DeBrae Jones
Week 4
Individual Assignment
Knowing Your Audience Paper and Communication Release
BCOM/275
Austin Matthews

Introduction

In 2010, 33 miners were trapped in a copper mine for a little over two months. The incident was covered through every world media outlet from televised news broadcast, radio stations, websites, to conventional newspapers. “On Aug. 5, 2010, a gold and copper mine near the northern city of Copiapó, Chile caved in, trapping 33 miners in a chamber about 2,300 feet below the surface. For 17 days, there was no word on their fate. As the days passed, Chileans grew increasingly skeptical that any of the miners had survived — let alone all of them. But when a small bore hole reached the miners’ refuge, they sent up a message telling rescuers they were still alive” (New York Times 2011, October 12). The method in which each news source or media outlet chose to cover and convey the information; can and will determine how the reader, viewer, or listener will translate the received information.

Understanding the Audience

When considering the different roles and people of the audience when transferring information in an informative method; we must begin to try and understand human emotion, religious beliefs/concepts and theories, ethnicity, region, and a host of other components that are key when appealing to the target audience. Knowing who the people are that the message is being conveyed to will ensure the effectiveness and audience appeal of the message. For example; “Many of the miners came bounding out of their rescue capsule as pictures of energy and health, able not only to walk, but, in one case, to leap around, hug everyone in sight and lead cheers. Their apparent robustness was testimony to the rescue diet threaded down to them through the tiny borehole that reached them on Aug. 22, but also to the way they organized themselves to keep their environment clean, find water and get exercise” (New York Times
2011, October 12). From the example presented, the media was doing what some may call damage control for a big corporation, trying to reassure the rest of the world that the miners are well and in good spirits after being trapped in a mine which is a physical and mentally traumatizing situation; by tricking the world into believing that the miners were going to be compensated and well taken care of by the mining company while the incident was still an international topic. The backlash for the incident once the miners were saved was not a main focus, the incident died down and eventually forgotten about by everyone else in the world other than the miners and people of Chile.

Conveying a Family Message

The potential needs of the families of the miners in receiving a message about this incident would be to show compassion, sincerity, situational control, and reassurance that the miners are ok will be rescued and are in good health. “The miners later used a modified telephone to sing Chile’s national anthem to the hundreds of teary-eyed relatives celebrating above. In Santiago, the capital, motorists honked their car horns and people cheered wildly on subway platforms” (New York Times 2011, October 12). With the incident being broadcast on worldwide platform allowing the families of the miners to hear and sing Chile national anthem with the miners, conveyed the most effective personal message to the family reassuring the health and rescue of the miners was coming soon.

Reassuring Employees

The potential needs of the company’s employees when receiving a message about this incident would be to reassure employees that the company will do the best it can to prevent such incidents. Employees of the company will need to feel as if their lives are worth more than just an expendable employee to the company, as well as all miners that were trapped in the in the mine will be rescued and brought back to good mental and physical health with full support of the company, even if it all if just a mascaraed for the media.

Immediately holding press conferences before and after all moments of the incident is televised and covered on international media outlets, can begin and end any immediate worries that employees of the company as well as relatives of the miners involved in the incident.

References

Weik Juan. (2014). Over 30 workers trapped after Chilean copper mine collapse. Retrieved from Weik Juan, BCOM/275 website.

Chile Mining Accident (2010) Ney York Times. Retrieved from, http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/chile_mining_accident_2010/