ذائقة الجمهور وإشكالية التعميم !

Taste, in its simplest concepts, means the ability to distinguish between things and appreciate them according to personal standards and interests. The taste of the audience is the final result of the evaluation process, leaning towards or preferring one thing over another. This taste changes over time and is influenced by psychological, social, and economic factors, and even beyond that. It sometimes falls under a state of mood, contradiction, and politeness between one position and another. However, despite the challenges of measurement and impact, it remains an important indicator for understanding audience behavior and an opportunity to improve the media content presented to them, as well as to select media and marketing campaigns that align with that taste.

There is a relationship between the audience's taste and the level of their personal freedom; thus, they are the ones who decide and choose what suits them. Conversely, there is a relationship between that taste and the general communication behavior in society, as the private taste often transforms to align with the collective in a general taste. This is usually evident in topics that directly affect common issues and subjects. However, the noteworthy aspect is not in defining or ranking the audience's taste, but rather the more dangerous part is in interpreting the reasons and factors of that taste, its temporal contexts, its communicative circumstances, and the reflection of all that on the mental image of the individual and society.

Talking about taste in a holistic context for society is possible, but it still faces significant challenges at the level of tools and methodologies, accuracy in selecting criteria, and the cultural and social diversity within society, alongside other challenges related to biases and restrictions sometimes imposed on the nature of the study or survey. Therefore, many studies and opinion polls have sought to measure taste from the perspective of a specialized audience to overcome those challenges, which can be referred to as the taste of audience gathering points around a specific field, issue, event, or topic, and understanding the behavior of that audience during the gathering period, rather than each individual separately, by measuring that taste according to a dropdown list of options, such as the taste of the sports audience or the artistic audience, as sports or art are the gathering points for the audience we are addressing in analyzing their taste.

If we talk, for example, about the taste of the Saudi audience in the sports field - the gathering point - we find that it is an audience that leans towards sarcastic and spontaneous content, prefers visual content, and tends to favor content that opposes the rival, sometimes justifying it in their comments and interactions on social media. However, this result cannot be generalized to say that Saudi society is sarcastic, for it is an expression of the taste of a sports audience and not the entire society. This is one of the most significant methodological errors when we generalize taste.

Does this mean that the taste of any society cannot be measured? The answer is certainly no, but this measurement still faces significant challenges - as we mentioned - and thus most results about the taste of any society are merely general indicators that may be difficult to generalize or judge.