Attitude and Zoella

Clay Shirky argues that audiences in today’s online age are no longer passive consumers of media content. Evaluate this ‘end of audience’ theory.

Refer to Zoella and the Attitude website to support your answer. [30]

Shirky's theory states that audiences no longer passively consume. Rather, they actively engage with the media. An example of this is Zoella, whose career exists mostly on social media. This allows fans to comment on her posts and videos, engaging with the media. She also has Q&A videos where she answers the fans questions.

Shirky's theory also states that there is no such thing as a passive audience. This, however, is not the case for a big part of Zoella's audience.  Going into the comments section of Zoella's videos, most of them are stand alone comments with no replies. This shows that the audience is not interacting with each other, only Zoella. As well as that Zoella rarely interacts with the comments either. Her last video on the Zoella youtube channel has the comments turned off, preventing the audience from interacting with it.

Shirky's theory also relies on the idea of audiences now being very individual, with media attracting a wide range of people. Zoella'a fanbase, however, seems to all be very similar, likely in big part due to her content neither challenging nor going against the expectations of society. Zoella is a middle-class woman who focuses on clothing and makeup in her content. Occasionally she branches out, with videos about airplane anxiety and other similar topics, but these are still within the realm of tame content. Her videos do not challenge the viewer, and so her videos attract a majority of the same types of people.

Attitude

Attitude began as a newspaper in the 1990's and later into a website. It is targeted at older gay men, primarily those with some amount of wealth. As it is a UK magazine, and it therefore targeted towards British men.

The website has an article called "boys" that is filled with photos of shirtless, muscular men. Currently, all of the men in this section are white, which reflects the ethnic group the newspaper is targeting.

The audience is older gay men, because much of the articles are reflective of their interests.

Exam question: Zoella and audience

How far can aspects of identity be seen to affect the way in which audiences use online media?

 Discuss, with reference to Zoella.  You should refer to relevant academic theories in your response.

Online media allows audiences to find a wider range of media to identify and interact with, but according to Gauntlett's identity theory, it also gives them a wider variety of media to build an identity with. In the case of Zoella, she does not challenge any stereotypes or preconceptions of womanhood, and therefore the audience does not have to think so hard to understand her content. It is very surface level and seemingly open. While o an intellectual level, we all understand that the way Zoella presents herself in the videos is not necessarily who she really is (especially since Zoella is a brand identity), due to the manner in which she addresses her audience in the videos, she creates the illusion of a two way friendship between her and the viewer. This makes the viewers more captivated in her content, and they then allow her subconsciously to have greater control over how their identity is shaped than perhaps a YouTuber they feel is very cold and distant.

However, the audience is no longer solely a consumer of the media they like. In the age of online media, people can actively create a two way conversation between the consumer and the producer. This ties in to Shirky's end of audience theory. The audience is no longer passive. Not only are they shaped by the media they consume, but the media is shaped by them. While the audience is shaped by the content Zoella puts out, if she were to create a completely different style video that the fans didn't like, they could immediately and in large numbers give her negative feedback for it. This would then affect her content, as it is unlikely she would create another video that style if the last one received backlash. This also means that the audience has a greater control over their identity, as they have greater control over the things that influence it. However, consumers could trap themselves in never wanting to see different content, and therefore restricting the media that moulds their identity.

Jenkin's fandom theory follows the idea that fans, in the age of online media, can not only consume media they like, but create media in response to it. Fans of Zoella's could create fan fiction, fan art, or fan pages. This means that not only are they consuming media that influences them, but they are also producing media that may influence others. This then means that parts of the audience now bare the same responsibility of the producer, which is to be aware of how the content created can be interpreted. Producers of media have an obligation to their fans to make sure the content they create is appropriate for their audience. A YouTuber that created content primarily for young children suddenly releasing a video full of swear words and other age inappropriate content would not only be irresponsible, but a betrayal of the trust they had with their audience. This would inevitably effect their views and the number of people interested in their content, and by extension the money they earn.

Zoella

Zoella is a brand that runs began on youtube. It primarily focuses on clothing and makeup, and generally shows the familial, social aspect of her life. Her main target audience is women aged 13-29. She primarily entertains her audience, but she also gives advice on which products to use and talks openly about her experiences with mental health. At this point in time, the top article on her blog is about an interview with a mental health professional.

Zoella does not challenge the dominant ideas that women like clothes and makeup. According to the cultivation theory, this could influence the young women who watch her content in terms of what they feel they should like. However, the argument could also be made that the only girls consuming her content are already interested in these things. However, Zoella's content on its own could plant the idea in girls' heads that this is the only ideal for what women should be. Zoe Sugg, in contrast, offers a broader range of identity and ideas about what identity is. She offers a more mature, worldly view of what a woman can be and the girls that watched her Zoella content grew up to watch her Zoe Sugg content, perhaps influencing and cultivating how they matured in their own lives.

Due to her career being entirely built on the internet, from the very beginning fans were able to interact with her through the comments section. This fits with Shirky's end of audience. The audience are no longer passive consumers as they were previously in media.