Media Topic 5 - Relationship Between Media and Audience Flashcards
What is a media text?
Any media product that describes, defines or represents something, such as a movie, TV program, article, or advertisement.
How do individuals interpret media content?
Influenced by their social experiences, ethnicity, class, and gender.
What does polysemic mean in the context of media texts?
A media text can be interpreted in different ways by different people.
What are some influences on individual and group behavior and attitudes besides media?
- Families
- Friends
- Schools
- Workplaces
- Churches
- Social class
- Ethnicity
- Gender
- Disability
- Age
What is a methodological problem in researching media effects?
Difficult to establish if media or other social factors cause alleged effects.
What is the hypodermic syringe model?
A model suggesting media act like a syringe, injecting messages into passive audiences.
What is a criticism of the hypodermic syringe model?
Assumes the entire audience is passive and homogeneous.
What do active audience models propose?
Audiences are not homogeneous and are influenced by social characteristics.
What does the two-step flow model suggest?
Media influence is mediated through opinion leaders in social networks.
What is a limitation of the two-step flow model?
It assumes that the influence of media flows directly from media to audience.
What is the cultural effects model?
Suggests media gradually influence audiences over time, shaping common sense ideas.
What is reception analysis?
The study of how audiences receive and interpret media texts.
What are the three ways audiences might decode media texts according to Morley?
- Preferred reading
- Negotiated reading
- Oppositional reading
What is selective filtering?
An interpretivist approach where audiences filter media based on personal experiences.
What are the three filters of selective filtering according to Klapper?
- Selective exposure
- Selective perception
- Selective retention
What is the Glasgow Media Group’s stance on media power?
The media has significant power in shaping audience views, often accepted as dominant.
What did Philo’s study of the 1984/5 miners’ strike reveal?
People from different backgrounds interpreted media images similarly.
What is the primary conclusion of GMG research regarding media influence?
The media has a great deal of power in forming the way audiences view the world, and most people accept the dominant media account unless they have access to alternative forms of information.
What did Philo’s study of the 1984/5 miners’ strike reveal about media perception?
People from different class and political backgrounds interpreted violent images of miners and pickets in the same way and believed the media account that the miners were responsible for the trouble.
Who rejected the television account of the miners’ strike, according to Philo’s study?
Only those who had actually seen a picket line rejected the television account, regardless of their class or politics.
What does the cultural effects model highlight about audience responses?
Audience responses are influenced by social circumstances, experiences, education, class, values, and beliefs.
What is the main focus of the uses and gratifications model?
The model emphasizes what audiences do with the media or use them for, considering audiences as active participants.
List the various uses and gratifications of media according to McQuail and Lull.
- Diversion
- Personal relationships
- Personal identity
- Surveillance
- Background wallpaper
What does the uses and gratifications model suggest about audience power?
Audiences have some power to decide media content, as failure to satisfy audience pleasures risks loss of viewers and advertisers.
True or False: The uses and gratifications model underestimates the power of media companies.
True
What major societal concern arises from media violence?
Media violence is often blamed for increasing crime and violence in society.
What was the conclusion of Ferguson’s research regarding violent media and real-life violence?
Ferguson found no evidence of long-term links between media violence and real-life violence; increased media violence was associated with a decline in violence in society.
What are the competing claims about the effects of violence in media?
- Copycatting or imitation
- Catharsis
- Desensitization
- Sensitization
- Psychological disturbance
- Exaggeration of fear of violence
What methodological problems are associated with researching media violence?
Defining ‘media violence’, selective exposure, common third causes, and the Hawthorne effect.
What is the hypodermic syringe model of media effects?
It suggests that media violence directly influences viewers’ behavior without considering individual interpretation or context.
What is the conclusion regarding the evidence for media violence causing aggressive behavior?
There is little reliable and undisputed evidence about whether violence in the media leads to an increase in aggressive behavior.
Fill in the blank: The cultural effects model underestimates the media’s ability to _______.
[mould public understanding of social issues]
What is the role of agenda-setting in media according to GMG?
The media focuses public interest on particular subjects and influences what is discussed by removing issues from public discussion.
