What is an audience?

An audience is a group of people who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature theatre, music video game or academics in any medium. Audience members participate in different ways in different kinds of art; some events invite overt audience participation and others allowing only modest clapping and criticism and reception.

What Audience theorists can you find?

Stuart Hall : Encoding and Decoding; Preferred/ negotiated/ oppositional readings. Denis McQuail Uses and Gratification theory. The audience consume media for many different purposes: Escapism, Identity, Entertainment, and Education/information. Ien Ang - Audiencehood is becoming an even more multifaceted, fragmented and diversified repertoire of practices and experiences.

What audience theories link to the horror genre?

The uses and gratification theory links to the genre of horror as the audience watch the film for Entertainment as the target audience get a thrill of being scared as this is the purpose for wanting to watch the film. The hypodermic syringe model theory could also be linked to the horror genre as it could be said that people who watch horror films could turn into killers and murders use the diabolical ideas in horror films in real life which could give the film a bad reputation. A lso escapism could link to the horror genre as the target audience may watch the film in order to distract themselves from real life.