This segment will review variety of literature exploring on how and why media organizations produce audiences and markets. The different types of audience theories there are will explore this, and how the audience reacts within these theories. There are many various audience theories out there, however six will be explored.
“The word audience is so much part of our everyday talk that its complexity is often taken for granted.” (Ross & Nightingale 2003)
Today, media is surrounding us, whether it is television, films, magazines, games, radio, music, the news, and even billboards and posters, and we don’t even acknowledge it, unless it hits us in the face. Along with this media, comes different audience, and different reactions. The
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Hall also suggested that the way an audience reacts, is dependant on their cultural backgrounds and how they were brought up, for example, if the mass media’s intended message is fruit is great, it all depends if an individual has been brought up to dislike fruit, etc. the audience is also given more credit, and it’s understood that they mat react in different ways.
Reception theory is the social interaction aspect, and the Two-Step Flow theory is also similar.
“Formulated first in the The People’s Choice, the hypothesis suggests that ‘ideas often flow from radio and print to the opinion leaders and from them to the less active sections of the population.’” (Lazarfield and Katz, 1970)
Paul Felix Lazerfiled originally came up with this theory, and then later, Elihu Katz began working with him. The two of them looked at during the presidential elections, how the votes make up the audience’s minds and wrote a book exploring the different factors of it. They speculated how the mass media connects with people, however this communication is routed through opinion leaders. These people are very media-literate and they link their understanding to others. The mass media uses comedians as the opinion leaders, as they take real life news, and analyse it in a comical way, and the mass media probably entrust the comedians more, as they come across less bias and less of an agender, and the public find the news sometimes so bias, it was almost comical. Two-Step Flow theory is
Today’s media (news) plays an enormous role in the lives of people in directing a specific perception of the world around them. Most often media conduct's a subconscious effect upon its spectators in which the upshots are deliberately or illdeliberatly towards a particular topic.
Audience Analysis Paper Have you ever been sitting in a big crowd of people listening to a speaker and you look around and see that no one is paying attention or has any interest in what the person is talking about? That speaker probably wasn’t very good because they did not include the key part to public speaking in their speech which is analyzing the audience. “Effective public speaking requires that a speaker considers the various characteristics of the audience and utilize insights from that audience analysis during the development and presentation of the speech.” I will go into depth on what it means to analyze an audience and describe how I intend to include the factors of audience analysis into my cultural speech on Italian cultures
Assignment: As the documentary Miss Representation explains, “The media is now the message and the messenger.” Every day, we take in countless hours of media that influence how we view others and in turn how we view ourselves. It is our responsibility to consume media in an intelligent way AND fight back against negative messages put forth by the media.
In today’s society, media is present in our lives 24/7 allowing it to have a major influence on our culture in both positive and negative ways.
It is not entirely clear whether the audience is rather passive by simply consuming the meaning produced by the media industry or co-creates it. Nonetheless, one should not underestimate the influence of the media.
This paper will discuss the methods that two authors use their articles to approach their individual audiences.
While much of the American public is aware of the media's influential power over our society, many believe they are immune to these influences and therefore underestimate the actual effects it can have within our lives. Parenti believes media can even influences these "immune" Americans through the ideal of political entertainment. This ideal embodies a media with subtle hints of various political, cultural and systematic views that are embedded with in a program's or movie's characters, contents or plots. While this influence may be indirect, much of it goes undetected by the wary public who claim immunity from such media. Furthermore, Parenti argues that such critiques of influential media by the wary public are biased in themselves, stating that, "this editing is itself partly conditioned by the previously internalized images fed to audiences by the same media they are now viewing." Ultimately things ranging from style and social status, to love and relationships and even to our perception of foreign culture is all influenced by media and its conglomerates. They are the ultimate
Understanding how an audience receives information can be vital in the creation of a production. One of the ways of testing how the audience receives information is through the audience theory. With the audience theory, audiences can be separated into passive or active, a passive model suggests the production has an effect on the audience while an active model suggests that the audience interacts with the production to develop their own interpretation. The is one main difference between the passive and active models. In the active model, audiences form opinions and are therefore in control, while audiences in a passive audience only accept opinions and have little control. Looking further into the audience theory there is the reception theory.
Four theorists are the contributing authors of the active research theory. These authors evolved the role audience play and their ability to actively engage with communication medians. The idea of deconstructionism was the focus of the work of Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault during the 1960’s. Later in the twentieth century theorist Raymond Bauer developed The Obstinate Audience. In the early 1980’s a theorist by the name of Stuart Hall challenged the traditional theories of an audience role in the media and developed his encoding/decoding theory. Each contributed to the current understanding of the active role audiences engage in when information is presented.
Understanding the background and history of the Agenda Setting Theory is imperative to this analysis. Dr. Max McComb and Dr. Donald Shaw developed the Agenda Setting Theory in a study conducted during the 1968 presidential election (McCombs & Shaw, 1972, p. 178). This study describes how if an audience is exposed to the same media, they will place importance on the same issues. This theory strictly presents information and sets the terms of public discourse. At the time, this was a trailblazing new idea.
Mass media plays an important role in the society by providing entertainment, information and acting as the government’s overseer. Several scholars have developed philosophies that help people understand how mass media fulfills its roles in the society. For example, Horkheimer and Adorno have constructed theories that explain the functions and impacts of mass media in the society across the globe (Mosco, 2008). The central theme in all mass communication models entails the meaning of media contents, which include the images and texts and their influence on the target audience. The perception of the target audience concerning the text and images in the media are what form the basis of these theories. This essay discusses two hypothetical frameworks: the political economy and cultural studies theories, including their similarities and differences, and how they help in understanding the relationship between the media and society.
Media influence is the force by which ideas are injected into people’s lives shaping the very culture of society. This influence is masqueraded through hidden media message, resulting in a change in its audience which can be positive or negative, abrupt or gradual, short term or long term. Although mass media’s influential effect can reach a wide ranged audience as an agent of socialization the responsibility to contain what it releases has not been of importance. “The media’s socially significant obligations are formally ignored.” (A.S. Zapesotskii, 2011, p 9). Media messages can be exerted through many different outlets such as TV shows, music, movies, commercials, news, magazines, games which are all gravitated to entertain audiences ultimately offering personal gratification that can sometimes blur the lines between reality and
Exploring Why the Mass Media May Exert Only a Limited Influence Over the Audience Media is the way in which large companies are able to diffuse their choice of information to the public via sources such as television, newspapers and radio stations. It is evident that the media in general has become a major function in most people’s lives and consequently has been blamed fir crime, abortion and the corruption of morals in society. I will attempt to evaluate to what extent the media exerts influence over their audiences by examining the media models. I believe that this is an important issue to consider as the media continues to centre the lives of many difference social groups as on a daily basis,
We process communication through many styles and forms of media. How one perceives what is communicated may be based on the approach in which someone uses in order to send and receive messages. The following theories are examples in the way we communicate and may explain why two people watching or listening to the same message may perceive the message in different ways. First, there is the type of communication process known as uses and gratifications. According to Media Effects, "A medium or message is a source of influence within the context of other possible influences." (Jennings, B. and Oliver, M., 2009, p. 165) Based on this information, everyone's social and cultural backgrounds may affect how a message is perceived. Physiologically, receivers of communication may react differently. They may experience different emotions and reactions to what they are being introduced to. An example of someone becoming influenced based on their perception of what is being received in a message is that of the followers of the kneeling protests. Six weeks ago, there may have been a few people who would chose to kneel at a football game during the National Anthem. After several weeks of protests, the idea of kneeling before a football game during the anthem became more prevalent. This may be associated with the theory that is stated in Media Effects. "Audience activity is the core concept in uses and gratifications. It refers to the utility, intentionality, selectivity, and involvement of the audience with the media (Blumler, 1979)." (Jennings, B. and Oliver, M., 2009, p. 172) In other words, the media played on the protests and kept the issue at the forefront to where more people chose to follow along. This leads me to the concept of cognitive dissonance and selective exposure. We all have our own belief system. It is difficult to have a true sense of unity in our country because of the large diverse culture in America. Even though we are The United States of America, we have become less united over the past few decades. For instance, Japan and China do not have the freedoms we are blessed to have here in the United States, yet somehow, they come across as united countries. These countries have some diversity, but the
It reflects that government use messages to educate citizens and give them same ideology. It is same with other country like America for example. During 2003-2010, the Iraq war brought destructive effects to Iraq. In another side of the ocean, the White House published a report in which declared they stand at the right and fair side of the world. It had inspired lots of Americans at that period. People in America were told that they were doing the right thing. It is obvious that the messages which audiences gain from the media are not simple any more. It has been selected and reflected the ideology that the controller wants audiences to receive. In other words, the sender of message has encoded it in order to express their views. In conclusion, at the beginning of the model, the traditional one put the sender in the first step in which doesn’t think of the deep content of the message and forgets feedback part of it. Hall critiqued this model with coming up with encoding theory and explains production process as the process of information encoding. It means the sender encodes the information by their ideology. It contains the ideology which the senders want audiences to receive.