Media models Flashcards
What is the Selective filter model?
Klapper suggests that for media content to have an effect it must pass through three filters.
1) Selective exposure = the audience must choose to view, read or listen to media to be influenced by it. This is affected by interests, education, age, gender and class etc.
2) Selective perception = the audience may view media content but reject it because it doesn’t fit their perception of the world.
3) Selective retention = media content has to be retained to influence the audience. We simply forget a large amount of information we are exposed to, and are more likely to remember things we agree with.
What is the evaluation of the selective filter model?
- This theory is useful as it acknowledges that audiences members have choices about what they consume and how they do this, unlike the hypodermic syringe model. = active model.
- Useful as it acknowledges that social groups influence the way the audiences may select and interpret the media.
- Not useful as filters aren’t accurate. For example, the selective retention model says we only pay attention to and remember information we agree with. This isn’t true as we are more likely to remember and share information that we don’t agree with.
What is the uses and gratifications model?
Blumler + McQuail and Lull argue that the audience actively choose media content in order to satisfy needs. For example =
- Diversion/escapism = escaping worries in reality.
- Personal relationships = compensate for a lack of relationships by following tv characters.
- Personal identity = use media to makeover identity
- Surveillance = use media to get info about world.
What is the evaluation for the uses and gratification model?
- Not useful as it doesn’t look at how different age, ethnic and class groups use the media to gratify needs in different ways.
- Marxists would argue the choices we have in the media are restricted.
- Postmodernists argue we can’t simplify people’s needs into a few categories.
What is the reception analysis model?
This model argues that people interpret the media in different ways due to their social backgrounds.
Morley = researched how 29 different groups interpreted the content of a news programme. He concluded that people choose one of three readings of content:
- Preferred/dominant reading = reflects the consensus view.
-Oppositional reading = a minority opposes the story.
- Negotiated reading = the media reinterpret content to fit in with their own lives.
This model sees audiences as very diverse and engaged in active choices, and sees media messages as ‘polysemic’ interpreted in a number of ways.
What is the evaluation of the reception analysis model?
- Morley’s research was carried out in an artificial environment. This means that the respondent’s reactions may have been affected by the fact they didn’t see the news programme in their natural environment. = demand characteristics.
What is the cultural effects model?
This theory argues that media content contains messages which reflect the interests of media owners and producers - the audience are expected to agree with this message.
Over time through a drip drip effect most people come to accept this ruling class ideology.
Lynegar and Simon support this as they found those who relied most on TV news of the Gulf War were more likely to favour a military rather than a diplomatic solution.
This approach recognises that different social groups may respond differently to media content, but within limits
What is the evaluation of the cultural effects model?
- Not realistic as the diversity of the media would make it hard for their to be a single capitalist worldview.
- Pluralists believe media output is constructed for the benefit of the audience, not the ruling class.
What is the postmodernist model?
Focuses on how individual members of the audience create their own meanings from a media text.
Generalisations of the media are impossible, as viewers/readers may react to the same content in different ways.
All reactions are of equal value, as there is not single truth.
What is the evaluation of the postmodernist model?
- It is hard to say if the media is having a positive/negative effect on its audience as there is so many different interpretations.
- It is useful to an extent as it recognises that audiences and interpretations are diverse.
