Audience

The audience is whoever needs to be persuaded.

Some important questions:

Who is the audience? (Are there multiple audiences?)
What's their relationship to the issue? What do they value?
How invested are they in maintaining the status quo?
What power do they have? What resources?
What's their relationship to the speaker?
How would they react to the speaker’s goal?

We could go further, but these questions are a good start.

For example, we talked about Darth Vader as speaker in The Empire Strikes Back, when he tries to persuade Luke Skywalker to join him on the dark side:

Darth Vader

But what about Luke Skywalker? What could we say about him as an audience in this specific situation?

Luke skywalker defiant gantry

(From The Empire Strikes Back)

Who is the audience? (Are there multiple audiences?)
What's their relationship to the issue? What do they value?
How invested are they in maintaining the status quo?
What power do they have? What resources?
What's their relationship to the speaker?
How would they react to the speaker’s goal?

Using the questions to guide you, what can you say about Luke Skywalker as the audience in this situation? (Rough notes are fine.)

Luke is Darth Vader's only audience.
He's been a farm hand, a fighter pilot (blew up Death Star #1), slept inside a dead Taunton, trained with Yoda, become a Jedi knight, lost his hand in a duel with Darth Vader—he's been through a lot!
But he's basically idealistic, believes he's on the side of good, and wants to overthrow the Empire that killed his aunt & uncle and blew up Princess Leia's home planet.
When it comes to joining the dark side, Luke is conflicted because he really hates Darth Vader and the Empire—he wants revenge.
Darth Vader also believes Luke wants power and would be tempted by the prospect of ruling the galaxy, but on that point he's mistaken.
Ultimately, Luke is determined to maintain the status quo, with him being on the light side of the Force.
While Darth Vader has the upper hand in general, on this particular issue Luke is more powerful: only Luke can choose his allegiance.

What about the Liberty Science Center?

Liberty Science black holes billboard

Who is their audience for this billboard? It's probably parents who are driving to and from work:

Parent driving kids to school

Major traffic jam

Who is the audience? (Are there multiple audiences?)
What's their relationship to the issue? What do they value?
How invested are they in maintaining the status quo?
What power do they have? What resources?
What's their relationship to the speaker?
How would they react to the speaker’s goal?

Using the questions to guide you, what can you say about the audience for this ad? (Rough notes are fine.)

We don't have a lot to go on, so we have to make some guesses.

First, there is no single audience. The audience is a large group of individuals, who we could divide into parents of young kids and adult science nerds.

Each of these audiences would have a different profile, so let's focus on the parents:

The issue for parents is how to spend their time with their kids. Many parents want to keep their kids busy with activities that are fun but also educational.
The status quo is parents do whatever they normally do on their weekends, which might be fine except both parents and kids can get bored, so parents are motivated to find new experiences.
Parents' power is they have some money, time, and some authority over their kids. But that's not unlimited: most parents have to weigh up costs and benefits of an activity, and they also need to convince the kids to go along.
They may or may not already have a relationship with the science center. If they do, they might jump at the chance to go to a new exhibition at the planetarium. If they don't, they might need to be convinced that the planetarium is worth their time and money (compared to other options).

What about this unnamed authority instructing people to not play on the pipe? What can we say about their audience?

sign tells everyone who is playing on pipe to not play on pipe

Who is the audience? (Are there multiple audiences?)
What's their relationship to the issue? What do they value?
How invested are they in maintaining the status quo?
What power do they have? What resources?
What's their relationship to the speaker?
How would they react to the speaker’s goal?

Using the questions to guide you, what can you say about the audience for this sign? (Rough notes are fine.)

Again, we have to make some guesses.

Let's assume the speaker is a town council.
The primary audience is the kids who want to play on the pipe.
A secondary audience is their parents, who may have more power over the kids than the council does.
Neither kids nor parents probably have any idea who put the sign there, so they have no relationship with the speaker (except probably irritation that they are being told they can't do something they want to do).
The kids are heavily invested in the status quo. They want to play on the pipe. Playing on the pipe is fun! Plus playing on the pipe doesn't seem to hurt the pipe, and the sign doesn't do anything, and everyone else seems to ignore it anyway.
The parents probably want to obey the sign, but they also don't want to spend their time yelling at their kids to get off the pipe, so on balance, they'd rather just let the kids climb on the pipe since it doesn't seem to do anything anyway.
The power in this situation is interesting. The parents have some power over the kids, but they don't want to use it because it's too much effort.
The council probably has some power to issue fines, but it would have to pay someone to go to the beach, issue the fines, and probably become unpopular with the kids and parents.
So right now, the audience is a bunch of kids who are getting what they want and don't want to change, and it will take a lot more than a sign to budge them.

So you can see, key questions about the audience revolve around how they feel about the status quo and how invested they are in maintaining it.

Before we wrap up, try using the questions to describe an imaginary audience based on this image (you'll need to imagine what the issue might be, as well):

menacing cow looks through window

Who is the audience? (Are there multiple audiences?)
What's their relationship to the issue? What do they value?
How invested are they in maintaining the status quo?
What power do they have? What resources?
What's their relationship to the speaker?
How would they react to the speaker’s goal?

Using the questions to guide you, describe an audience based on this image. (Rough notes are fine.)

Persuasive context