2. Audience Theories
Theories help you to create new ideas and new ways
of thinking about media audiences and should be
incorporated into your G325 response.
Some ideas:
Effects.
Uses and gratifications of the product.
Reception theory.
Ethnography.
Postmodern theory.
Media 2.0
3. Ideology and Interpellation*
Key example = gender based magazines
Nuts does four things:
1. Represents men to men.
2. Represents men to women.
3. Represents women to men.
4. Represents women to women.
* to identify with a particular idea or identity
5. Complicity* three theorists
Althusser: interpellation misrecognition
Winship: complicity and false belonging
Gauntlett – irony / play
*the state of being an accomplice
*
6. The active audience
Marxist ideology theory presents the media as a
controlling force (Antonio Gramsci, Raymond Williams)
Effects theories tend to assume a passive audience.
Reception theory sees audiences as active makers of
meaning.
Audiences may read the media as the producers intended
(preferred reading - hegemonic).
They may partly share the preferred response (negotiated
reading)
They may interpret the text in an alternative way
(oppositional, counter-hegemonic reading).
7. Ownership and Media Power
A Marxist view of media will focus on the relationship
between the providers of media, broader power structures
and the messages in media products circulated by these
power-holding institutions. This is media hegemony /
ideology theory.
Outfoxed is a key example.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w39FnpuMRfo
In the postmodern world it is more complex – eg The
Simpsons mocking Fox, Murdoch buying Myspace.
Whatever, we do we need to be aware of where media is
coming from and whose interests it might serve.
8. Identity and Locality
Local Media
National Media
Public Service Media
Commercial Media
Deregulated Media
Global Media
Cultural Imperialism – eg Hollywood film
Diaspora – eg Bollywood
Postmodernity
What happens to our identities?
9. Models of Mass Media
‘Classic’ (outdated or timeless?) models:
Shannon and Weaver, 1949
Galtung and Ruge, 1965
Blumer and Katz,1974
11. Hypodermic Model
‘Effects’ theory is / was often limited to the
idea that the media ‘inject’ messages into
audiences who are seen as passive.
The constant attempt to ‘prove’ that media
violence creates violent citizens (eg horror
films, video nasties in the 1980s, videogames
now) is based on this false premise.
Gauntlett on effects -
http://www.theory.org.uk/tenthings.htm
12. Galtung and Ruge, 1965
Gatekeeping the flow of information
Agents in gatekeeping are owners, editors,
journalists etc who create agendas (eg news
agendas) and then select and construct media
information to fit the agenda.
13. Two Step Flow Model
McQuail and Windahl, 1986
The stars are ‘opinion leaders’
The circles are everyone else
14. Uses and Gratifications
Blumer and Katz, 1974
We USE media (active, not passive) for:
Diversion
Personal Relationships
Personal Identity
Surveillance
15. Follow Up
These are basic introductions to some key ‘classic’
audience theories but there are many more and
they are more complex.
To avoid ‘parodic’ versions of the theories, read
this:
http://www.rdillman.com/HFCL/TUTOR/Media/medi
a2.html