catfish:

The intended audience for the programme "catfish" is mainly for anyone using the internet for social network purposes, it reaches a wide selection of the public as its something the vast majority can relate to, especially young people between the ages of 13 to 25. I use these ages because the age for starting to use the internet is 13 when using a social network area. It mainly aims to the younger generation because they use it mostly in an unsafe way of meeting new people on the internet whereas older people are statistically shown that older generation generally don't even use the internet. Also the actual channel that catfish is aired on (mtv) indicates the audience to be between the ages of 16 to 30 year olds. Overall it mainly aims to capture a younger age group audience as they are typically known to relate to the issues shown within this programme therefore would show more of an interest in watching.

To start with "catfish" meets the uses and gratifications of personal identity. It does this by identifying the audience through social networking and relating them to the issues displayed in the programme. It does this by realising that their audience are more likely to have come into contact with the same issue/situation as the people displayed in the programme; the audience typically like this because it helps them with their own personal problem and how to deal with it. Lastly we see the programme uses personal identity as the people shown in "catfish" are relatively young and therefore identify more with their targeted audience as they fit the same age category.

Within uses and gratification the programme also displays the use of information as its not only used for entertainment purposes it has an element of documentary purposes to spread awareness of issues in the world about the problems/dangers occurring in social networking sites. This can relate to parents, carers, or near enough everyone as there is a huge majority of social users in the world and this programme relates to all of them. It uses information to create an idea that the internet is unsafe the majority of the time, it does this by using a type of hyprodermic needle that injects an idea of danger online using certain ideas to create this interpretation, one being near enough all stories used on the programme are in fact NOT success stories which ultimately injects the idea to the audience as it's biased. This can also relate to process of selection when they have cut out success stories and selected only the ones that effects the audience in the intended way.

Uses of entertainment within uses and gratifications doesn't necessarily apply in catfish as it doesn't allow it's target audience escape from reality but to face it as it's likely the audience have either been in this situation or know someone who has. The only time this may be the case is when someone outside of the targeted audience watches it without intended purely for entertainment from watching the stories shown in the programme which allows an emotional release.

Social interegation is the last part of uses and gratification. this is used a lot as the target audience are generally in contact with each other a lot whether it be in school, college or any other educational places as they are young. This shows there is expected to be a lot of discussion within companionship about the programme and their thoughts and feelings on the show. Even further than this we could assume the teachers hearing these conversation may lead to them involving into social interegation themselves or even the first consumer to tell their parents which could intrigue them into watching catfish too.

 

The programme "catfish" is very mediated and constructed throughout. To start with the selection process that I spoke about earlier on is a key aspect of this as all success stories are left out in intention to alter out opinions and feelings towards the message brought in the programme.

After the selection process has been finished the programme is constructed to chose ultimate highlights that create a more viewable programme, it also uses elements that will try and control your thoughts of the programme to suit their intended way.

Also the focus/mediation is to follow the character in which the story is based upon, this results in us as the viewers making a particular assumption on the story or on the social networking issues raised in catfish.

An important aspect of the use of mediation and construction in catfish I think is dominant ideology. I think this because the man presenting the show is someone effected by social networking and therefore holds and ideologic change that social networking relationships are bad/dangerous from his past experience. By him having this assumption it is the point of view that is presented throughout. And because of this it creates a kind of 2 step flow because he is now the "opinion leader" therefore the audience is more likely to hold his view on social networking relationships.

 

Overall the programme "catfish" is a highly constructed or mediated show that meets a lot of uses and gratifications (even if not intended) and reaches an audience of ages 13 to 30 years of age and a majority of all social networking users.