Reception Analysis

Question 1

Method of analysis that stresses audience interpretation as the
primary site of meaning-making.

Answer 1

Reception Analysis

Question 2

• Russian linguist and foundational figure in semiotics and structural analysis of language
• Distinguishes six communication functions, each associated with dimension of the communication process
o Sender to message to receiver (horizontal)
• Can put pressure on any one of these areas
o From context, message, channel, then code (vertical)

Answer 2

Roman Jokabson (1892 – 1982)

Question 3

“Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won’t mistake for the real thing.”
• You can’t really tell when someone is being serious or not

“christwire”

Answer 3

Poe’s Law

Question 4

Old-school Traditional View
• Media “inject” people with various beliefs; masses are duped into blindly accepting prevailing ideology
• Advertisers advertise, consumers buy, almost as if without free will
• “false consciousness”
• largely rejected b/c we don’t just mindlessly absorb the media artefact, we participate; this model is too simplistic

Answer 4

Hypodermic Model

Question 5

group of German-American theorists who developed critical thinking tools to analyze changes into the Western capitalist societies that occurred after Marx developed his theories

Generated one of the first models of critical cultural studies that analyzes the processes of:
o Cultural production and political economy
o Politics of cultural texts
o Audience reception and use of cultural artifacts

Answer 5

The Frankfurt School

Question 6

Heavy viewing of media gives individuals a distorted view of the world

• i.e. Fox News and Moms
o giving that information back out
• i.e. playing video games for hours and hours; respond in that same manner in the real world
• i.e. Interview with Marilyn Manson, Bowling for Columbine (2002, Michael Moore)
o we live in a media landscape full of fear; so we consume to reduce that feeling of fear

Answer 6

Cultivation Analysis

Question 7

the process of creating messages according to a particular code

Answer 7

Encoding

Question 8

the process of using a code to decipher a message and formulate meaning

Answer 8

Decoding

Question 9

Encoding and Decoding

Answer 9

“The Codes of encoding and decoding may not be perfectly symmetrical.”

Question 10

a set of rules that govern the use of visual and linguistic signs within a culture

never neutral

Answer 10

Code

Question 11

• Certain individuals are more active in their attention to media and disseminate information to others
• Audiences follow these “opinion leaders”
oi.e. an individual (media figures) give a review and general public considers their opinion before watching a movie
o i.e. Twitter
• i.e. Klout – tracks and gives score based on how influential you are on social media platforms

Answer 11

Two-Step Flow

Question 12

Types of Meanings

Answer 12

• Dominant
• Oppositional
• Negotiated

Question 13

“many meanings” (John Fiske) refers to the relative openness of media texts to multiple interpretations
• i.e. TV series Lost and Breaking Bad

Answer 13

Polysemy

Question 14

Limitation/Problems with the polysemy model (Celeste Condit)

Answer 14

• Not everyone has access to oppositional codes
• Many audience members unfamiliar with Marxism or Queer theory for example
• Ration b/t work required in decoding text is out of whack with pleasure produced in decoding a text
o Many audience members don’t have the tools and therefore don’t have access to the pleasure of decoding

Question 15

the greater the semiotic excess, the more interpretations possible (aligns with Hall’s concepts of negotiated and oppositional reading)

Answer 15

“semiotic excess” (polysemy)

Question 16

an open writerly text that is also popular; it relies on audience members already possessing certain interpretive competencies, which they apply in a self-interested productive way.

Answer 16

“producerly”

Question 17

Audience members share understanding of denotations of a media artefact but disagree about the valuation of these denotation to such a degree that they

Answer 17

polyvalence

Question 18

Difference b/t polyvalence and polysemy

o i.e. Occupy wall street tent

Answer 18

Polyvalence differs from polysemy in that the difference between the audience members is one of CONNOTATION not of MEANING as a whole

Question 19

Polysemy Revisited and Revised

Leah Cecarreli

Answer 19

a. Strategic Ambiguity – The intentional decision on the part of media makers to craft a vague, semantically rich text that is open to multiple interpretations. (Breaking Bad, for example)
b. Resistive Reading – The creation of a textual meaning that is contrary to the meaning intended by the text’s author, creator or producer. (Similar to Hall’s notion of “Oppositional Reading”)
c. Hermeneutic Depth – Critics recognize that the multiple meanings in a text is the source of its overall meaning. Media studies critics play with and problematize any apparent single meaning and show how it is in fact one of multiple meanings.

Question 20

Interpretive Communities (Stanley Fish):

Answer 20

Groups tend to interpret a text similarly because they share similar social positions, experiences, and expectations. These positions, experiences and expectations can be socio-cultural or geographical.

a. Shared strategies – the members of an interpretive community will share coding/decoding strategies.
b. Multiple communities – Meaning is not inherent in producers, texts or audiences, but only in the multiple interpretive communities that constitute producers, texts and audiences.

Question 21

Defined – approach to understanding human social phenomena based up fieldwork often involving both qualitative (interviews) and quantitative (surveys) data
Participant Observation – set of research strategies that aim to understand a given group of individuals and their practices through intimate intensive involvement with them in their natural setting

Answer 21

The Ethnographic Method