audience description

Audience Description

My target audience is adolescents or young adults who have friends/loved ones who are addicted to drugs or alcohol. My audience is not limited to race, gender, or socioeconomic class, because I believe drug use and addiction is not determinative by these factors. In other words, I am targeting any young adult or adolescent, from any race/ ethnic background, boy or girl, rich or poor. The educational background of my audience is a current student, who is in high school, college, or even recently graduated young adults. I am assuming my audience is literate and retains a basic level of education. Since drug use has become embedded in contemporary American culture, and in some cases, is commonplace within high schools and colleges, much of my audience is desensitized to drug use and addiction. This desensitization, in effect, not only has caused my audience to develop a lack of concern towards chronic drug use, but has also caused my audience overall to become more indifferent.

Our culture, which highly values social identity and social belonging, has instilled in my audience a strong sense to retain the social identity and ties they have established. In order to do this, my audience often conforms to American social interactional values which include informality, respect, and building solidarity. Here, in order to build solidarity or maintain solidarity amongst friends or a certain group, teenagers and young adults will tend to cater to the groups expectations and values. In many cases, direct intervention or confrontation conflict these expectations or values, so teenagers and young adults often become timid. Considering this, I will promote anonymous intervention, which I believe would be more appealing to my audience in that they can maintain the social ties and solidarity they have established amongst their friends or social group