Media and Audiences

Media in Everyday Life

• Media do not do things to people, rather, people do things with media.

• These theories put a division between consequences and effects of media. How audiences actively engage in the process of generating meaning related to intelligence and capacity of people to make decisions.

• Audience perspective is a counter to both mass society notions and the dominant limited effects paradigm.

• Audience activity should be seen relative concept: some people are more active media consumers than others.

• Reception studies see the readers of media texts often apply their own negotiated and oppositional meanings to the preferred readings intended by content producers.

Reception Theories

• There is no one theory of reception analysis, uses and gratification, framing, information processing. There are plenty of theories using those phenomenon.

• Frame analysis assumes that people use their expectations of situations to make sense of them and to determine their actions in them.

• Individuals use the social cues to determine whether they should downshift or up-shift.

• Media’s contribution to this framing is in influencing people’s expectations or readings of those cues.

Reception analysis

Audience centered theory that focuses on how various types of audience members make sense of specific forms of content. Most media texts have multiple meaning.

• Preferred/dominant reading: the producer-intended meaning assumed to reinforce the status quo.

• Negotiated meaning: audience –created meaning or interpretation that differs from preferred reading.

• Oppositional Decoding: audience –created meaning or interpretation that opposes to dominant reading.

Why now?

• Why audience theories appeared late? Because of -no fund coming from, governments, media or related corporations,- audience expectations, perceptions and receptions are not measurable, -behaviorist standpoint was dominant in media studies.

Uses and Gratifications (U&G)• People’s uses of media and gratifications they seek from that use.• brings more central position in thinking about media.• Provides insightful analyses of how people experience media

content• Divides active and passive use of media• Studies use of media as part of everyday social interaction• Provides useful insight into adoption of new media

Three major types of gratification by Herta Herzog• emotional release:• opportunities for wishful thinking:• advice obtained from listening to daytime serials.

Fraction of Selectionby Wilbur Schramm

• What determines which offerings of mass communication will be selected by a given individual?

Expectation of Reward

Effort Required

People weight reward from the given medium in response to how much effort they spend.

Four Media Functions

• Media messages may have intended functions but unintended consequences.

Four Media Functions (by Lasswell 3 + Wright 1)• surveillance of the environment: Media’s collection and

distribution of information.• correlation of the parts of society: refers to media’s interpretive

and analytical activities.• transmission of the social heritage: media’s ability to

communicate values, norms and styles across times and between people.

• Entertainment: Functions are not the aims and goals of the media corporations but

consequences of media messages. However functionalism became equated with legitimization of the status

quo.

Three developments in media studies provided by U&G

Developments made possible U&G research• 1st » New research techniques, questionnaire

and surveys help to understand people’s reasons for using media. Instead of survey, experiments they actively use ethnography with participant observation.

• 2nd » how people use media can be as important as how media affect people

• 3rd » the idea of focusing positive use of media rather than negative effects of media.

three characteristics of computer mediated mass communication by Thomas Ruggiero

U and G theory is suitable for the new media. Ruggiero defines three characteristics of computer mediated mass communication:

• Interactivity: Participants in communication have certain degree of power.

• Demassification: selecting from a wide menu, tailoring user’s own message.

• Asynchroneity: Ability of senders and receivers to reach messages in different time.

Active Audience RevisitedBlumer (1969): Audience studies should be guided by five principles:• Audience studies should be carried out in the direct empirical

context of media use;• The reception of media should be understood against the

background of individual and collective life histories which render current events and meanings intelligible;

• Mass media use and effects should be seen in contingency with other influences, not as isolated phenomena;

• The process of interpretation of meanings by audiences precedes and modifies any possible media effect;

• Media use should be seen as related to the use of other communication technologies.

Meanings of Activity according to Blumler

Utility: Media have different uses which people can put them into use

Intentionality: Media content can be directed by people’s motivation

Selectivity: Media content reflect people’s interests and perferences.

Imperviousness to influence: Audience might avoid any effect including the media’s one.

Basic Assumptions of U&G

• The audience is active and its media is goal oriented.• The initiative in linking his or her need gratification to a

specific media choice rests with the audience member.• The media compete with other sources for need

satisfaction.• People are self aware enough of their own media use,

interests, and motives to be able to provide researchers with an accurate picture of that use.

• Value judgment of the audience’s linking its needs to specify media or content should be suspended.

• by Elihu Katz, Jay Blumler, Michael Gurevitch.

Social Situation and Media Use• Social situation can produce tensions and conflicts, leading the

pressure for their easement through media consumption.• Social situations can create an awareness of problems that demand

attention, information about which might be sought.• Social situations can impoverish real life opportunities to satisfy

certain needs, and the media can serve as substitutes or supplements.

• Social situations often elicit specific values, and their affirmation and reinforcement can be facilitated by the consumption of related media materials.

• Social situations can provide realms of expectations of familiarity with media, which must be met to sustain membership in specific social groups.

by Elihu Katz, Jay Blumler, Michael Gurevitch.

Encoding-Decoding

• Stuart Hall says understanding of the media must focus on the fit between the discursive constructions of the message.

• Encoding: Social political context in which media content is produced. (Macroscopic)

• Decoding: the consumption of media content in everyday life. (Microscopic)