SMARTHINKING Writer's Handbook

Chapter 2, Lesson 1

Analyzing the Audience

Objective

Learn how to analyze an audience so that you will recognize its needs when you write.

Why is analyzing your audience important?

Did you ever go up to a friend and say, "Hey, I'm taking Professor ________'s course this semester. I've heard he's pretty tough on papers. You took him last semester, right? What does he want?"

If so, you already have some experience in analyzing a potential audience. Now suppose you take a course that has five essays with due dates spread throughout the semester. Even if you know the subject, the first paper is always tough because you really don't know what the professor wants. But as you learn what the professor expects of your writing, each assignment gets easier. By successfully analyzing your audience—the professor—you have learned to deliver the subject matter in a way that s/he will respond to more favorably. As a student, knowing and understanding your professor as an audience has real implications when your assignments are graded.

Analyzing the audience, therefore, is a natural learning process for most students, even though they may not even realize they are doing it! The trick is to learn how to analyze other audiences aside from your writing professors. In the workplace and in society, the ability to analyze various audiences can help you communicate, and succeed.

How do you define an audience's interests?

In ancient Greece, a teacher and philosopher named Aristotle said, "All men are persuaded by considerations of their interests." With this simple sentence, he was cautioning his students to pay attention to each audience so that they could alter their proposals to match the interests of their listeners and readers. You too must learn how to consider the audience's different interests before you start to write. But how do you define these interests? You do so by (1) identifying the audience and then (2) assessing the audience's needs.

A scenario

Suppose that your father was a professional baseball player in the U.S. major leagues. American professional athletes make very large salaries, and many people are outraged that "pro" athletes make so much more money than firefighters, teachers or other kinds of workers. However, from your personal experience, you think that because professional athletes give up a lot of freedom and time with their families to play sports, their high salaries are justified. You decide that your goal in writing about this issue is to convince other people that your point of view is valid. After thinking about it, you choose to publish an article in the college newspaper. Before you write, however, you'll need to analyze your audience so you can make a convincing argument.

The key to audience analysis is the concept of demographics, or the study of populations. Don't worry—you won't have to develop surveys or spend countless hours analyzing statistics before beginning to write! But, it is a good idea to think about your readers and jot down any common factors that define them as a group. For example: are they students or workers? Do they both attend college and work? Are they children or adults? Approximately how many of those who read the college newspaper are men and how many are women? What level of education to they have—high-school, some college, or a college degree? Answering these questions will help you focus in on what kind of people your readers are.

For your article about professional athletes' salaries, you need to know something about your readers so that you can speak to them with examples and details that they will understand and respect. Because the article will appear in the campus newspaper, you know most readers will be students. Most will be young adults, but some may be older students returning to school. Most will have high school degrees, but some, like your professors, have college and graduate school degrees. Since the topic is sports, it may be that more of your readers will be men then women, but not so many more men that you can ignore the women in your audience.

By identifying the major characteristics of your audience, you set the parameters of your writing style and shape your writing process.

Exercise

Take a look at your college newspaper. Who reads it? In the text box below, list the groups who read that newspaper. When you've finished, click the Compare button to see our list of other possible audiences of that newspaper.

 

As you can see, there are multiple ways to identify the demographics of an audience. Spending a few minutes figuring out who your audience is will make you a more effective writer.

Once you have identified the demographics of the overall audience, you are ready to choose which segments of that audience you wish to focus upon. For the student newspaper, you would probably want to choose traditional students between the ages of 18-22.

Analyzing Your Audience

Demographic analysis helps tell you who your audience is. However, it doesn't tell you what your audience cares about or what their hopes, dreams, assumptions, and fears are. To learn these things, you must analyze the audience.

You can do so by looking at seven key concepts: bias, agenda, fears, values, needs, commonalties, and differences and educational level.

• Bias is the belief system, or world view, of the audience. Liberal and conservative thinkers are two examples of overall bias.
• Agenda is what the audience wants to accomplish in the world. For example, health care reform, tax reductions, and feeding the poor are all agendas.
• Fears are what the audience wants to avoid. They can range from personal fears of sickness, death, or poverty, to global fears of war, environmental decline, or mass hunger.
• Values are the social and personal principles held by an individual, class or society. For example, hard work, charity and truthfulness are all values.
• Needs are what the audience requires to be healthy and happy. Examples of needs include food, housing, community, and even entertainment.
• Commonalties and Differences are the things the members of the audience do or don't have in common with other groups, or with you as the writer. For example, your readers may not have a professional baseball player in the family (difference), but they may have played organized sports (commonality).
• Educational Level defines the intellectual requirements of the audience. Since different audiences are convinced by different methods of reasoning and speaking, it's important to know what your audience's intellectual needs are. You want to talk to them using the right-level vocabulatry and offering the types of evidence that they'll find convincing.

Remember as you look at these concepts that the goal is to define the interests of your chosen audience as it relates to your subject. People have so many different views, interests, hopes, and fears that it is impossible to identify the needs of your audience on all subjects!

Exercise

Returning to our example, imagine that you are writing an article for your campus newspaper defending the salaries of professional athletes. Choose the answer that you think best suits your audience's interests as they relate to maintaining those salaries:

1. Which of the following best describes the belief system of the general student population concerning pro athletes' salaries?

A. They believe athletes deserve the salaries they make
B. They believe the salaries are too high for what athletes do.
C. They believe athletes should share the wealth with the fans.
D. They don't care either way.

2. What are the audience's fears as they relate to athlete's salaries?

A. They are afraid that ticket prices will get too high for everyone to attend the games.
B. They are afraid that college athletes leave college too early in order to make money at the professional level.
C. They are afraid that all teams can't compete equally because not all teams have the money to pay the high salaries.
D. All of the above.

3. What are the values of the audience as they relate to people making money for their athletic talents?

A. They believe people should be able to make as much money as possible.
B. They believe that athletes should make less money than doctors, teachers, and public service workers.
C. They believe that high salaries give children the wrong idea about fame and popularity.
D. B and C

4. How is my audience similar to and different from me?

A. They agree with my thesis.
B. They disagree with my thesis.
C. They don't care about the issue one way or another.

5. What is the educational level of this audience?

A. They haven't finished high school.
B. They are high school graduates.
C. They hold a degree from a two-year college.
D. They hold a degree from four-year college.
E. They hold a post-graduate degree.

By answering these questions, you've analyzed the interests of your audience as they relate to your topic. Doing so will help you address your audience's needs when you make your argument. You know, for example, that this audience mostly is comprised of your peers, so you will write using the vocabulary that they use, but in a tone that won't offend readers who aren't peers. However, you also know that many of them will be skeptical about your argument, and that you will have to work hard to put their fears and doubts to rest. You'll learn how to do this in another topic (See "How the Audience Affects the Purpose for Writing.")

Summary

You've learned how to use demographics to identify potential audiences. You've also learned how to analyze your target audience's interests, values, and needs so you can take them into account when you write.