Topic 4 ‐ The mass media and audiences Ac ve audiences:

Sees the media as far less influen al. They believe that people have considerable choice in the way they use and interpret the
03 December 2015 13:18
media. They are not passive.
SOCIOLOGISTS ARGUMENTS ABOUT THE MEDIA HAVING DIRECT EFFECT UPON THEIR
AUDIENCES AND TRIGGERING SOCIAL RESPONSES (BEHAVIOURS/ATTITUDES) 1. The two step flow model
• KATZ and LAZARSFELD (1965)
• Gerbner et al (1986) ‐ representa ons of violence in certain types of media contribute to violent crime and
an social forms of behaviour in real life, especially commi ed by the young. ○ Suggested that personal rela onships and conversa ons with significant others such as family, friends, teachers and
• Feminist views work friends result in people believing or rejec ng media messages
• Consump on of pornography that’s easily accessible through the internet is harmful in terms of ○ They argue that social networks are usually dominated by OPINION LEADERS. They suggest that the media messages
encouraging sexual violence and nega ve a tudes towards women go through 2 steps
• Size zero models on social media may be producing a genera ons who suffer from ea ng disorders. 1> The opinion leader is exposed to the media content
• Interac onalist sociologist views 2> Those who respect the opinion leader internalise their interpreta on of that media content.
• Cohen and Young (1980) ‐ the influence of the media in the crea on of moral panics has increased
social anxiety and fear among the general popula on and have even led to changes in social policy and 2. The selec ve filter model – Klapper (1960)
laws. 1) Selec ve exposure – A message must first be chosen to be viewed, read or listened to. These choices depend on
• Marxist views people's interests/educa on.
• OLD ‐ media transmi ed a mass culture which was directly injected into the minds of the popula on 2) Selec ve percep on – The messages have to be accepted, the audiences may choose to take no ce or reject the
making them more vulnerable to r/c propaganda message.
• CONTEMPORARY ‐ the way the media is organised and operates in capitalist socie es may be 3) Selec ve reten on – Messages have to s ck, people are more likely to remember something if they agree with it.
influencing parts of the popula on to believe in cultural values that benefit r/c ideology. They argue Postman (1986) argues that we live in a 3 minute culture (3 mins a en on span)
that the media representa ons of women, ethnic minori es etc.. may also be crea ng and reinforcing
nega ve stereotypes of these groups and others 3. The uses and gra fica ons model
• The power of adver sing has had an instant effect on the sales of a product, especially if it is promoted by a • Blumler and McQuail (1968)
celebrity.
○ They see the media as ac ve.
• Adver sing towards children has resulted in 'pester power' and pressure on parents to buy their children's
○ They suggest that the people use the media in order to sa sfy par cular needs that they have. These needs could be
love.
biological, psychological or social. More importantly, they should be rela ve. The way the audience use the media to
• Norris (1999) ‐ media coverage of poli cal issues can influence vo ng behaviour. e.g. BBC covering the
sa sfy their needs will depend upon influences such as social posi on, age, gender... the 4 needs which people use
elec on/candidates behaviours
TV to sa sfy:
Hypodermic model of media violence: 1. Diversion > we use TV to escape from rou nes/worries. People may immerse into par cular types of media to
make up for a lack of sa sfac on at work/daily lives.
• The view that the media are very powerful and the audience is very weak. The media can 'inject' their
2. Personal rela onships > we know more about TV show characters than our own neighbours.
messages into the audience, who accept them without ques on.
3. Personal iden ty > the use of media for their own iden ty e.g to improve their wardrobe, latest trends
• Assumes all audiences are PASSIVE – unable to resist messages that are 'injected' in them.
4. Surveillance > use the media to obtain info about news and the world to help them make up their minds on
• The audience is filled with dominant ideology and violent images, this model suggests that as soon as passive
par cular issues.
audiences see this, they immediately go out and act it out.
• Lull (1995)
Believers of this model point to films which caused horrible crimes:
• Columbine Massacre – blamed violent video game 'Doom' and the movie 'The Basketball Diaries' ○ Audiences ac vely use the media in 5 ways:
• Jamie Bulger case – two young boys (aged 10/11) killed a li le boy, it was believed it was due to them watching 1. Rela onal – media used for making conversa on with people, gives people something to talk about
Child's Play and 'video nas es'. 2. Affilia on – TV may reinforce family community
Imita on or copycat violence 3. Avoidance‐ media used to escape the real world
• Bandura's Bobo Doll study – conducted a correla on study to see the direct cause and effect rela onship 4. Social Learning – people may use media to find answers and access a role model e.g. celebrity
between media content and violence. He showed 3 groups of children real, film and cartoon examples of a 5. Competence dominance – certain family members may use their authority to control the amount of media
everyone accesses.
Bobo Doll being hit with a mallet + verbal aggression. A 4th group was not shown any aggressive ac vity. The
Marxists cri cise this model because they suggest that needs may be socially manufactured by the media. Marxists argue
children were then made to be frustrated by being shown toys that they couldn't play with. They were then led
that the mass media in capitalist socie es, especially the adver sing industry, promote ideology involving consump on
to a room to play with toys. The 3 groups displayed physical aggression towards the Bobo Doll. Bandura
and materialism as good things to have. This may mean that people mistake false needs for personal or social needs.
concluded that violent media content could lead to imita on/copycat violence.
• Mar n – argued that imita on was a likely outcome of media violence but it is argued that it can have a
disinhibi on effect – convinces children that in some social situa ons, violence can be used and normal rules 4. The Cultural Effects Model ‐ 'drip‐drip model' ‐ NEO ‐ MARXIST MODEL (new type of Marxism)
can be broken. • The view that the media are so powerful that they have linked up with other agents of social control to encourage
Desensi sa on par cular ways of making sense of the world. They see them as transmi ng capitalist values and norms.
• Newson – inves gated the effect of violent films and videos. She concluded that sadis c images in films/on the • This model recognises that media audiences are made up of different types of people from a variety of social backgrounds
internet were too easily accessible to viewers and was easy for people to iden fy with the violent who have had different experiences. This means that they interpret what they see and read in different ways.
perpetrators. • However, the Marxist cultural effect theory argues that the media messages have strong ideological messages that reflect
• She suggested that the long exposure to the media violence may have a 'drip‐drip' effect on young people over the values of the media owners.The producers expect the media audiences to respond in a par cular way – preferred
the course of their childhood and as a result would desensi se them to violence – they become socialised into (dominant reading).
accep ng violence as a normal behaviour, especially when needing to solve problems. • R/c ideology constantly bombards the public through media because they have power that they can filter through into
• She concluded that the latest young genera on had weaker morals and were more likely to behave in more society via the media. The public w/c will eventually believe the r/c ideology to be natural and true. This is called cultural
an social behaviour because they are becoming desensi sed. hegemony. Thus the w/c will accept the values without realising it.
Censorship • THE MORE AN IDEOLOGY IS DRIPPED INTO SOCIETY BY THE MEDIA, THE MORE PEOPLE BELIEVE IT AND ACCEPT IT AS
• Newson’s conclusions led to the censoring of both films and TV programmes. TRUE!
• Video Recordings Labelling Act 1985 – cer fied films and also insisted that filmmakers make cuts to use of bad • Contemporary examples of this – size zero models/big hips and bu – dripped into magazines, Instagram, more and more
language and violence. people desire to be like that.
• TV – nine o’clock watershed and warnings of violence and bad language before certain programmes. These cause and effects are very difficult to opera onalise and measure.
Feminist perspec ve ‐ Pluralists ques on the idea that the view of the capital elite make up the main cons tu ons of ideology. They argue that
• Morgan (1980) ‐ suggested that pornography is the theory, rape is the prac ce. this underes mates the role of professional and objec ve journalism in construc ng media content.
• It is suggested by some feminists that there is a direct link between pornography and sexual violence. Marxists claim to be the only ones who see the true ideological interpreta on of media content, which implies that the
• Dworkin (1990) ‐ suggest pornography trivialises rape and makes men increasingly want to inflict pain on rest of use are 'cultural dopes'.
women.
HOWEVER, Hald (2007) concluded that men and women generally consider pornography as a posi ve 5. RECEPTION ANALYSIS MODEL:
influence on their lives. • Suggests that the way people interpret media content differs according to their class, age, gender, ethnic group.
• Morley (1980) ‐ research into how audiences interpreted content on a 1970s news show. Morley examined how people
Cri que of the hypodermic syringe model from different educa onal and professional backgrounds interpreted ideological content of programmes through use of in‐
• Preven ng real life violence depth interviews.
○ Catharsis – watching violent movies/TV shows can provide a safe outlet for people's aggressive • Morley found that audiences were far from passive in their reading of media content, instead they made up their own
tendencies. minds. The recep on analysis model concluded that people choose 1 of 3 interpreta ons of media content:
▪ A study to support this would be Fesbach and Sanger (1971) – teen boys were given a diet of TV 1. Dominant reading ‐ reading of media content based on consensus, most people are likely to go along with it
shows in which one half watched violent TV and the other watched non violent shows. The result because the subject ma er is widely accepted as legi mate. Their views are more likely to be shared by
was that the group that watched only violent shows showed less aggressive behaviour. In journalists and is likely to underpin news values.
conclusion, by immersing themselves into the violent films, their aggressive energy was released in 2. Opposi onal reading ‐ a minority may oppose the views expressed in the media content.
a safe way. 3. Nego ated reading ‐ audience may reinterpret media content to fit in with their own opinions and values.
○ Sensi sa on ‐ Jock Young (1981) argued that seeing the effects of violence can make people more e.g. they may not have any strong views on the Royal Family, but enjoy reading about celebrity lives.
aware of the consequences and less likely to commit them. He suggested that violent scenes can be so
graphic and shocking that it can put people off violence. • Morley argues that the average person belongs to several sub‐cultural groups and this may complicate a person’s reading

• Methodology – the method of the studies to support the hypodermic model has been ques oned of media content in the sense that they may not be consistent in their interpreta on of it. Recep on analysis theory
○ Gauntle (2008) cri cises the way the Bandura Bobo Doll study was carried out. There are issues with therefore suggests that audiences are not passive, impressionable and homogeneous(not the same). They act in a variety
validity because the experiment was conducted in an ar ficial lab, not in the real world. This is a cri cism of subcultural ways and, for this reason, media content is polysemic, i.e. it a racts more than one type of reading or
because it is not sure if the children would actually carry out violent acts to real people in real situa ons. interpreta on.
Also, there are issues with par cipant reac vity and demand characteris cs because the children may
have been aware that they had to hit the doll, in order to be seen as a desirable Pp. Postmodernism and recep on analysis
○ Also, violence is not defined, is it real violence? The study fails to acknowledge that the context of the • The postmodern model focuses on how individual members of audiences create their own meanings from a media text.
violence can impact the affect it has on its audiences. • Postmodernists see media content as producing one par cular defini on of reality, which has the same degree of
• Children as sophis cated media users importance as any other defini on of reality.
○ The hypodermic model suggests that everyone is vulnerable and passive to the messages the media • These interpreta ons of media reality are constantly changing and being modified, therefore are not fixed.
sends at us. But we are able to dis nguish between real violence and cartoon/fake violence from an • Rather than seeing the audience as an undifferen ated mass, or as divided into cultural or other groupings,
early age. We are also aware that violence watched should not be imitated or we will be punished postmodernists argue that generaliza ons about media effects and audiences are impossible, since the same person may
(through learning/reinforcement SLT). react to the same media message in different ways in different situa ons.
○ Evidence to support this – Buckingham (1993) found that children are more sophis cated in their Post‐modernist Model
understanding of media content and more media literate than previous researchers assumed. E.g. his • Strina (1995)
sample clearly differen ated between fic onal violence and real violence. ○ argues that the media today are the most influen al shapers of iden ty and offer a greater range of consump on
• Audiences are not homogeneous choices in terms of iden es and lifestyles. Moreover, in the PM world, the media transmit the idea that the
○ Factors such as age, maturity, class, educa on etc. can influence how people respond to media content. consump on of signs and symbols for their own sake is more important than the goods they represent.
There are therefore not passive receivers of media messages like the hypodermic model assumes. ○ BASICALLY, the media encourages the consump on of logos, designer labels and brands and these become more
• Scapegoa ng the media important to a person's sense of iden ty than physical clothes and goods themselves.
○ The hypodermic model uses the media as a scapegoat for everything that’s wrong in society. But there • Other PMS say that since 2000, the globalisa on of communica on has become more intensive which has led to a great
are other factors that could be causing violence like a person's biological make up, family upbringing, significance for local cultures.
peer pressure, drugs etc. E.g. Bowling for Columbine documentary – Moore says that there isn't just one • Thompson – last ten years the globalisa on of communica on has become more intensive and extensive.
cause, its like blaming bowling for their massacre, they really liked bowling but that didn't cause it, this is • This has had great significance for local cultures, in that all consumers of the global media are both ci zens of the world
the same for video nas es. and of their locality.
• Seeing other global experience allows people to think cri cally about their own place in the world (hybridized media
culture).
• Lull – notes how television opened up localized ways of thinking and seeing the world and made available new
perspec ves, lifestyles and ways of thinking and responding to the world.
• However, Thompson notes that the interac on between global media and local cultures can also create tensions and
hos li es
• E.g. the Chinese authori es have a empted to control and limit the contact that the Chinese people have with global
media, whilst some Islamic commentators have used global media to convince their local popula ons of the view that
Western culture is decadent and corrupt.