Active Audience Models Flashcards
What do active audience models assume about the audience?
audience aren’t entirely passive and suggest that people have considerable choice in using and interpreting media.
What is the two-step flow model?
A model suggesting that media messages are first interpreted by opinion leaders and then passed on to their social circles.
Who came up with two step model?
Katz and Lazarzfield
Suggest that personal relationships and conversations with significant others (eg: family) result in people modifying/rejecting media messages
Who are opinion leaders?
People of influence whom others in the network look up to and listen to.
pass their viewpoint as true to the audience - overarching acceptance of opinion leaders interpretation
What are the two steps in the two-step flow model?
- The opinion leader is exposed to the media content
- Those who respect the opinion leader internalize their interpretation.
True or False: Media audiences are directly influenced by media messages according to the two-step flow model.
False
Rather they choose to adopt a particular opinion/attitude/behaviour after negotiation and discussion with opinion leader
What is a critique of the two-step flow model?
no guarantee that the opinion leader hasnt been subjected to an imitative or desensitizing effect.
Socially isolated individuals dont have access to an opinion leader to help with the interpretation of media content
What does the selective filter model (Klapper 1960) suggest?
For a media message to have any effect, it has to pass through three filters of active selection.
List the three filters in the selective filter model.
- Selective exposure
- Selective perception
- Selective retention.
What is selective exposure?
Audience must choose to view, read or listen to the content of specific media
Media messages can have no effect if noone sees/hears
- what the audiences chooses depends on their interests etc
What is selective perception?
Audience may not accept the message: some people may take notice of some media content but decide to reject or ignore others
What is selective retention?
Messages have to ‘stick’ in the mind of those who have accessed media content
Research indicates that most people have a tendency to remember only the things they broadly agree with
Who came up with the uses and gratification model?
Blumler and McQuail etc
What is the uses and gratification model?
Audience use the media to gratify a need
Audience is way more active than previous models suggest
What are the four basic needs identified by Blumler and McQuail regarding media use?
- Diversion
- Personal relationships
- Personal identity
- Surveillance.
How may media serve the need for diversion?
People may immerse themselves in particular types of media to compensate for dissatisfaction in their daily lives.
How does the media serve the need for personal relationships?
Media products may compensate for the lack of community in our lives
Through identifying with characters - cybercommunities seen as alternative families
How does the media serve the need for personal identity?
People may use the media to modify their identity
Social networking websites allow people to use the media control the presentation of their identity
How does the media serve the need for surveillance?
Use of the media to obtain information and news that contribute to their opinions on certain topics
Who came up with the reception analysis model?
Morley
What is the focus of the reception analysis model?
It focuses on interpretation and response to media content.
Audiences actively read media content and dont automatically accept the media’s perspective
What are the three ways audiences interpret media content according to Morley?
- Preferred reading
- Oppositional reading
- Negotiated reading.
What is preferred reading?
Accepts media content as legitimate
Often shared by journalisys and editors and underpins news values
What is oppositional reading?
Opposes the views expressed in media content
What is negotiated reading?
Audience reinterpret the media content to fit in either their own opinions and values
What is meant by the term ‘polysemic’ in the context of media messages?
Media content attracts more than one type of reading or interpretation.
Audience is impressionable and homogenous, act in a variety of sub cultural ways making media content polysemic
According to Strinati (1995), what role does media play in identity formation in a post-modernist context?
The media are the most influential shapers of identity and offer a greater range of consumption choices.
- Postmodernist Model
What has intensified since 2000, affecting local cultures?
The globalization of communication.
All consumers of global media are citizens of the world and of their locality
- seeing other global experiences allows people to think critically about their place in the world
What tension can arise from the interaction of global media and local cultures?
It can create tension and hostilities, as seen with attempts to control global media access.
According to Thompson
Fill in the blank: The selective filter model includes _______ exposure.
[selective]
Fill in the blank: Blumler and McQuail identify _______ basic needs.
[four]
