There are two basic ways audiences are constructed and function as a market: as consumers (also referred to as market type) and as commodities. In turn at least a part of a person's identity is defined by their participation in a market. The consumer society suggests that all social problems can be solved by working on your "self".
The three most common and persistent ways of describing market types include:
1. Demographics-quantitative description of population according to a set of social or sociological variables such as age, income, and gender.
2. Taste Culture- Refers to continuing commitment of a group of people to some type of product.
3. Lifestyle Clusters- Represents the segment of population that tends to purchase and use certain kinds of products or to make certain kinds of decisions. (Members tend to spend their money and time in a similar manner)
When the audience is viewed as a commodity, they are looked at as an object produced in order to be sold for a profit. (TV and radio are the most common and obvious places that an audience is commodified).
Chapter 8 also discussed social identity and acknowledged three main questions:
1. Where do categories of identity come from and what do they signify?
2. What does it mean to belong to or be a member of a particular social group?
3. What is the content or meaning of categories and how are these meanings determined?
In response to these questions, there are two schools of thought.
1. Essentialist View- categories of identity are natural, necessary, and universal.
2. Anti-Essential View- There is no single physical trait or genetic marker that can be used to separate the human population into races.
As a whole, the chapter was trying to explain that people's identities are less stable and unified than they were in previous generations. People's identities are changing under the influence of pop culture and mass media.
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