Audience Advocacy

When you study audiences in depth, you are in a good position to listen for how they describe their interests and needs. With clients who really care about this, our research can reveal the perspectives of a few major audience groups. These are likely to be different to each other.

So, Coppice’s ‘audience advocacy’ is based on what people actually say and do. We don’t come to one single conclusion but describe a few different positions. Audiences’ perspectives can’t just be communicated in numbers. Their thoughts and feelings should be included.

We have worked with advocacy groups to reveal where shifts of opinion are taking place and advise them about their messaging. For example, The Greens discovered in one Insite Mapping workshop that it wasn’t just their focus on the environment that was gaining electoral support but also their insistence on clear processes of decision-making at local government level, where integrity could be demonstrated.

In an earlier, more extensive study of people with disabilities and their uses of the Web, we showed that their needs were more complex than just reading information through accessibility technologies. The reputation of the organisation providing information was decisive, especially for health and for travel. In those early years, many were conscious of how little content was available. One peron described it as ‘access to this little tiny pie’.