SuperHuman: AUDIENCES

Channel 4: public service broadcaster

Aim is to take risks and produce unique content

Gives a voice to minority groups and act as a platform for difference

Channel 4: audience

Mainstream channel whose content needs to reach a mainstream audience

Traditionally young audience, but this is shifting as younger viewers move to online platforms

Channel 4: recent shifts

Focus is competing with online platforms and reaching young audiences who no longer watched terrestrial television in a living room

Aim of Superhuman advert:

Get people to watch Paralympics

Change attitude around disability

Target audience: superhuman

-Mainstream audiences

-Diverse audiences

-British audiences

-Channel 4 viewers

-Fans of the Olympics

Mainstream audiences:

-Paralympics has become a mainstream event which correlates with channel 4 seeking to reach a wide audience

-The campaign reached 81% of the UK population

Diverse audiences:

Channel 4 remit is to create content that appeals for the taste of interest of a culturally diverse society

British audiences:

Paralympics is a national event, therefore there's a focus on British paralympians

Channel 4 viewers and fans of the Olympics:

ready-made/Pre-sold audience

Personalisation: target and appeal to audiences

Individual narratives are constructed to encourage the audience to identify the athletes and their lives

-Giving birth

-Missing out on their child's birthdays for work

Technical codes: target and appeal to audiences

Close-up shot: popping of the blister

Unfamiliar views: prosthetic blade

Editing cuts: athletes growling routines in contrast to clips of cartoon moments that engages audience through humour

Audio codes: target and appeal to audiences

Soundtrack: so you want to be a boxer from the musical Bugsy Malone - upbeat starring tune

Intertextuality: older audiences will be familiar with the film from which it is taken from

Heavy breathing and grunting: woman in childbirth and a baby crying

Unique selling point: target and appeal to audiences

Realistic betrayal of the lives of disabled athletes: encouraging audiences to examine their own misconceptions of disability in the light of what they have just viewed

Channel 4 Paralympic coverage

Viewed by 20 million people

22% of whom was 16 to 34 years of age

Stuart Hall reception theory: preferred reading

Disabled people are humans like anyone else: Channel 4 audiences will accept this meaning as they are familiar with the approach taken by the broadcaster

Challenged audiences to examine how they may use outdated language to categorise disabled people: ' to be a paralympian there's got to be something wrong with you' slogan at the end of the advertisement this will encourage audiences to see this is something positive that being paralympian is something of which to be proud

Stuart Hall reception theory: negotiated meaning

Disabled audiences: agree with the message of the video but feel like different types of disabilities under represented

Cartoon imagery: the advert makes light of some of the issues

Stuart Hall reception theory: oppositional meaning

Shock tactics: timelapse photography of a bruise developing and a close-up shot of a blister being popped: oppositional reading at the advert is distasteful and shocking

Older audiences: may still believe that the Paralympics is a less important than the Olympic Olympics

Gerbner cultivation theory: repeated patterns or representation over long periods of time

Audiences may have become desensitised to advertising which raises awareness for a particular social group becoming somewhat immune to their purpose

-Superhuman tries to avoid heavily repeated patterns of representation as it challenges dominant ideologies of disability

Gerbner cultivation theory: cultivation reinforces mainstream values

Superhuman offers a refreshing a more realistic perception of what it means speed disabled and one that challenges common preconceptions and mainstream values