Theories Flashcards
Functionalists
Believe that the media has a useful and important purpose in people’s lives and that we NEED it. For example:
They believe that it is important to feel as though you belong to a community and to have a national identity. Durkheim believes it is very important to feel a sense of national identity to keep a community going.
Blumer and Katz Uses and Gratifications
Blumler & Katz were functionalists that came up with the “Uses & Gratifications Theory” which states that the media has different functions and uses for audiences. They think that audiences need different types of media for information, entertainment, escape, identification and social interaction
Richard Dyer’s Utopian solutions theory
He believes that an audience will enjoy a text if it offers them a glimpse of a “utopian” perfect life and if it offers them solutions to particular problems they have. For example audiences suffering from boredom will need products offering entertainment. Audiences suffering from isolation will seek out a text that offers them a sense of community
Marxists
Believe that the media is used to deliberately manipulate an audience into believing specific things. They think it is a BAD thing because they think we are being duped. Believe that audiences are passive, and that we are manipulated and the media affects our behaviour and our beliefs about what it is to be British.
Karl Marx
Karl Marx believed that the ruling class dominates the working class. And they believe that as the majority of film production companies are large, commercial and run by ruling classes, they tend to perpetuate the dominant ideology to exert hegemonic control over the working classes to create a “false consciousness” where working class people are convinced that society is good and their lives are fine the way they are.
HypoDermic Syringe theory
The Marxist group the FRANKFURT SCHOOL came up with the idea of the “HYPODERMIC SYRINGE MODEL” often also known as the “MEDIA EFFECTS THEORY”. This is a theory which states that the media is like a needle injecting its message into the audience and that all audiences get the same message. The audience is powerless to resist this message and they are directly influenced by it.
Neo Marxists
Stuart Hall is a “neo Marxist” who believes that although the media TRIES to manipulate and control audiences, audiences might NOT automatically believe or accept what they see. He believes that audiences take either a preferred, oppositional or negotiated reading of a text. He says the way people interpret the media depends on their cultural background and personality
He believes that the more a specific representation is repeated in the media, the more it becomes “naturalised” and it can lead to politically constructed representations seeming like “a common sense”.
He also believes that the media tends to construct society rather than reflect it.
DANIEL CHANDLER’S CAGE THEORY
He believes that our sense of identity is made up of 4 main aspects which he nicknames the “CAGE THEORY”. This consists of Class, Age, Gender and Ethnicity. He believes the media’s portrayal of these 4 aspects affects how we feel about our own identity.
Also agrees with Stuart Hall and thinks that representations which become familiar through constant re-use come to feel ‘natural’ and unmediated
pluralists
Believe that media only reflects what audiences want and that if it didn’t do this, film companies would go out of business.
They admit that some representations are more common, but that this is just because those beliefs already exist in society so films have to reflect them
Postmodernists
Believe that culture is so diverse now that class, gender, ethnicity and age don’t really define who we are. They don’t think there is a big class divide (or any other divide for that matter) and they believe that audiences are diverse and varied. They don’t believe that having a “National Identity” is possible anymore because Britain is such a diverse place and we are now all so different. Some postmodernists think that globalisation has led to us being “Americanised” and not having any real sense of national identity. They think that all around the world people are losing their sense of national identity because of this and that we live in a state of “cultural homogeneity” where all the cultures are virtually the same.
Hyper- reality
Baudrillard also thinks that in this day and age where we are bombarded with media, we often start to accept media as reality without looking at the real world. He thinks that we prefer the “created” version of reality as it is often more glamourous and entertaining. He calls this a “hyper-reality”.
SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORISTS (Tajfel and Turner)
They believe that there is “intergroup discrimination” where audiences enjoy seeing representations of others, that make them feel that they as an audience are better and of a higher status. They think that audience strive to see themselves as successful and positive and actively seek out products that make them feel assured of their own status.
Stanley Cohen- Moral Panic
He believed that occasionally in society there would be panics where the majority of people would be utterly convinced that certain groups in society were going to disrupt society and cause problems. For example he believes that after 9/11 there was a moral panic involving Muslims where ALL Muslims were seen as terrorists. He believes that the media often starts these moral panics and makes them worse.
DAVID GAUNTLETT
Thinks the idea that the media affects the way we behave is rubbish. He studies the Frankfurt schools Media Effects theory and contradicts all of its ideas. He thinks we:
Shouldn’t blame the media for issues that already exist in society
Shouldn’t assume the audience is passive and naive
Shouldn’t believe the Frankfurt School’s research as it was conducted in an artificial way and there’s no real way we could ever find out the real effect media has on society
Shouldn’t assume that there will only be negative results from consuming a media text. Sometimes a media text that contains negative issues has a positive repercussion on the audience
Believes that we use the “media as navigation points for developing our own identities”.
Believes that the media “disseminates a huge number of messages about identity and acceptable forms of self-expression, gender, sexuality and lifestyle.”
JACQUES LACAN – MIRROR STAGE THEORY
Lacan carried out research with children and animals using mirrors and discovered that humans reach an age where they are able to recognise their own reflection and that people were able to develop a sense of their own self by examining their reflections
