Relationship between media and audiences Flashcards
Media’s Influence
The media comprise only one influence on the way people might think and behave, and there is a wide range of other agencies involved in people’s socialisation, e.g families, friends, schools, workplaces, and workmates. All influence individual and group behaviour attitudes. Very important to weigh the influence of the media alongside these other factors.
Is it difficult to establish whether it is actually the media, or other social factors, that cause any alleged affects?
Yes, because we can only control certain variables (positivists).
What is a media text?
Any media product which describes, defines, or represents something, such as a movie or video clip, TV or radio programme, a newspaper or magazine article, a book, a poster, a popular song, an advertisement, a CD/DVD etc.
What does Polysemic mean?
Means that a media text (such as a media message, picture, or headline) can be interpreted in different ways by different people. Meaning that we should therefore look at how different audiences perceive things differently in the media.
Example of effects caused by the media or other social factors
It is shown that those who watch more violence on television are more aggressive than those who watch less, this might be because people whose social circumstances have made them more aggressive choose to watch more violent programmes rather than because the media make them aggressive.
Even people exposed to the same media texts do not interpret and react to them in the same way, so there must be some influences on audiences other than the media.
Media’s influence on people’s beliefs, values, and behaviour
Impossible to establish what people’s beliefs might have been without any media influence.
Neo-marxists like the GMG argue that the media encourages audiences to accept the cultural hegemony of the dominant class.
Media’s influence on people’s beliefs, values, and behaviour
However this media effect cannot be proven. For example, people might have been racist or sexist or supported the dominant ideology anyways, even without never being exposed to media influences.
Media effects models
Range of media effects models, with differences between them based around two key questions:
-How passive/active are audiences
-How powerful ae the media in affecting audiences
The hypodermic syringe model
-Media acts like a hypodermic syringe, injecting messages directed to audiences.
-Audiences are seen as passive, unable to resist media messages.
-Media fills audiences with dominant ideologies, e.g sexist, racist, violent content.
-Assumes direct and immediate effects
-Radical Feminist , Dworkin - exposure to pornography leads to abuse.
-Links to moral panics, e.g media influencing behaviour
-Partly explains the London riots.
Hypodermic syringe model AO3
-The model assumes the entire audience is passive and homogeneous (sharing the same characteristics) and will react in the same way to media content
-It assumes audiences are passive, gullible, and easily manipulated
-It assumes the media have enormous power and influence
Two-step flow model
-The media doesn’t directly influence audiences but works through opinion leaders.
-Opinion leaders filter, interpret, and share media messages.
-Audiences are NOT passive, but shaped by social networks (friends, teachers, family)
Two-step flow model AO3
-There are likely more than two steps = ideas and interpretations of media content get bounced around in discussions in a variety of groups, creating many steps in the flow of media influence
-Still assumes audiences are victims of media content
-Suggests people are heavily influenced by opinion leaders
-The audience are divided into ‘active’ viewers/readers (opinion leaders) and passive viewers/readers who are influenced by the opinion leaders.
-The rise of the new media and social networking sites, the role of opinion leaders may be less influential
The cultural effects model - the ‘drip drip’ effect - encoding and decoding
-Stuart Hall > media texts have a preferred meaning based on dominant hegemony , which is instilled when encoding by those who are the creators, but audiences interpret them differently .
-Morley believes three types if readings happen when media is decoded>
-Preferred - audiences agree with the intended messages
-Negotiated - audience partly accepts, partly modifies meaning
-Oppositional - audience rejects the message
The cultural effects model - ‘drip drip’ theory
-Media messages shape long-term beliefs over time by drip feeding
-Promotes dominant ideology (e.g stereotypes about race, gender)
-Audiences inteperet content differently based on background
Selective Filtering - Interpretivist approach
Klapper - people have experiences of their own, make choices, and interpret or decodee and filter what they read, see, or hear in the media.
Selective Filtering - Interpretivist approach
Klapper suggests that there are 3 filters that people apply in their approaches too and intepretations of the media:
1.) Selective exposure - people must first choose what they wish to watch, read, or listen to in the media, and they may only choose media messages that fit in with their existing views and interests.
2.) Selective perception - means people will react differently to the same message, and may choose to accept or reject a media message depending on whether or not it fits in with their own views and interests.
3.) Selective retention - people will forget material that is not in line with their views and interests, and will tend to remember only those media messages with which they generally agree.
Uses and gratifications model
McQuail and Lull - Media have the weakest effect, audiences actively use media for their own needs.
4 main reasons people use media:
-Diversion (escape from reality)
-Personal Relationships (social bonding)
-Personal Identity (self-exploration)
-Surveillance (gathering information)
Uses and Gratifications model AO3
The model overestimates the power of the audience to influence media content. Media companies set the choices, and media may create the different pleasures themselves through devices like advertising.
Example of selective filtering
The way that people respond to party political election broadcasts, depending on which political party they personally support, as suggested in the cartoon. During the Iraq war of 2003, the Daily Mirror passionately opposed the war, yet half its readers were in favour of it. The Daily Mail was a strong supporter if the war - but 1/4 of its readers opposed it. This suggests people may form their own views beyond what the media tell them.
Philo (2008) - The Glasgow Media Group
Very critical of the suggestion in the encoding/decoding and selective filtering that audiences can make their own readings or interpretations of media texts, and that they are polysemic and can mean whatever audiences interpret them to mean. He accepts that audiences are active, and can be critical of media accounts.
He stresses that GMG research over many years shows that the media has a great deal of power in forming the way that audiences view the world, and that most people accept the dominant media account unless they have access to alternative forms of information.
Philo (1990) - The Glasgow Media Group
Study of the 1984/5 miners strike in Britain, when TV news repeatedly showed images of miners and pickets in violent clashes with police found that people from different class and political backgrounds saw these images and interpreted them in the same way that was being shown and believed the media account that the miners and pickets were responsible for the trouble. This was true even amongst those who were sympathetic for the miners. The only exception to this was among those who had actually seen a picket line, who, regardless of their class and politics rejected the television account.
This suggests that the cultural effects model underestimates the serious extent of the media’s ability to mould public understanding of social issues like the miners strike. The media did have an effect on how audiences think about the world,
