Audiences : Cultural Effects and The Glasgow Media Group Flashcards
What’s the cultural effects model?
It’s a neo Marxist model. The media has a drip drip effect gradually influencing audiences over time, they’re not entirely passive. The media is owned and heavily influenced by the dominant ideology. The media coverage results in most people accepting what is told and these reflect a consensus that generally fail to challenge a ruling class ideology. For example benefit scroungers. Television content has also been dumbed down we know celebrate celebrities and consumption.
What does Curran argue?
Tabloid news papers also spread the dominant ideology, by focusing on individual issues our attention is diverted from collective societal issues such as class inequality, the popular press support a common sense view if the world which help maintain and justify existing inequalities.
What did Philo and the Glasgow media group come up with?
He suggested that the media has a great deal of power in forming the ways audiences view the world. However he acknowledged that some audiences are active. They found that in the 1984/5 miners strike audiences from different backgrounds saw the images and interpreted them in different ways. The GMG found that 1. the sample saw the ideological message that the miners were to blame 2. sympathy for miners was weakened by what was read and heard. 4. those who had not witnessed the strike saw it as violent and illegitimate. 4. Very few rejected the message that the miners were to blame. Philo found that the audience that had no direct knowledge or experience of an issue then the ideological message will be stronger. He argued that the cultural effects model needs to be dynamic and account for the fact that audiences may internalise or reject the media message based on personal experiences.
