*The information on this page has been gathered from a variety of sources and should be regarded as a collective revision guide, rather than a reference site. Seek original sources if you wish to directly quote any information.
AS MEDIA STUDIES KEY CONCEPTS
AS MEDIA STUDIES KEY CONCEPTS
The Key Concepts
When we analyse any kind of media text, there are some tools we use to help us. These are the key concepts of Media Studies and they are like your tool box for analysis. They are easy to remember and are a starting point for any analysis.
F.A.I.R Forms Audiences Institutions Representations
These four concepts are used to understand how meaning is being made and how and why a media text is effective.
Media Forms This means the type of media text or media platform that we are studying. For example, a TV programme is a different media form to a magazine or a website. The media language we use to analyse a media text will change with different media forms. For example if we were analysing a film, we would talk about camera movement, editing, sound, location, props and mise- en-scene, where as if we were analysing a CD, we would talk about image, font, colour, genre and representation.
Different media forms are then split into genres. Film for example can be split into horror, comedy, action, western or thriller. TV might be split into soap opera, documentary, game show or drama.
Different genres have different ‘codes and conventions’. For example, we know a science fiction film when we see one because there are spaceships and aliens, themes of discovery and technology, the future, time travel and robots. The dominant colours are metallic silver and neon blue or green. These codes and conventions are very different to a western where we would expect to see cowboys and saloons, horses, spurs, guns and maybe a cactus. The Narrative or story is also different; different themes and different types of characters too. The codes and conventions show us the type of narrative and genre and this helps us recognise and analyse the form of the text we are studying.
Media Audiences If the media is about MASS COMMUNICATION, then it’s very important to look at who a media text is communicating with. Different media companies have different audiences. For example, Kerrang! Radio has a different ‘target Audience’ to Classic FM or Choice. Different media texts can also have a different target audience. For example BBC1 make Newsround and News at Ten but the target audiences are clearly different. Media audiences can be broken down into different groups, this is called audience segmentation. You can segment audiences by age, race, gender, social class, how much education they have, where they live, what sort of interests they have or the subculture they identify with.
Audiences also respond to the media texts they watch, listen to or download. Media Studies is also concerned with audience responses. Sometimes audiences identify with certain texts, like teenagers may like ‘Skins’ because they identify with the characters. Or maybe they aspire to be like them, or are gratified by the story lines or action. Audiences also respond by participating like when they vote for The X Factor, or for a ‘eviction’ type programme.
Media Institutions. In Media studies, it is also important to consider the company or organisation that produce or broadcast the media texts that we receive. Different media institutions have different aims and visions and they often have different audiences or compete with each other for the same audience. Some media institutions are huge and they own lots of different media forms; Rupert Murdoch owns a company called ‘News Corp International’ which owns Sky TV, The Sun newspaper, The Times newspaper, FOX TV and 20th Century Fox films and lots more. Some people see this as worrying because increased concentration of ownership means that all our media content is getting more and more similar and its only real purpose is making money.
The study of institutions also includes looking at how a company makes its money. For example, a commercial institution like The Sun newspaper makes its money from advertising which means they need a very big audience to interest their advertisers. News articles are often cut or shortened to make more space for advertising to make more money for the institution. This worries some analysts, because it means that The Sun is not really concerned with news so much as advertising revenue and audience figures.
Another important part of institution is ownership and control. If an owner is able to control their institution and its content or audience then should there be a limit on how much one media conglomerate should be allowed to own?
Media Representations
This can seem complicated but it’s very simple once you get it and possibly the most important of all the key concepts. What we see and hear in the media is never real... It is a RE-presentation of reality. When we see young people in the media, they are being re-presented to us. How a person or organisation is represented is really important. A representation could be either positive or negative depending upon the way it is constructed. Costume, the language they use, the location are all part of how meaning is created. Another example might be with race. As Media analysts, we need to look at the representation of characters and organisations critically to uncover whether there is an unfair dominance of negative stereotypes.
Try watching an episode of The Wire or Skins and think about the representation of young people. Is it good or bad, fair or unfair, is it stereotypical or more balanced? Try watching an episode of Britain’s Next Top Model and thinking about the representation of women, is it positive or negative and why?
As you watch TV, read magazines, go to see films or listen to the radio, or read the paper or surf the net, try thinking about the key concepts. Why not stop and think – who is the audience and how are they responding? What are the stereotypes being used here and are the representations positive or negative? Which institution made this media text and how are they funded; what is their vision?
UNDERSTANDING MEDIA AUDIENCES
Researchers investigating the effect of media on audiences have considered the audience in two distinct ways.
Passive Audiences
The earliest idea was that a mass audience is passive and inactive. The members of the audience are seen as couch potatoes just sitting there consuming media texts – particularly commercial television programmes. It was thought that this did not require the active use of the brain. The audience accepts and believes all messages in any media text that they receive. This is the passive audience model.
The Hypodermic Model
In this model the media is seen as powerful and able to inject ideas into an audience who are seen as weak and passive.
It was thought that a mass audience could be influenced by the same message. This appeared to be the case in Nazi Germany in the 1930s leading up to WWII. Powerful German films such as Triumph of the Will seemed to use propaganda methods to ‘inject’ ideas promoting the Nazi cause into the German audience. That is why this theory is known as the Hypodermic model.
It suggests that a media text can ‘inject’ ideas, values and attitudes into a passive audience who might then act upon them. This theory also suggests that a media text has only one message which the audience must pick up.
In 1957 an American theorist called Vance Packard working in advertising wrote an influential book called The Hidden Persuaders. This book suggested that advertisers were able to manipulate audiences, and persuade them to buy things they may not want to buy. This suggested advertisers had power over audiences. In fact this has since proved to be an unreliable model, as modern audiences are too sophisticated.
Basically this theory stems from a fear of the mass media, and gives the
media much more power than it can ever have in a democracy. Also it ignores the obvious fact that not everyone in an audience behaves in the same way. How can an audience be passive – think of all the times you have disagreed with something on television or just not laughed at a new so called comedy, or thought a programme was awful.
Cultivation Theory
This theory also treats the audience as passive. It suggests that repeated exposure to the same message – such as an advertisement – will have an effect on the audience’s attitudes and values. A similar idea is known as densensitisation which suggests that long term exposure to violent media makes the audience less likely to be shocked by violence. Being less shocked by violence the audience may then be more likely to behave violently.
The criticism of this theory is that screen violence is not the same as real violence. Many people have been exposed to screen murder and violence, but there is no evidence at all that this has lead audiences to be less shocked by real killings and violence. Also this theory treats the audience as passive which is an outdated concept.
Two Step Flow Theory
Katz and Lazarsfeld assumes a slightly more active audience. It suggests messages from the media move in two distinct ways. First, individuals who are opinion leaders, receive messages from the media and pass on their own interpretations in addition to the actual media content.
The information does not flow directly from the text into the minds of its audience, but is filtered through the opinion leaders who then pass it on to a more passive audience. The audience then mediate the information received directly from the media with the ideas and thoughts expressed by the opinion leaders, thus being influenced not by a direct process, but by a two step flow.
This theory appeared to reduce the power of the media, and some researchers concluded that social factors were also important in the way in which audiences interpret texts. This led to the idea of active audiences.
Active Audiences
This newer model sees the audience not as couch potatoes, but as individuals who are active and interact with the communication process and use media texts for their own purposes. We behave differently because we are different people from different backgrounds with many different attitudes, values, experiences and ideas.
This is the active audience model, and is now generally considered to be a better and more realistic way to talk about audiences.
Uses and Gratifications Model
This model stems from the idea that audiences are a complex mixture of individuals who select media texts that best suits their needs – this goes back to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
The users and gratifications model suggests that media audiences are active and make active decisions about what they consume in relation to their social and cultural setting and their needs.
This was summed up by theorists Blumier and Katz in 1974; ‘Media usage can be explained in that it provides gratifications (meaning it satisfies needs) related to the satisfaction of social and psychological needs’.
Put simply this means that audiences choose to watch programmes that make them feel good (gratifications) e.g. soaps and sitcoms, or that give them information that they can use (uses) e.g. news or information about new products or the world about them.
Blumier and Katz (1975) went into greater detail and identified four main uses:
Surveillance – our need to know what is going on in the world. This relates to Maslow’s need for security. By keeping up to date with news about local and international events we feel we have the knowledge to avoid or deal with dangers.
Personal relationships – our need for to interact with other people. This is provided by forming virtual relationships with characters in soaps, films and all kinds of drama, and other programmes and other media texts.
Personal identity – our need to define our identity and sense of self. Part of our sense of self is informed by making judgments about all sorts of people and things. This is also true of judgments we make about TV and film characters, and celebrities. Our choice of music, the shows we watch, the stars we like can be an expression of our identities. One aspect of this type of gratification is known as value reinforcement. This is where we choose television programmes or newspapers that have similar beliefs to those we hold.
Diversion – the need for escape, entertainment and relaxation. All types of television programmes can be ‘used’ to wind down and offer diversion, as well as satisfying some of the other needs at the same time.
Reception Analysis
Reception analysis is an active audience theory that looks at how audiences interact with a media text taking into account their ‘situated culture’ – this is their daily life. The theory suggests that social and daily experiences can affect the way an audience reads a media text and reacts to it.
This theory about how audiences read a text was put forward by Professor Stuart Hall in ‘The television discourse – encoding/decoding’ in 1974 with later research by David Morley in 1980 and Charlotte Brunsden.
He suggests that an audience has a significant role in the process of reading a text, and this can be discussed in three different ways:
1 The dominant or preferred reading. The audience shares the code of the text and fully accepts and understands its preferred meaning as intended by the producers (This can be seen as a hegemonic reading).
2 The negotiated reading. The audience partly shares the code of the text and broadly accepts the preferred meaning, but will change the meaning in some way according to their own experiences, culture and values EG These audience members might argue that some representations – ethnic minorities perhaps – appear to them to be inaccurate.
3 The oppositional reading. The audience understands the preferred meaning but does not share the text’s code and rejects this intended meaning and constructs an alternative meaning. EG This could be a radical reading by a Marxist or feminist who rejects the values and ideology of the preferred reading.
Genre Theory
Film theorist, Robert Stam, refers to common ways of categorizing films:
While some genres are based on story content (the war film), other are borrowed from literature (comedy, melodrama) or from other media (the musical). Some are budget-based (blockbusters), while others are based on artistic status (the art film), racial identity (Black cinema), location (the Western) or sexual orientation (Queer cinema). (Stam 2000,14).
Films can help to remind us of the social nature of the production and interpretation of texts. In relation to film, many modern commentators refer to the commercial and industrial significance of genres. McQuail argues that: The genre may be considered as a practical device for helping any mass medium to produce consistently and efficiently relating its production to the expectations of its customers. Since it is also a practical device for enabling individual media users to plan their choices, it can be considered to order the relations between the parties to mass communication. (McQuail 1987, 200)
Steve Neale observes that 'genres... exist within the context of a set of economic relations and practices', though he adds that 'genres are not the product of economic factors as such. The conditions provided by the capitalist economy account neither for the existence of the particular genres that have hitherto been produced, nor for the existence of the conventions that constitute them' (Neale 1980, 51-2). Economic factors may therefore account for the perpetuation of a profitable genre.
Narrative Theory
Narrative is simply a way of organising material so it makes sense. Edward Branigan (Narrative Comprehension and Film, p3) describes narrative not just as a chain of events or cause and effect, but as an;
“activity that organises data into a special pattern which represents and explains experience”
Film as Fairy Tale
Propp’s theory
Vladimir Propp, a Russian critic, active in the 1920’s, published his Morphology of the Folk Tale in 1928. While the Soviet cinema was producing excellent films, Propp was essentially interested in the narrative of folk tales. He noticed:
Folk tales were similar in many areas. They were about the same basic struggles and they appeared to have stock characters. He identified a theory about characters and actions as narrative functions. Characters, according to Propp, have a narrative function; they provide a structure for the text.
Characters that perform a function
The Hero – a character that seeks something
The Villain – who opposes or actively blocks the hero’s quest
The Donor – who provides an object with magical properties
The Dispatcher – who sends the hero on his/her quest via a message
The False Hero – who disrupts the hero’s success by making false claims
The Helper – who aids the hero
The Princess – acts as the reward for the hero and the object of the villain’s plots
Her Father – who acts to reward the hero for his effort
Actions as functions of narrative
Preparation
A community/kingdom/family is in an ordered state of being A member of the community/kingdom/family leaves home
A warning is given to the leaders of the community or a rule is imposed on the hero
The warning is discounted/ the rule is broken
The villain attempts to discover something about the victim of the broken rule
The villain tries to deceive the victim to gain advantage The victim unwittingly helps the villain
Complication
A state of disorder The villain harms a member of the community/kingdom/family
One of the members of the community/kingdom/family desires something
The hero is sent to get what is desired
The hero plans action against the villain
Transference
The hero leaves home
The hero is tested or attacked/ he meets the test and is given a magical gift or helper
The hero reacts to the donor
The hero arrives at the place he can fulfill his quest
Struggle
There is a struggle between the hero and the villain |
The hero is branded
The villain is overcome
The state of disorder is settled
Return
The hero returns
The hero is pursued
The hero escapes or is rescued
The hero arrives home and is not recognised
A false hero claims rewards
A task is set for the hero
The task is accomplished
Recognition
The hero is recognised
The false hero or villain is unmasked
The false hero is punished The hero attains the reward (princess/ kingdom)
To Propp events are not just about character and action but also about progressing the narrative.
CRITICISMS Propp’s theory of narrative seems to be based in a male orientated environment (due to his theory actually reflecting early folk tales) and as such critics often dismiss the theory with regard to film. However, it may still be applied because the function (rather than the gender) of characters is the basis of the theory. E.g. the hero could be a woman; the reward could be a man.
Critics argue that Propp’s strict order of characters and events is restrictive. We should rather apply the functions and events randomly as we meet new narratives. E.g. the hero may kill the villain earlier than Propp expects. Changing the traditional format will change the whole way the text is received.
Some critics claim there are many more character types than Propp suggests and we should feel free to identify them. E.g. the stooge in a sci-fi film, who is usually nameless and usually killed early on to suggest the power of the alien force, is a typical modern character type.
It applies to Fairy Stories and to other similar narratives based around 'quests' IT DOES NOTAPPLY TO ALL NARRATIVES.
WHY THE THEORY IS USEFUL It avoids treating characters as if they are individuals and reminds us they are merely constructs. Some characters are indeed there just to progress the narrative.
Todorov’s theory
Tzvetan Todorov simplified the idea of narrative theory whilst also allowing a more complex interpretation of film texts with his theory of Equilibrium and Disequilibrium.
The theory is simply this:
◦ The fictional environment begins with a state of equilibrium (everything is as it should be)
◦ It then suffers some disruption (disequilibrium)
◦ New equilibrium is produced at the end of the narrative
Seems simple enough and easily applicable to all films! But theories can never be THAT easy! There are five stages the narrative can progress through:
• A state of equilibrium (all is as it should be)
• A disruption of that order by an event
• A recognition that the disorder has occurred
• An attempt to repair the damage of the disruption
• A return or restoration of a NEW equilibrium
Here narrative is not seen as a linear structure but a circular one. The narrative is driven by attempts to restore the equilibrium. However, the equilibrium attained at the end of the story is not identical to the initial equilibrium. Todorov argues that narrative involves a transformation. The characters or the situations are transformed through the progress of the disruption. The disruption itself usually takes place outside the normal social framework, outside the ‘normal’ social events. E.g a murder happens and people are terrified. Someone vanishes and the characters have to solve the mystery. So, remember:
• Narratives don’t need to be linear.
• The progression from initial equilibrium to restoration always involves a transformation.
• The middle period of a narrative can depict actions that transgress
everyday habits and routines.
There can be many disruptions whilst seeking a new equilibrium (horror relies on this technique).
Enigma codes Barthes identified a number of narrative codes referring to the realist text.
The most common of these is the Enigma code.
Enigma codes refer to audience desires to know what will happen next. This code sets puzzles, questions and resolves them within the text. ‘the function of the enigma code is to delay revelation, to dodge the moment of truth by setting up obstacles, stoppages, deviations ..delaying final disclosure until the ultimate moment’ (Stam et.al.) Narrative and Non - Fiction
APPROACHES TO REPRESENTATION
You will all be familiar with this term as a key concept to help you analyse an unseen media text, but this term is also used and an area of academic theory in Media Studies. You will need to become well read and confident in this area of theory and research. You will need to know all the related theory, debates, political, historical and social context.
Key areas for studying ‘Representations’:
◦ Two detailed studies of the images of particular groups or places across a range of media.
◦ Alternative images of these groups or places across the media.
◦ General issues of representation and stereotyping within the media.
◦ Problems of producing fair and accurate media representations.
◦ Representations and power in the Media.
◦ Reasons for dominant representations (e.g. historic, economic, social, political, etc).
Here are some notes outlining the key theories about Media Representations.
The Male Gaze – Laura Mulvey – Feminist Theory – Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema – Written in 1975
The cinema apparatus of Hollywood cinema puts the audience in a masculine subject position with the woman on the screen seen as an object of desire. Film and cinematography are structures upon ideas. Protagonists tended to be men. Mulvey suggests two distinct modes of male gaze – “voyeuristic (women as whores) and fetishistic – women as unreachable madonnas”. (Also narcissistic – women watching film see themselves reflected on the screen). (Film texts: Alien, Jackie Brown).
People who criticise her ideas say that she is ignoring the fact that all genders – male and female want to feel dominated and overwhelmed by the cinema experience. Also, she ignores the fact that men are capable of ‘metaphoric transvestism’ whereby they are able to view the film from the perspective of a woman. (Thelma and Louise, The Piano, Knocked Up, Brick Lane).
Subculture – Representation of Groups – Dick Hebdidge
In his book, Subculture and The Meaning of Style, Dick Hebdidge said that 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. Ken Gelder lists 6 ways in which a subculture can be recognised: 1) Often have negative relationship to work 2) Negative or ambivalent relationship to class 3) Through their associations with territory ( The street, the hood, the club) rather than property 4) Through their stylistic ties to excess 5) Through their movement out of home into non-domestic forms of belonging (social groups as opposed to family) 6) Through their refusal to engage with they might see as the ‘banalities’ of life. Other ways of recognising a subculture might be symbolism attached to clothes, music, visual affectations like tattoos etc. (Examples – Ben and his friends in Knocked up representing a subculture some of the values of which Alison and as such the America she initially represents might benefit from). Subcultural values often associated with being ‘cool’.
Semiotic Analysis
SIGNS
A sign, according to Saussure (1915/1966), is a combination of a concept and a sound-image, a combination that cannot be separated. But because Saussure does not find these terms quite satisfactory, he modifies them slightly:
I propose to retain the word sign [signe] to designate the whole and to replace concept and sound-image respectively by signified [signifié] and signifier [signifiant]; the last two terms have the advantage of indicating the opposition that separates them from each other and from the whole of which they are parts. (p. 67)
The relationship between the signifier and signified—and this is crucial—is random, unmotivated, unnatural. There is no logical connection between a word and a concept or a signifier and signified, a point that makes finding meaning in texts interesting and problematic.
The difference between a sign and a symbol, Saussure suggests, is that a symbol has a signifier that directly relates to it.
One characteristic of the symbol is that it is never wholly arbitrary; it is not empty, for there is a rudiment of a natural bond between the signifier and signified. The symbol of justice, a pair of scales, could not be replaced by just another symbol, such as a chariot. (p. 68)
We can now start looking at texts differently and can start thinking about how it is that signifiers generate meaning. How do signifiers generate meaning? And how is it that we know these meanings?
Sign: A Combination of Signifier and Signified
LANGUAGE AND SPEAKING
Texts (such as films, television programs, and commercials) are “like languages,” and the rules of linguistics can be applied to them. What a language does is enable the communication of information, feelings and ideas by establishing systems and rules that people learn. And just as there is grammar for writing and speaking, there are grammars for various kinds of texts—and for different media.
Saussure made a distinction that is useful, between language and speaking. Language is a social institution, made up of rules and conventions that have been systematized, that enables us to speak (or, more broadly, to
SIGN
signifier
Sound-image
signified
Concept
communicate). Each person “speaks” in his or her own manner, but this speaking is based on the language and rules that everyone learns. A television program such as Star Trek can be viewed as speech that is intelligible to its audience because the audience knows the language. That is, we know the signs and what they signify; we know the conventions of the genre, or what is acceptable and unacceptable.
We know the codes!
Sometimes there is confusion, and the code applied by the creator of a program isn’t the code used by the members of the audience. In such cases there is bad communication. What makes things complicated is the fact that, generally speaking, people are not consciously aware of the rules and codes and cannot articulate them, although they respond to them. An example of this kind of mix-up is a scene in a film or TV program that is meant to be sad but generates laughter in audience members.
It is obvious, then, that people are “speaking” all the time, even when they aren’t saying anything verbally. Hairstyles, eyeglasses, clothes, facial expressions, posture, gestures, and many other things communicate or “speak” (that is, signify continually) to those who are sensitive to such things and who are mindful of signs and signifiers. Maya Pines (1982) has offered this explanation of semiotics:
Everything we do sends messages about us in a variety of codes, semiologists contend. We are also on the receiving end of innumerable messages encoded in music, gestures, foods, rituals, books, movies, or advertisements. Yet we seldom realize that we have received such messages, and would have trouble explaining the rules under which they operate.
1. Semiotics is concerned with how meaning is created and conveyed in texts and, in particular, in narratives (or stories).
2. The focus of semiotics is the signs found in texts. Signs are understood to be combinations of signifiers and signifieds.
3. Because nothing has meaning in itself, the relationships that exist among
signs are crucial. An analogy can be made with words and grammar: It is the ways in which words are combined that determine what they mean. Language is a social institution that tells how words are to be used; speaking is an individual act based on language.
4. Texts can be viewed as being similar to speech and as implying grammars or languages that make the texts meaningful. Codes and conventions make the signs in a narrative understandable and also shape the actions.
CONNOTATION AND DENOTATION
The word connotation comes from the Latin connotare, “to mark along with,” and refers to the cultural meanings that become attached to words (and other forms of communication). A word’s connotations involve the symbolic, historic, and emotional matters connected to it. In his book Mythologies (1972), Roland Barthes, a distinguished French semiotician, addresses the cultural connotations of many aspects of French daily life, such as steak and frites, detergents, Citroen automobiles, and wrestling. Barthes’s purpose, he says, is to take the world of “what-goes-without-saying” and show this world’s connotations and, by extension, its ideological foundations.
Denotation, on the other hand, refers to the literal or explicit meanings of words and other phenomena. For example, Barbie Doll denotes a toy doll, first marketed in 1959, that was originally 11.5 inches high, had measurements of 5.25 inches at the bust, 3.0 inches at the waist, and 4.25 inches at the hips. The connotations of Barbie Doll, in contrast, are the subject of some controversy. Some scholars have suggested that the arrival of the Barbie Doll signified the end of motherhood as a dominant role for women and the importance of consumer culture, because Barbie is a consumer who spends her time buying clothes and having relationships with Ken and other dolls. The Barbie Doll doesn’t prepare little girls for the traditional role of motherhood in the way other kinds of dolls do—allowing them to imitate their mothers in caring for their “children.”
Comparison of Connotation and Denotation
Connotation
Figurative Signified(s) Inferred Suggests meanings Realm of myth
Denotation
Literal Signifier(s) Obvious Describes Realm of existence
A great deal of media analysis involves discovering the connotations of objects and symbolic phenomena and of the actions and dialogue of the characters in texts—that is, the meanings these may have for audiences— and tying these meanings to social, cultural, ideological, and other concerns.
Cultivation Theory
Unlike social cognitive and priming effects, the cultivation effects analysed by American communications George Gerbner are honed through much longer exposure to the media. Gerbner and his colleagues carried out longitudinal surveys of people’s opinions on certain subjects- the key variable being how much TV they watched. Variations in opinions held by those who watched lots of TV compared with those who did not were measured to compare the ‘cultivation differential’. In practice, this means that those viewers who watch lots of TV are found to have different opinions about the world outside of t heir front doors than those who watch less TV. So TV cultivates the opinions of people who watch several hours of it each day, every day.
Gerbner identified a ‘mean world syndrome’ that affected heavy TV viewers. Put simply, the more TV you watch, the more likely you are to view the outside world as a hostile and dangerous. Why? Cultivation theory explains ‘mean world syndrome by equating its cultivation differentials with its TV- content analysis. In terms of the latter, Gerbner found that crime on TV was ten times worse than crime in the real world. He also found that TV had a ‘mainstreaming effect’ on people’s tastes and opinions.
TV has to cater for the broad tastes of mass audiences, so instead of innovative programming able to accommodate diverse cultural and political views, TV producers tend to fall back on tried-and-tested formulae. This mainstreaming effect cultivates a narrow minded view of the world to which TV viewers become accustomed and cannot see beyond.
So it would seem that TV addicts make a direct connection between what they see on the small screen and what they think is happening in reality. TV’s cultivating power means that it guides certain individuals into ways in dealing with the world beyond the box. The process of desensitization- becoming less shocked by what we see on TV- is a classic cultivation effect. The problem is, of course, is that TV realism is far removed from actual reality. Witnessing a drive-by shooting in the flesh would probably make us physically sick, and mentally scarred for life, whereas witnessing it every night on TV, we hardly bat an eyelid! More worryingly, the cultivating effects of indiscriminate TV viewing by very young children have been casually linked to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
But on a positive note, cultivation theory may go some way to explaining the ‘release-valve model’ of media effects in which an individual’s negative energy (anger, frustration, jealousy, hatred) is unleashed upon, say, moving pixels in video games, rather than real-life people.
Uses and Gratifications Theory
The argument underpinning this approach is that audiences use the media- not vice versa. Uses and gratifications theory moves away from fears of effects to fulfillment of needs. The theory goes like this. Human beings are deemed to have various social and physiological needs these needs generate certain expectations of the media (as well as the food we eat, the car we dive etc) that are then sort out and selected in order to rely those expectations, resulting in needs gratifications. An obviously analogy would be the act of eating a meal when we need to satisfy our hunger, and the subsequent gratification we experience if the meal meets our expectations. Likewise, we play video games and watch stand-up comedy on TV in order to gratify our need for excitement or laughter. The need always precedes the effect, meaning that media effects are self regulated, wholly beneficial and tailored to temporal moods and whims.
So uses and gratifications theory treats audiences as active and intelligent in their media choices and uses. It also reverses the assumption made by effects studies that audiences are held captive by the media. Instead, the media are like a set of tools that consumers freely utilise at any time to fix any necessity. Media technologies may even fulfill consumer needs in relatively superficial ways, when say; we turn on the radio as soundtrack to ironing our clothes. In this case, the radio helps to reduce boredom by gratifying the need for something interesting to which we may listen. It seems the media and its consumers can do no wrong!
The optimism espoused by uses and gratifications theory is not without its critics, though. One major criticism is a lack of consensus about what the most basic human needs actually are, and whether and whether these needs are universal or vary on an individual or cultural basis. The idea that media products are always able to satisfy consumer expectations is also questionable, and smacks of an uncritical defense of the media. Surely the media sometimes fall short of our needs and expectations when, for instance, we face a barrage of advertising in our email inbox or buy a ticket to the latest blockbuster movie and leave disappointed?
Theoretical Perspectives (Audience)
You will all be familiar with the term ‘Audience’ as a key concept to help you analyse an unseen media text, but this term is also used as an area of academic theory in Media Studies. You will need to become well read and confident in this area of theory and research. You will need to know all the related theory, debates, political, historical and social context.
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