Uses &
Gratifications Theory - Audience are
active individuals rather than passive ones. They will select what they watch,
will consume in different ways and believe
different things. (Katz and Blumler
The Hypodermic Needle Model - Suggests that people just take in media passively (believing
everything)
Gerbner - Cultivation
Theory. People
who watch a lot of TV over estimate the amount of crime in the
real world (Mean World Syndrome). One text has little effect whilst when
the media show the same thing again and again it has a large effect.
Two-Step Flow
Theory - Being influenced by opinion leaders
Reception
Theory - Based on Stuart Halls encoding/decoding theory.
The text is encoded by the producer and decoded by the reader. There may be differences
between two readings of a text based on different audiences.
Saussure (1983) - "Audience can look at a media text from
a syntactic point of view, just describing what they see, or from a
representational or symbolic point of view where the attribute meaning to what
they see"
Barthes (1967) - An audience's understanding of media
texts comes from their understanding and knowledge of frequently told myths or
stories. He argues that the organisation of signs encodes particular messages
and ideologies
Stuart Hall - Argued that meaning is not fixed by the
producer, and the audience is not passive, gave us different readings, the
preferred reading is where the audience reads it the way you wanted them to.
David
Buckingham – “media do not just offer us a transparent
‘window on the world’ but a mediated version of the world. They don’t just present reality, they
re-present it”
- “Identity is complicated/complex.”
- "A focus on
identity requires us to pay closer attention to the ways in which media and
technologies are used in everyday life and their consequences for social groups”
Gramsci – Hegemony – Those in
power want to keep the order.
David Gauntlett - "Identity is now consciously constructed and the media provides
some of the tools to help us construct our identities. The media contains a
huge number of messages about identity and acceptable lifestyles.
At the same time the public
have their own set of feelings. The media and media consumers are in a dialogue
in which neither over powers the other"
Anthony Giddens - "There is a social structure that which
shapes our lives (traditions, institutions, moral codes, established ways of
doing things), but it relies on individuals following these structures" -
Changing social structure over time (Structuration)
Hebdidge - A subculture is a group of like-minded
individuals who feel neglected by societal standards and who develop a sense of
identity, which differs to the dominant on to which they belong.
Acland - Media representations of youth maintain social order/hegemony (the ones
in control have the most influence)
Giroux - Youth becomes an empty category in representation and reflects adult
concern
Steve Anderson - Younger people are becoming a lot more empowered because of social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and Blogging.
Wilkins - Deviancy Amplification Spiral (1964) - a cycle of increasing numbers of reports on a category of
antisocial behaviour or some other 'undesirable' event, leading to a
moral panic.
Stan Cohen - Moral Panic/Folk
Devils (1972)
Althusser - Ideological State Apparatus. Dominant ideology reinforced through
different groups including media.
Laura Mulvey (1975) - Male
Gaze - Audiences are
positioned to view characters from the perspective of a heterosexual male, such
as through the extensive use of focusing particularly on the curvature of the
female body. - Leads to the objectification of women. Women viewers
are made to view the product secondarily.
Jonathan
Schroader - the gaze is more than just a
look, it implies a psychological relationship where the gaze is superior to the
object.
Gaylyn Studlar – Female Gaze
Branston and Stafford (2001) - Soaps rely on archetypal characters and
stereotypes - ensure ready accessibility because stories have universal appeal
about families and communities
Dyer (1979) - "Stereotypes are always about power: those
with power stereotype those without power"
Baudrillard - The media presents a simulation of the world that is artificial
and 'hyperreal'
- Some audiences consider this hyperreality to be reality - leading to
hypersexuality etc
Semiotics - The study of sign and symbols
There is a sign, an object that is called the
signifier
The meaning that is given to that is called the signified.
This is nor fixed and can change with time or the society or culture that
it is shown to.
Mediation - The process of electing and shaping, creating meaning from an
original event. An event which is mediated within the systems of values of an
institution e.g. (News of the World, CH4 News). Their view is represented to
the public. - Selection vs Rejection, Focussing,
Organisation
Collective Identity: The individual sense of
belonging to a group who share a set of traditions of traditions and values
(part of identity)
-
Not just representation of the mainstream media but also from the
self-representations of media users.
Structuration is the process where human
agency and social structure are in a constant relationship and the social
structure is reproduced by the repetition of acts by individual people (and
therefore can change).
Scopophilia - deriving pleasure from looking. As an expression of sexuality,
it refers to sexual pleasure derived from looking at erotic objects: erotic
photographs, pornography, naked bodies, etc.
Genderfuck - Refers to the self-conscious effort to play with traditional of
gender roles.
Patriarchy is a social system in which males hold primary power, predominate
in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control
of property; in the domain of the family, fathers or father-figures hold
authority over women and children.
Archetype
: a very typical example of a certain person or
thing
Gender
Binary: Describes a system where a society splits its
members of male and female sexes into gender roles, gender identities and
attributes.
Genre Theory
Steve Neale
- It is easy to underplay the differences within a genre. Steve Neale declares
that:
"Genres are instances of repetition and
difference" (Neale 1980, 48)
"Difference is absolutely essential to the
economy of genre" (Neale 1980)
Toderov - "Any
instances of genre will be necessarily different" (Toderov - cited in
Gledhell, 1985, 60), Narrative Theory - Equilibrium theory
Lacey - There
are repertoires of elements that work together to suggest genre, which are a
useful framework to use for analysis
Setting
Character
Narrative
Iconography
Style
Gledhill
- "There are no rules of inclusion and exclusion" (Gledhill, 1985)
"Genres are not discrete systems consisting of
a fixed number of listable items (Gledhill, 1985)
Chandler - It is difficult to make
clear cut distinctions between one genre and another: genres overlap, and there
are 'mixed genres' such as comedy thrillers (Chandler 2000)
Burton - Each text in a
given genre shares particular key elements to make up the generic formula:
- Protagonists
- Stock characters
- Plots/Stock Situations
- Icons
- Background and Décor
- Themes
