Audiences in the Digital Age

Question 1

What are The Frankfurt School ?

Answer 1

The Frankfurt School, also known as the Institute of Social Research, is a social and political philosophical movement of thought located in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Question 2

What did the Frankfurt School believe in?

Answer 2

Believed that the idea that the mass media and systems of cultural production have done a great deal to prevent the collapse of capitalism predicted by Marx was developed by the theorists of the Frankfurt School.

For the Frankfurt School: the function of cultural industry is to ultimately organise leisure time, maintains capitalism even when you’re not out working or in public as through TV adverts for example you’re constantly consuming stuff.

Question 3

What did Cashmore (2002) believe?

Answer 3

Paraphrase: viewers become mere absorbers of television’s images, rather than creators of them”

Question 4

What are the three different types of Resistance?

Answer 4

Bricolage
Detournement
Parody

• All show an active audience and all express change

Question 5

Example of Detournement

Answer 5

Mcdonald’s M changed to W ‘Im gaining it’

Question 6

What is the Hypeerdermic Syringe Theory?

Answer 6

• Early Mass Media theory that became popular with the rise of television
• Believed in direct correlations between the consumptions of television and behaviours
• Thought the media ‘injected ideas’ into peoples heads
• Doesn’t take into account other factors

Example
13 reasons why, moral panic. Concerned the show will encourage young people to commit suicide

Question 7

Decerteau 1983 - Active Reader Model

Answer 7

“The reader takes neither the position of the author nor the authors position. He invents the texts something different from what they ‘intended’.”

Question 8

Active Audiences as a resistance (DeCerteau 1983)

Answer 8

Media Framing etc limits an audiences ability to be active interpreters. This leads to audience looking for information elsewhere. Information that the industry may not want to be portrayed.

Question 9

What is difference between Analogue and Digital

Answer 9

The Analogue era was when media consumption was from newspapers and professional sources. The Digital Age now allows people to create conversation and shares information much more freely.

Question 10

Digital Age

Answer 10

• We are less reliant on news organisations to tell us latest news. We share with each other instead.
• User-Generated content
• News is becoming more of a conversation
• Rise of Citizen Journalism (you,Sian)

Question 11

Case Study for Active Audience

Answer 11

Beach Body Ready. 
Protein World Ad 
Banned by ASA 
Body Shaming 
Negative Attention of social media 
Graffiti on Billboard - Resistance 
Citizen Journalism example