How audiences respond to and interpret the media — Eduqas GCSE Media Studies C680
Eduqas GCSE Media Studies · C680
How audiences respond to and interpret the media
Audiences
What you need to know
Active and passive audiences: the difference between seeing audiences as absorbing messages and seeing them as choosing, questioning and creating.
Why audiences read the same product differently, through social differences (age, gender, ethnicity and class) and individual ones (experience and beliefs).
Media practices and identity: how what people watch, play, read and share connects to who they are and who they want to be.
Why responses change over time, such as how audiences now read products from the 1950s, 1970s or 1990s.
Audiences as producers: fans, users and players who create and share content.
Stuart Hall's reception theory, in which audiences may take a preferred, negotiated or oppositional reading of a product: a useful perspective, though not one the specification requires.
The set products for 2027 and 2028 exams are the Vogue and GQ covers; the Man with the Golden Gun and No Time to Die posters; the Guardian of 18 January 2022 and the Sun of 1 January 2021 (2027 exams only), then the Guardian of 6 May 2025 and the Sun of 22 March 2025 (2028 exams); the Quality Street and NHS 111 adverts; the Sun, Desert Island Discs, No Time to Die and Fortnite for industries and audiences; Trigger Point with The Sweeney, or Man Like Mobeen or Modern Family with Friends; and Lizzo or Taylor Swift, Stormzy or Justin Bieber, and Rio or Waterfalls. This Girl Can, The Archers and Luther were last set for 2026 exams, so past questions on them are practice only.
