Media Audiences Theorists

Question 1

Albert Bandura

Answer 1

• The media can implant ideas in the mind directly.
• Audiences acquire attitudes,emotional responses and behaviour through modelling.
• Media representations of transgressive behaviour can lead to imitation.

Question 2

George Gerbner

Answer 2

• Exposure to repeated patterns of media representations over a long period of time can influence the way people perceive the world.
• The media reinforces mainstream values.

Question 3

Stuart Hall (Reception theory)

Answer 3

• Comminution involves both ENCODING by producers and DECODING by audiences
• Three ways in which an audience member my ‘read’ (decode) a text

            Dominant/hegemonic/preferred = the            audience member accepts the intended meanings in the text. 
            Negotiated= the reader adapts the ingredients meanings in the text. 
  
            Oppositional= the encoders message is understood, but the decoder (reader) disagrees with it.

Question 4

Henry Jenkins

Answer 4

• Fans are active participants in the construction and circulation of textual meanings.
• Fans read appropriate texts in ways that are not fully authorised by the media producers (‘textual poaching’)
• Fans construct their social and cultural identities through their consumption of media images.

Question 5

Clay Shirky

Answer 5

• The internet and digital technologies have had a profound effect on the relations between media and individuals.
• We can no longer think of audiences as ‘passive consumers’ in the age of the internet, but as producers who ‘speak back’ to the media, as well as creating and sharing content with on another.