Knowing Your Audience

Running head: Knowing Your Audience 1

Knowing Your Audience

Tia U. Robinson

BCOM 275

March 20, 2012

Rick Grooms

Knowing Your Audience 2

Knowing Your Audience

Knowing your audience is a critical component of public speaking. To know your audience would be an extremely significant mark at any time a company was to communicate material to a group or organization. Knowing your audience proves to be even more significant when a company has to deal with the outcome resulting from a disaster. Understanding the group of people who are receiving the message is second in importance only to the message itself. A poor understanding of your audience can lead to poor delivery of the information that you need to get across. In regards to the Chilean Copper Mine Collapse, there are many factors to take into consideration when releasing information to the public. Speaking from the perspective of announcing the incident, one must note the different roles and people in the audience. The families of the miners and the employees of the company must receive the message differently. Also, there are precautions that must be taken before the messages are delivered to ensure they are delivered correctly.

“On August 5, 2010, a gold and copper mine near the northern city of Copiapo, Chile caved in, trapping 33 miners in a chamber about 2,300 feet below the surface,”(“Chile mine, 2010). The outcome of the company and their reaction to the disaster would eventually define how the world, their audience, would see them. It turns out to be very imperative that the representatives of

Knowing Your Audience 3

Knowing Your Audience

the company who issues updates and information to the public know their audience well. The audience the company would be reporting to would be made up of the news correspondence, the victim’s families and the media. Not only would the company...