Media Theories

Question 1

What is Post modernism?

Answer 1

Postmodernism refers to ideas after modernism, contemporary culture and society, which has developed since modernism. The term is hotly debated and complex so try and avoid trying to define it to the examiner (they’ll know what it is anyway) that doesn’t mean avoid using the theories though.

Postmodernism deliberately rejects the boundaries between low and high forms of art and rigid genre distinctions, emphasising instead pastiche, parody, bricolage and irony. Postmodern texts favour fragmentation, discontinuity (especially in narrative structures) and ambiguity.

If you don’t understand some of the terminology here then you need to find out!

Question 2

Jameson

Answer 2

Jameson identified stages of capitalism which have led to the development of the postmodernist culture and society:
• Market capitalism- associated with particular technological developments e.g. the steam-driven motor
• Monopoly capitalism – associated with technological developments, especially electricity – and modernism in art
• Multinational or consumer capitalism – associated with sophisticated nuclear and electronic technologies, linked to postmodernism

(Media “consumption” is part of Jameson’s third stage of development)

Jameson’s focus was on commodification of culture as economic pressures begin to shape culture directly. E.g. early film makers were able to make films which interested them. Today’s media producers must satisfy the investors (institution) first.

Question 3

Jaques Lyotard

Answer 3

Lyotard argues that society maintains stability through metanarratives, which are stories a culture uses to structure its practices and beliefs (e.g. religion, political belief. Every belief system or ideology has its metanarratives e.g. Marxism, the metanarrative is that capitalism will collapse and a socialist world will evolve. He argues that in a post modern world these metanarratives are no longer central and therefore society is no longer stable, but fluid.

Question 4

Baudrillard

Answer 4

A postmodern society is comprised of simulacra, not originals (not only the obvious simulacrum of a poster copy of a famous painting but also a television programme, for example – there is no original programme which all the others copy, only copies themselves . Another example of simulacrum would be computer games e.g. Sim City or Virtual Zoo. These are reality created simulacrum which cannot have an original.

Hyperreality – A good example - is the way the nation receives “live” news from around the globe especially about wars, the war is shown as a simulation. Due to this simulation we react as though what we are experiencing is real. Baudrillard is referring to the way that the media presented a “reality” of the war which actually bore little resemblance to the reality of the war itself. The simulacra (the media texts) have become more “real” than the reality that they convey.

Other examples of simulacra in society:
• Disneyworld and other theme parks
• Flight simulations (and indeed real flight simulators used to train airline pilots)
• Virtual communities (facebook, myspace, bebo, msn web messenger, forums etc…)
• “Live” presentations of events which are still being constructed (time lapse) E4 coverage of Big Brother – the director/producer being able to construct a reality by selecting different cameras
• Theme pubs and clubs

Another example is – you probably have a good idea about what New York City looks like, even if you have never been there, because you have seen simulacra of it so often.

Question 5

Marshall McLuhan

Answer 5

The Global Village – 1960s famously stated that the world was a global village.
The media play a vital role in creating this. We can view events live as they happen, many people in the world can share the same moment at the same time.

Critics like McLuhan argue that the media reflect and create the social and cultural world we live in because the media producers construct our views of all these global events and therefore construct our values and ideologies.

Question 6

Feminism

Answer 6

Feminism is a response to society’s assumptions that women should be subservient to men. Until the emergence if feminism, women were treated almost as objects, passive agents in a male world.

The roots of the feminist movement date back to the eighteenth century but run through the Suffragette movement which fought for the right for women to vote in the earliest part of the twentieth century and the land girls and other women who moved into many male occupations during WW2.

Question 7

Laura Mulvey

Answer 7

“The male gaze”
Laura Mulvey argues that cinema audiences look at films in two different ways – voyeuristically and fetishistically. Cinema audiences watch a film without being watched by the film’s characters on screen and usually in a darkened cinema so other audience members are not observing them either. Therefore the are almost voyeurs, watching the people on screen this can lead to two effects:

Objectification of female characters in relation to this controlling male gaze
Narcissistic identification with an ideal image seen on screen.

She argues that this voyeurism involves turning the represented figure itself into a fetish (object). Fetishistic looking, she suggests leads to the cult of the female movie star, celebrated by her looks but considered as an object and often treated as such.
Conventional Hollywood – male protagonist in the narrative and assume a male audience. Male characters are active and dynamic and not always conventionally attractive. Actresses, on the other hand, must be glamourous and attractive but are only in supporting roles (the princess according to Propp) and therefore are on screen as “eye candy” to appease the “male gaze” of the (male) audience.

Question 8

Judith Butler

Answer 8

Argues that we all put on a gender performance, whether traditional (heterosexual) or not. By choosing to be different about it, we might work to change gender norms and the binary understanding of masculinity and femininity as represented in the media. She suggests that:

Gender is not some inner truth but the presence of received meanings.
Gender is not fixed but constructed.

Think about the way that gender representations are used to construct identity in the media you can see how these “performances” can be manipulated. E.g: Madonna – has constructed images which are expressly feminine, overtly masculine and less extreme over her career.

There are many artists who seek to construct particular gender identities in order to represent particular ideologies to an audience – David Beckham, Eddie Izzard and Paul O’Grady both use feminine gender identity at times as part of their image, presenting less conventional ideologies to their audience.

Question 9

Liesbet Van Zoonen, 1993

Answer 9

Lecturer at the University of Amsterdam in Film and Media Studies.

Took Mulvey’s theory to the next level and was writing in the 1990s when feminism was changing again. She argued that audiences were not as passive as they were and that women had been through the liberation in the 1970s and were now as active audience as men and in fact the “Male Gaze” was not the only gaze…
1) Men viewing women
2) Women viewing women
3) Women viewing men
How can you take Van Zoonen’s theory and bring it into the 21st century?

Think about women and fashion magazines, investing time and money into role models such as Victoria Beckham and Kate Moss (however controversial!)

What about films and books like Bridget Jones? How could you argue Van Zoonen’s theory applies to this type of film/book?

Question 10

David Gauntlett

Answer 10

Argues that gender roles are more complex and that the media reflect this. He points out that female role models are often glamourous as well as successful (Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City (fictional), Victoria Beckham, Katie Price) in a way that previously they were not. He argues that much of this is due to the rise of “Girl Power” in the media, through identities constructed by music artists such as Beyonce Knowles (strong, independent woman) as well as contemporary actresses, for example, who are demanding less passive film roles.

He argues that our expectations of gender are flexible and culturally dependent and therefore will continue to change. He tracks these changes through different media texts, especially lifestyle magazines.

Question 11

Donna Hathaway

Answer 11

Argues that cyberspace allows non-sexist identities to be constructed, liberating women. Your cyber identity is formed in different ways from your physical identity it does not rely on visual representations in the same way.

Critics may argue that new media texts still retain physical world stereotypical assumptions (think about representations of Lara Croft in video games) and that this affects the way that cyberspace is constructed and controlled.

Question 12

Consumers

Answer 12

Consumers of media texts – we all consume media texts everyday and it is our consumption which interests the institutions (producers). They need to ensure they can clearly define a target audience for a particular product and then create a product which will appeal directly to that target audience. The success of a media text is directly judged in terms of the size of the audience, so media producers have a good reason for wanting to attract large audiences. This obvious for a newspaper proprietor, they can judge the success by the numbers of copies sold, but less obvious for the broadcasting media. However, a successful commercial TV programme will have a larger audience and thus attract more advertising and a successful PSB text with a large audience is justification for the continuation of the licence fee system.

Question 13

Mass audience

Answer 13

Mass audience : basically large audiences e.g. the audiences for soap operas such as Coronation Street and Eastenders or a premiership football match. Mass audiences are often termed “broadcast” audiences those who consume popular culture and mainstream texts such as soap operas, sitcoms or reality TV shows (how many people are watching the same entertainment at the moment?)

Question 14

Niche audience

Answer 14

Niche audience: much smaller than a mass audience but usually very influential. Niche audiences are usually very dedicated and loyal and thus maybe still attractive to advertisers (e.g. programming on channel four is often aimed at a niche market) The introduction of the More4 and BBC 4 on the digital TV offering a “higher” quality of programming for a niche market. BBC Radio 4 offers shows on their station aimed at niche markets e.g. The Message show on a Sunday evening at 8pm rounding up all the weeks media should be listened to by Media Studies students and academics a like. (hint hint!)

Question 15

Narrowcasting

Answer 15

Narrowcasting: related to niche audiences, initially BBC 2 and Channel 4 were seen as narrowcast channels as they were appealing to a smaller section of audience than the likes of BBC 1 and ITV 1 this however could be argued has changed with the emergence of the multi-channel environment on digital and satellite radio and television. Think new media here, could you comment on the internet and the emergence of podcasting as the new narrowcasting?

Question 16

Segmentation

Answer 16

Segmentation:
Socio-economic model, different groups in society have different media texts aimed at them? High and popular culture?

Group A- laywers, doctors, scientists, managers of large scale organisations – well paid professionals
Group B- teachers, senior managers, some middle management – fairly well paid professionals
Group C1 – “white collar” workers, junior management, bank clerks, nurses
Group C2 – skilled “blue collar” workers such as electricians, plumbers and carpenters
Group D –Semi and unskilled manual work such as drivers, post sorters
Group E –Students, the unemployed and pensioners

Age, gender, demographics (where the audience live), profiling (identifying what types of consumers), values, attitudes and lifestyles.

Question 17

The Hypodermic Syringe Model

Answer 17

A short term effect theory –
The effects of the mass media on their audiences. The model owes much to the supposed power of the mass media, in particular film, to inject the passive audiences with ideologies. This can be seen in earlier propaganda films such as the Nazi film Triumph of the Will. During the Iraq war, the only reporting of the war on Iraqui television was from Iraq State news Agency – and not surprisingly their version of events were sometimes different to that being broadcast outside of Iraq. Think about Al Jeerzera what about the way they deliver news?

The audience is seen as a passive mass who will immediately accept whatever version events is given in the media.

Think of some modern recent examples for this theory to back it up…try to use really up to date contemporary stories from the media to really add some meat to your answer.

Question 18

The Plug-in Drug theory- Marie Winn 1985

Answer 18

Providing a barrage of research evidence to support the view that television undermines family life and destroys children’s capacity for intelligent thought. It impairs children’s sense of their own identity, their linguistic abilities and their attention span. Because of their addiction to television, children are deprived of play and of the opportunity to participate in the interpersonal rituals of family life.

The metaphor of television as a drug :
Children are “TV Zombies” who watch in a “trance like state” which “blots” out the real world, and parents are urged to help their children “kick the TV habit”.

Children are merely victims of a dangerous addiction they are powerless to resist.

Question 19

Neil Postman, 1983

Answer 19

Argues that TV is primarily responsible for the “disappearance of childhood”. He describes television as a “total disclosure medium” which has led to the blurring of the distinction between adulthood and childhood: because of television adults can no longer keep “secrets” from children and “protect” them from adult ways. As a result children have begun to dress like adults, use bad language, have sex earlier and generally more ill mannered than they used to be.

Counter Argument for Postman’s theory – he is ultimately unable to prove a “casual” connection between television and the broad social developments he describes.

Question 20

Ian Connell, 1985

Answer 20

Has argued that the tendency to blame the media has become almost routine for many on the Left. Yet, he suggests, it is based on a view of audiences as the innocent victims of a powerful “propaganda machine”: the idea that the media are able to impose particular “biased” attitudes on the audiences is an oversimplification which ignores the active participation of viewers in making meaning. (in less academic language: it is too simple a theory and that audiences are more active than that when consuming a media text)

Question 21

The Inoculation model or Cultivation theory

Answer 21

While a single text does not have much effect on an audience, the repeated exposure will make the audience less sensitive. Critics call it becoming “desensitised”. Theorists will cite the number of previously banned films which, when they are broadcast many years later, generate comments such as “I can’t see what all the fuss is about”, because social attitudes and expectations have changed so much.

Similar to that is Narcotising Dysfunction: The mass media render the audience in capable of action. The prolonged exposure to images and the media in general can act like a narcotic drug on the brain. Think “couch potato”.

Question 22

Two Step Flow Model, Paul Lazersfeld, 1940

Answer 22

Assumes a more active audience (semi-active audience)

The message is sent indirectly from the producer to the reader and is intercepted by an opinion leader who acts as a filter as to what message is received. Opinion leaders are crucial to the flow of communication in this model.

Institution———-Opinion Leader———–reader

Some more recent examples of Opinion leaders in contemporary society: in newspapers there is TV, film, Radio (and in the broadsheets) the arts critics – how influential can they be on what people consume in the media. Richard Arnold on GMTV in the mornings is a good example of an opinion leader giving his opinion on the good television over the weekend. What about Movie critics in magazines and a contemporary example, on the radio, is James King on a Friday afternoon on the Edith Bowman show on BBC Radio 1 doing a movie review on what has been released that week.

Question 23

Uses and Gratifications Model, 1960s

Answer 23

This theory assumes an active audience, which chooses the texts it consumes and where individuals have different reasons for consuming these texts.

(History) During the 1960s it became apparent that audiences made choices about how and when they consumed media texts. Far from being a passive mass, audiences were made up of individuals who actively consumed texts for different reasons and in different ways.

James Halloran, 1970 said that it let study move away from “thinking in terms of what the media do to people” and substituted the idea of “what people do with the media”.

Bluhmer and Katz, 1974 expanded this theory suggesting a series of possible reasons why audience members might consume a media text:

Diversion: escapism – from everyday problems and routine
Personal relationships: using the media for emotional and other interaction e.g. substituting soap operas for family life, can you think of any other examples?
Personal Identity: constructing their own identity from characters in media texts, and learning behaviour and values
Surveillance: information gathering e.g. the news, educational programmes, weather reports, financial news, holiday bargains

Question 24

Vladimir Propp, 1928

Answer 24

He studied folk tales and legends from many different countries and noticed the tended to be similar. They seemed to be about the same basic problems and the same basic character types cropped up in folktales.

Based on his study, he identified 32 basic categories of action which he called functions. He also identified a set of basic spheres of action or character functions. He concentrated on the way that characters in folktales tended to be types rather than individuals. The eight of these you should know:

The hero – who is on a quest
The villain- who opposes the hero
The donor – who helps the hero by giving them a magic tool
The dispatcher – who starts the hero on his way
The false hero – who tempts the hero away from his quest
The helper – who helps the hero
The princess – who is the reward for the hero
Her father – who rewards the hero for his efforts

Protagonist – hero
Antagonist – villain

Question 25

Claude Levi Strauss

Answer 25

Binary oppositions (eg. good vs. evil)

Question 26

Tzvetan Todorov

Answer 26

Believed there are five stages to a narrative:
Equilibrium
A disruption of this equilibrium by an event
A realisation that a disruption has happened
An attempt to repair the damage of the disruption
A restoration of equilibrium – which may be a new equilibrium

Question 27

Rolande Bathes

Answer 27

Bathes was interested in negotiated meanings between institution and audience. He argued that the reader produces new meanings when reading a text, making use of their previous knowledge as well as the text itself. E.g. when watching a docusoap about an airline, individuals “meaning” depends as much as on their own experiences of airlines and docusoaps as on the text itself.

The Enigma Code: it is the hook or the mystery to be resolved for an audience, e.g. in serials (such as The Bill) which make use of the old “come back next week to find out what happens” technique, or in trailers for new films to hook in the audience.

Question 28

Genre Theory

Answer 28

How genre is culturally constructed and the relationship between genre and cultural ideologies.

Genre is a dynamic concept, which changes over time and in different cultural contexts. These changes are gradual and you might notice these changes. These changes have lead to the construction of hybrid genres. These hybrids then become genres in their own right after a period of time. Docusoap was initially considered very much a subset of documentary, and reality TV as a combination of cinema verite, soap opera and game shows.

Genre theory was considered to have developed as a result of Andre Basin’s work on Westerns in the 1950s. He was the first to explore the very significant advantages of genre from an institutional perspective.

Genre make film making more efficient (by allowing the re-use of plots, sets etc…) as well as more marketable (by using generic conventions as a way of “selling” the film to the audience).

Question 29

John Fiske

Answer 29

Describes genres as “attempts to structure some order into a wide range of texts and meanings that circulate in our culture for the convenience of both producers and audiences”. Genre is simply a way of categorising texts in our media saturated culture.

Genre is:
 A way of categorising texts
 A way of defining codes and conventions for a category of text
 A way of setting up audience expectations
 Different from form –form means the shape of a particular text; genre refers to a type of text.
 Culturally dependent – different cultural groups construct different genre expectations
 Constructed through a series of signs (visual and aural) which are associated with that genre or through the use of generic narratives and ideologies.

Question 30

Altman

Answer 30

Argues that genres are usually defined in terms of certain media language (taking the western as an example: the guns, horses, wagons, towns, landscapes and even typical Western stars such as Clint Eastwood or John Wayne) or certain ideologies and narratives. He calls the group relating to the media language the semantic elements and the ideologies and narrative elements the syntactic, he argues that genre theory needs the two to be kept separate as a means of dealing with genre processes over time and hybridity.

Question 31

Daniel Chandler

Answer 31

He highlighted the key textual features of genres in the context of film and television narrative.

Narrative: similar (sometimes formulaic) plots and structures, predictable situations, sequences, episodes, obstacles, conflicts and resolutions.
Characterisation: similar types of characters (sometimes stereotypes), roles, personal qualities, motivations, goals, behaviour.
Basic themes: topics, subject matter (social, cultural, psychological, professional, political, sexual and moral) and values.
Setting: geographical and historical
Iconography: (echoing the narrative, characterisation, themes and settings)- a familiar stock of images or motifs, the connotations of which have become fixed, décor, costume and objects, certain typecast performers (some of whom may have become icons), familiar patterns of dialogue, characteristic music and sounds.
Filmic techniques: stylistic or formal conventions of camerawork, lighting, sound recording, use of colour, editing etc…

Question 32

Gledhill, 1985

Answer 32

Genres can thus be seen as a kind of shorthand serving to increase the “efficiency” of communication. They may even function as means of preventing a text from dissolving into “individualism” and “imcomprehensibility”.

Question 33

Deborah Knight, 1994

Answer 33

Some argue that knowledge of genre conventions leads to passive consumption of generic texts; others argue that making sense of texts within genres is an active process of constructing meaning.

Question 34

Varda Langholz Leymore, 1975

Answer 34

Argues that the sense which viewers make of any single text depends on how it relates to the genre as a whole.

Question 35

Alastair Fowler, 1989

Answer 35

Suggests that “readers learn genres gradually, usually through unconscious familiarisation”.

Question 36

Leona Jaglom and Howard Gardner, 1981

Answer 36

Research conducted to support Fowler’s notion.

Longitudinal study of twelve children from the ages 2-5, the researchers noted the development of genre distinction. 2 year olds did recognise the beginnings and endings of programmes, They argue that in the first few years of attempting to sort out the confusing elements of the television world, children are concentrating on making distinctions between shows.

Question 37

David Buckingham, 1993

Answer 37

In general discussions of television with children between the ages of 8-12 he found considerable evidence of children using genre, both explicitly and implicitly.

The older children were more likely to identify their likes and dislikes by referring to a generic category. Buckingham gave the children a task of sorting into groups 30 cards bearing the titles of television programmes. The children showed an awareness that the programmes could be categorised in several ways.

He stresses that categorisation is a social process as well as a cognitive one, his findings do offer some evidence “that children acquire a discourse of genre as they mature. As their repertoire expands, this enables them to identify finer distinctions between programmes, and to compare them in a greater variety of ways.

Question 38

John Corner, 1991

Answer 38

Assigning a text to a genre sets up initial expectations. Some of these may be challenged within individual texts e.g. a detective film where the audience know the murderer from the beginning of the film.

However challenging the too many conventional expectations for the genre could threaten the integrity of the text. Familiarity with genre enables readers to generate feasible predictions about events in the narrative. Drawing on their knowledge of other texts in the same genre helps readers to sort relevant from non-relevant information about the narrative in an individual text.