1. WK 7 – SG1006 – Contemporary Issues
in Media Studies- The active audience
DR. CAROLINA MATOS
LECTURER IN MEDIAAND SOCIOLOGY
DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY
CITY UNIVERSITY LONDON
2. Readings for week 7
Essential Reading
Ang, Ien, ‘Wanted: Audiences: On the Politics of Empirical Audience Studies’ in Marris, P and
Thornham, S eds. (1999) Media Studies: A Reader – 2nd
edition. Edinburgh University Press
pp482-492
Morley, David, ‘Cultural Transformations: The Politics of Resistance’, in Marris, P and Thornham,
S eds. (1999) Media Studies: A Reader – 2nd
edition. Edinburgh University Press pp. 471-482
Highly recommended
Hall, S et al. ‘The Social Production of News’ in Marris, P and Thornham, S eds. (1999) Media
Studies: A Reader, 2nd Edn, Edinburgh University Press.
Livingstone, S. (2004). ‘The Challenge of Changing Audiences: Or, What is the audience
researcher to do in the age of the internet?’ European Journal of Communication, 19(1), 75-86.
3. Key themes
* Early effects media research
* The hypodermic needle and the Frankfurt School
* The passive (or the vulnerable) audience
* The active audience (and Hall’s encoding/decoding model)
* The uses and gratification model
* Morley’s Nationwide study
* Audiences in the digital age: research, methods and fandom
*Essays
* Conclusions and readings for week 8
4. Media effects and audiences
* Does the media have effects on us? Are we passive or active audiences?
5. The “hypodermic needle” and the Frankfurt
School
* Media as a powerful social and political force –
* 1920/30s – Fears that political propaganda of the first Soviet Russian and Nazi Germany
attempted to seduce ordinary citizens
* In the 1930s, the Payne studies in the US concluded that films could do harm to children,
disrupting their sleep.
* The “hypodermic needle” – the standardized messages produced by the media are “injected”
into the audience.
* Media producers seen as creative and audiences as passive
* Culture based on mass ignorance and manipulation (i.e. the Frankfurt School)
6. The ‘vulnerable’ or passive audience
Who? –
Children, teenagers, (young) women
* Audiences seen as isolated individuals
vulnerable to influence
* Mass manipulation – “hypodermic needle”.
* Here the concern was with the
“ideological” effects on audience
* Criticisms to the notion of the media as all
powerful
Mediums attacked:
* Hollywood crime films of the 20s
* Popular culture of the 1950’s (the
increasing popularity of Hollywood films)
* The video “nasties” of the 1980’s (i.e.
Child’s Play and also horror films)
* Video games and pornography (and
violence) on the Internet – 1990’s onwards
7. Early research on communications effects:
media as all powerful?
* American social science tradition was marked by the behaviourist psychology tradition and
focused on the search for direct, short term effects
* I.e. The Albert Bandura Bobo Doll experiments –Experiments conducted by Bandura in
1961 and 1963 with a group of infants who were divided into three experimental and one control
group.
* 1st
stage - The first group where exposed to an adult attacking an inflatable bobo doll, who was
hit with a hammer. Two groups were shown this. The remaining group had an adult acting the
behaviour in the same room.
* 2nd
stage – The children were subject to aggression arousal by being refused permission to play
with dolls. Aim was to build frustration
* 3nd stage – Children were left in a room with an inflated doll and a hammer
* All three groups exhibited high levels of imitative aggression (more those exposed to TV)
8. Gerbner’s cultivation theory and TV violence
* George Gerbner in the 1970’s moved further from this approach and aimed to examine the long
term effects of TV on negative behaviour
* He argued that television frames our social world, and that we develop an image of the real
world based upon the content that TV images show us
* Effects of violent TV on audiences – the studies demonstrated that a high proportion of
dramatic programming contained violence. In 1975, 78% of the programmes analysed contained
violent episodes. The average hour of viewing violent was 8, and this climbed to 16 hours in
children’s weekend TV viewing
* Content analysis – an examination of programme contents. No engagement with individuals
who had engaged in violent activity after watching violent TV.
* Findings: The media exaggerates and distorts the levels of crime and violence in society.
Television was seen as cultivating a fearful, paranoid attitude to the world.
9. Media violence and pornography research:
criticisms
* Research has failed to prove links between content and violent behaviour
* Gauntlett (1998) has talked about the “10 things wrong with the effects model”:
1) Tackles social problems “backgrounds” (i.e. social background of offenders)
2) Children treated as inadequate
3) Conservative ideology (i.e. challenging aspects of the media seen as a threat to social order)
4) Artificial studies and misapplied methodology
5) Selection in its criticisms of media’s depiction of violence
Questions asked: What are the causes of violence ? Where do we draw the line between what is
violent and/or pornographic ? Are people not subject to various influences?
10. The “effects” of the media: other studies
* Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gardet ‘s study “The People’s Choice” in 1944 aimed to look at the
influence the media exerted over voters during presidential campaigns.
* Lazarsfeld interviewed a panel of voters over a period of time and concluded that political
opinions were more influenced by factors such as religion, social class, family ties and social
networks (not social media!) than the media
* Research does not rule out the influence of the media, but states that the influence focuses on a
small number of the politically engaged
* These individuals pass on their opinions to those around them, creating an indirect form of
media influence (i.e. the two-step flow influence)
* Conclusion: the media’s “effect” was one of reinforcement rather than change.
* And today? (powerful effects versus no effects)
11. Uses and gratification*
* These social scientists working on mass communication in Britain, which included also Denis
McQuail and Jeremy Tunstall, inverted the “effects” approach
* Developing from Lazarsfeld’s model, Katz, Gurevitch and Blumler argued that audiences are
not passively influenced by media output. They shifted the analyse to what people do to the
media
* Concerns: What are the uses that people make of activities, such as listening to a radio
programme? What needs are gratified? What satisfactions derived?
* McQuail, Blumler and Brown investigated what functions TV shows such as University
Challenge and Ask the Family served for a sample of viewers in Leeds
* From this, they developed the uses and gratification model, which they suggested might have
a general application for media use.
* in Marris and Thornham, 1999
12. “Uses and gratification model” and the active
audience*
* Media consumption according to needs
1)Surveillance/information gathering
2)Personal identity
3)Diversion (entertainment)
4)Personal relationships and sociability
* McQuail and others refused to endorse the all powerful view of the media on passive audiences,
as well as the disdain towards popular media (seen as escapist)
* Uses and gratification came under criticism also from more critical or Marxist sociological
perspectives
* “No attempt is made to differentiate between media or people on the basis of the interests they
represent” (Elliot in Marris and Thornham, 1999)
13. Further criticisms of the media effects
research tradition
* Bobo Doll’s experiment and other effects research:
1) Operates on a simple stimulus/response model of social behaviour. Other dimensions that
influence social behaviour, like education, class and gender are stripped away;
2) The studies are not clear about the durability of the effects. Will the effects be short term or
long?
3) Problems with assessing the impact of power. I.e. Lazarsfeld’s work on the relationship
between the media and voting intentions does not make sufficient allowance for the role of the
media as agenda-setter (i.e. the agenda-setting function)
* Concluding that the media is secondary downplays its position in shaping debate
14. Audience research – Cultural Studies in
Birmingham
* Criticisms of the behaviourist model of effects research (“direct influence”) lead to the
development of research on audiences coming from the Birmingham School of Contemporary
Cultural Studies in the 1980s
•Stuart Hall and the encoding-decoding model (the preferred reading or the hegemonic one, the
negotiated and the oppositional), part of the reception theory
•* Influenced by Gramsci, this model was more linked with questions of politics, power and
inequality
* Research on the positioning of audiences (the meaning produced by audiences) and the
intentions of the text
* Hegemonic perspective wants to ensure that audiences identify with the preferred reading of
the dominant groups (audiences are seen as free, but not so free, as they are asked to identify with
the dominant reading)
15. Morley’s Nationwide*
* Hall’s model drew more on the “ideological role” of the media, and broke away from the
passive conceptions of the audience which had dominated
* David Morley (1978) applied Hall’s model, arguing that responses are conditioned by class. In
other words, people response to messages according to their positioning in society
* Conducted an empirical study into audience’s understanding of the popular BBC News current
affairs TV programme Nationwide (1969-1983)
* Audiences comprised of “clusters of socially situated individual readers, whose readings will
be framed by shared cultural formations and practices.”
* Related the interpretation of messages to factors such as power and inequality. People bring in
different knowledge and tastes to their media usage (“cultural capital”)
(* Morley, 1999)
16. Audience research and TV
viewing*
* Morley’s study sent out to analyse the discourse of Nationwide, and then to study the readings
made of the programme by 29 groups drawn from different social backgrounds
* Used the encoding/decoding model - results (a “multiplicity of discourses was evident in the
decodings made by the groups)
* Task was to explore how textual codes interact with those of audience groupings to produce a
range of “social meanings”
* TV is a domestic media, centred on the family (a social experience)
* Criticisms: “Celebration of audience power”
* Ignored wider constraints in production
* Ambiguity of texts (* Morley, 1999)
17. The active audience and TV viewing:
further work*
* Hall and Morley supported reading audiences as active agents
* John Fiske (Television Culture) and Paul Willis have emphasised the creativity of consumers.
For Willis, audience interpretations are connected with questions of cultural membership and
cultural difference.
* I.e. Fiske (1999) uses the example of the TV series Hart to Hart to demonstrate that popular
TV is infused with ideology
* Ang (1989, 1999) states that “ uses and gratification research” embraces Morley’s
“ethnographic approach”
* Argues in favour of the differences between both approaches, stating that there are essential
difference in theoretical and political terms
(in Marris and Thornham, 1999; Ang, 1999)
18. Critical audience research versus
mainstream*
* Ang (1999) argues that the uses and gratification perspective is seen as the “scientific” model,
the one which aims for “objective” truth
* Model developed by the Cultural Studies perspective is different and focuses on the uses of
social and cultural power, seeing media consumption as a “site of struggle”
* Ien Ang’s classic study of Watching Dallas is an example of the “new audience research” and
the so-called ethnographic turn in audience research since the mid-1980s
* Increase of qualitative studies on audience research, quantitative research seen as having
limitations on telling us about the meanings made by audiences
* Talks about the impact of the work on the uses and gratification tradition, acknowledging a
symbolic nature of the negotiations between media texts and their readers
(* Ang, 1999)
19. Watching Dallas (1978-1991)
* Ang invited readers of the Dutch women's magazine Viva to write to her about their Dallas
viewing experience. "I like watching the TV serial Dallas but often get odd reactions to it. Would
anyone like to write and tell me why you like watching it too, or dislike it? I should like to
assimilate these reactions in my university thesis. Please write to ..." (1985, p.10). She received
42 letters, most of them from women.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGdfPtW56fo )
20. “Gendered” TV?
* Thus Ang criticised what she saw as a “functionalist approach” for looking at the multiple
relationships between audience gratifications and media uses
* Development of audience research (convergence of quantitative/qualitative)
* Female x male media texts:
* Research has shown that men like more news, current affairs, sports and documentaries
* Women more quality dramas, soap-operas (i.e. Brunsdson)
* Audience research on Dallas – Not only a case of “cultural imperialism”. People brought in
different interpretations, and women encountered a lot of pleasure in these texts;
* “Women’s fiction” – Christine Geraghty identified some characteristics, such as strong
female characters, the division between the public and private domain, emotions, personal
relationships and fantasy.
21. Audiences in the digital age*:
interactivity and participation
* Livingstone asks: are audience research theories ties to a historically-specific medium (TV)?
* “For the past half century, we have not so much researched ‘the television audience’ as we
have researched national, often public service, mass broadcast, non-interactive TV… family
audience in the living room.”
* Audiences in times of changing media consumption habits and environment:
* The BBC is also “re-thinking its relation to the audience in the digital age”
* Underlines the difficulties of doing audience online research
* New technologies has enhanced interactivity – “audiences are increasingly active, selective,
self-directed, producers as well as receivers of texts.”
* Livingstone (2004)
22. Audiences in the digital age*
* As Livingstone (2004) states, key terms in audience research are more, and not less significant
– i.e. choice, selection, taste, fandom, intertextuality and interactivity.
* Concerns over harmful content (i.e. media violence) have also returned to the agenda,
including regulation of the Internet
* Can we apply the encoding/decoding model to users of the new media? (Or the uses and
gratification?)
* “We know that not only does the social context in front of the screen frame the nature of the
engagement with what is shown on the screen, but that in many ways which we can now
elaborate, people are active in shaping their media culture. And we have a critical account of how
the media industry shapes, and constrains, people’s material and symbolic environment…”
* Heterogeneous interpretations: viewers diverge on socio-economic position, gender,
ethnicity.
23. Audience research in the Internet age*
* TB (social) versus Internet (individual)
* Questions:
* How do people follow hypertext pathways? Are new practices of reading emerging? Are these
more inclusive of difference? How do people read the world wide web? What are the emerging
skills and practices of new media users?
* Fandom is increasingly important, as audiences fragment and diversify. People are also
engaging more with content more than forms of channels (contrary to McLuhan) – favourite
bands, soap operas or TV series
* “…it is content irrespective of the medium that matters to people qua fans, for they follow it
across media….This is not to say that form is unimportant…the texts of the new media pose
particular challenges: they are multimodal, hypertextual and ephemeral.”
* Livingstone (2004)
24. Examples of audience engagement with TV
texts through different platforms
* BBC Iplayer - http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer
* Youtube – www.youtube.com
26. Methods to research audiences
* Combination of multiple methods
* Quantitative - Surveys
* Qualitative
* Ethnography
- Focus groups
- In depth interviews
- Participant observation
* Analysis of TV texts: textual and content analysis
27. Market research – Ofcom on violence on
TV and protecting audiences online
(http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/market-data-research/other/tv-research/tv-violence/) (18/07/14)
(
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/tv-research/protecting-audience-online/Protecting_au
)
28. Assessment and essay topics
◦1) Compare and contrast the concepts of ‘mediation’ and ‘mediatization’. Use
examples to illustrate your answer.
◦2) Assess the proposition that the media ‘frames’ social reality.
◦3) Examine the concepts of ‘performance’ and ‘ritual’ in relation to ONE current
reality TV show of your choice.
◦4) ‘The Frankfurt School’s contention is that media and culture have been incorporated
into an all-encompassing socio-economic system dominated by instrumentality,
rationality and objectification’ (Hodkinson). Comment.
◦5) Examine the proposition that the media amplify and exaggerate social issues
through moral panics. Give examples to illustrate your answer.
29. Assessment and essay topics
◦6) How do audiences adapt, resist and oppose media output? Give examples to
illustrate your answer.
7) Critically evaluate Stuart Hall’s model of encoding/decoding.
Give examples to illustrate your answer.
8) Can we have a ‘value free’ press? Discuss with reference to examples to
illustrate your answer.
9) Assess the relationship between the media and political actors. Give an
example to illustrate your answer.
10) Discuss the representation of gender in the media. Focus either on advertising,
film, television or on the political coverage.
30. Seminar questions and others for thought
1) How do you engage with the media? Do you consider yourself an active audience?
2) Is an age of increasing online activity, is it possible to speak of the existence of a “passive”
audience?
3) What media do you consume, and what are the needs that you want to fulfil?
4) Is “interactivity” the same as being “active”? Is it the same as participating in political debate
and engagement?
5) What are the main problems with effects research?
6) Why have studies on media violence and sex been seen as unsatisfactory?
7) How can we research audiences in the digital age?
31. Readings for week 8
Essential Reading:
Cohen, S. (2011) ‘Whose Side Were We On? The Undeclared Politics of Moral Panic Theory,’
Crime, Media, Culture 7(3): 237-43
Garland, D. (2008) ‘On the concept of moral panic,’ Crime, Media, Culture 4(1): 9-30
Highly recommended
Critcher, C. (2003) Moral Panics and the Media, Milton Keynes, Open University Press
Petley, J. et al (2011) ‘The idea of moral panic’, Crime, Media, Culture,7(3):215-28
