During the first ten minutes of class, write a summary memo focused on your reading of Chapter 8, “Your Audience” from Miller’s Digital Storytelling. We will discuss this after you have had a chance to write down your thoughts, and we will consider the questions raised by this chapter in regard to your current project.
4 thoughts on “Beginning of Class Writing: Miller, Chapter 8, Your Audience”
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Chapter 8 focuses on audience which I’ve found is a common factor in most content creation. Knowing who you’re writing for or presenting media to is crucial in its success. Knowing the audience includes knowing their purpose for seeking the information, their use for it and the time the expect to spend using it. I have encountered this information in other courses of my discipline as well. One of the biggest audiences and markets for digital media are young children ages 8-18 who nearly tripled the amount of time they spent on screen in the past decade. This market is crucial because youth of today translate to the consumer of tomorrow. Young users have many dynamics and understand them have several avenues such as, gender, developmental stages, desires and fears and content appeal. Not every child gravitates towards the same material what one is engrossed in another is indifferent to. Though some people dismiss the importance of understanding the young audience it is imperative to keeping your brand and your content relevant in years to come. In addition to age appropriateness and development it is important to gain parental approval of content because parents have a larger impact on their child’s exposure to content. Parents feel the need to protect their young users from damaging content. Outside of approval and appeal there are several other factors that go into content creation, humor, challenge and rewards are major components of this. Another target audience are projects and content geared towards girls and women , genders tend to think and interact very differently so creating content for a specific model of user can be very successful, though it is important to not create sexist or gender bias media. Lastly seniors are the final addition to digital media though reluctant those who do use it gravitate towards simple interfaces. Knowing who you’re creating for and what they’re going to do with it is imperative to rolling out successful and useful content across multiple platforms.
To: Professor Ellis
From: Mariah Rajah
Date: 03/07/2016
Re: Summary of Chapter 8
The audience of your digital story potentially decided has the potential whether or not your story will be a success. In Miller’s chapter 8 “Your Audience”, she explains how determining specific characteristics of your audience allows you to narrow down your understanding of how they could respond to your story. Miller states that audience differs across cultures, age groups, education levels, gender, and geographic location. These characteristics of audience determines how they respond to the story which can differ in opinion. Miller suggests to enlist Subject Matter Experts (SME) in order to to better understand how to specifically reach a target audience such as women or children. A key aspect of this chapter was Miller’s mention of i aspirations which she explains to be “engines that help push children toward maturity.” page 134. The inclusion of aspirations allow your audience to grow not only as a view but as an active participant within the story. The chapter goes on to highlight the use of humor and challenges in order to engage your audience but from my perspective the biggest underlying factor was Miller’s statement about how games and other stories are presented to women which can be seen on page 139. In these paragraphs her views in my opinion are stereotypical and one sides although many girls do not prefer gore the exclusivity of her language conjures that girls or young women could not possibly engage in such behaviors. I believe that in such an environment in which we live in it is important to understand the growing demographic of the expansive interests of children and the subject that those interests may not always fit into societal norms. All in all this chapter highlights very useful information digital storytellers could refer to when writing to specific target audiences.
To: Professor Ellis
Form: Pamela Drake
Subject: Digital Storytelling – Summary of Chapter 8 – Your Audience
Date: March 7, 2016
Chapter seven of Digital Storytelling by Carolyn Handler Miller describes the audience as a fundamental part of storytelling. Miller states that children content is as important as adult content and often are the leading force behind interactive entertainment. Specifically, a large amount of media and products, is devoted and marketed towards children and teens. However, Miller explains, that it is challenging to successfully create interactive entertaining games and toys.
When designing, developers have to consider the development stages of childhood and what mediums are suitable for different age groups, gender differences and what is suitable for the both genders or individual genders, and parents and children preferences and what is considered appealing and appropriate. In addition, developers also consider development psychologist and educational specialists also provide guidance to creators and this helps when evaluating what will and will not work. Other considerations Miller mentions are given to seniors, people with disabilities, women.
In her conclusion, Miller states that audiences vary enormously and she points out that if developers are to be successful, they must consider whether the subject matter is appropriate, whether the platform is accessible and convenient to use by the user, and whether the difficulty level is targeted to the right audience.
To: Professor Ellis
From: Jodieann Stephenson
Subject: Summary of Chapter 8
Date: 03/07/2016
In chapter 8 Miller hones in on the idea of audience. According to Dicitionary.com, audience is the group of spectators at a public event; listeners or viewers collectively, as in attendance at a theater or concert. In Miller’s account of audience, she focuses on audience in media, specifically in defining your target audience and designing a story around that particular target audience. The first question for any writer to ask is “Who is my audience?” Once there is a clearly defined audience, the writer can successfully craft a narrative. After you have identified your audience is important to understand the user, the participant in your story. This presents a daunting tasks for many content specialist. This goes back to identifying the developmental patterns of your audience. Also, the chapter stresses that although you have a clearly defined audience there maybe other participants who you need to consider. For example many young children who play video games, many of them cannot purchase video games so the games must appeal to the parents which is another audience that marketers have to consider.
Another key aspect of the chapter is the mention of gender, specifically women and elders in the digital scene. In many ways the chapter exposes how many video games force the ideas of gender into children’s head at such a young age. Girls are told to be drawn more towards animals and boys are told to participate in activities that are more challenging. Boys are taught to be more aggressive and girls are taught to be submissive and through culture and video games these ideologies are reinforced. The chapter allows examines racism in the video platform of YouTube, and how many societies does not accept certain individuals so they search for new forms of communities in nontraditional ways.
In all the chapter is something that I will continuously consider in my career. I will always ask the question “Who is my audience?”