Instructions
for Audience Analysis
I.
Begin by carefully examining the periodical whose readers you have chosen
as your audience.
In your analysis, you should consider the following questions:
§
Articles--
What are the articles about?
What does the choice of subject-matter show about the magazine's
orientations? Look at the Table of Contents. What is emphasized
most?
What are the regular features? Read through and analyze the
articles.
What side do the articles take on most issues? (NB: Remember that
many magazines commonly print opposing viewpoints, so make
sure you don’t get pulled off target by the occasional liberal article
in a conservative magazine and vice versa.)
§
Personnel--
Who publishes in this magazine? What
can you discover about the
publisher?
Are there any writers
whose names you recognize? Look up
writers
on the Internet.
Examine the advertisements. What
products dominate? What
audience do the ads seem to target?
What about visual design, illustrations. cartoons, etc.?
Support
your conclusions with detailed examples?
Make a real and successful effort to gather information and to find out about
things you didn't understand?
II.
Read through your responses to part one of your analysis, and use the
information you have gathered to help you analyze your audience in four areas.
Relationship of audience to itself: What
are the physical, cultural, economic environments of the audience? What are its
ethics, myths, prejudices, and preconceptions?
Relationship
of audience to the subject: What
does the audience already know, think, feel about the subject?
Relationship
of audience to the writer: What
experiences, interests, and values do I share with my audience? What is my
purpose in addressing this audience? What role am I asking the audience to play?
Relationship
of audience to the form What mode of development and
organization does the audience expect to find? What tone, level of diction,
level of sentence complexity?
Some Periodicals to Consider:
(These are suggestions for any of you having difficulty selecting an
audience, if you choose from this list, do not do so randomly. Make
a reasonable choice with your topic and approach in mind.)
The Nation (liberal)
The National Review (conservative)
Reason (Libertarian)
Salon (Internet)
Images: A Journal of Film and Popular Culture