Media-Audience Relationship

Audience effect models:

The Hypodermic Syringe model - media directly influences audiences

• Back in the 20s when radio and newspapers were just starting to get important in society, sociologists developed theories about how the media affected people
• The hypodermic syringe model says that the media injects the message into the mind of the audience in the same way drugs are directly injected into the body
• The idea is that the media is so powerful its messages directly influence the individual and they're powerless to resist the message or reject it
• There is a direct correlation between violence and anti-social behaviour in films, TV, video games and real-life behaviour
• This theory can be especially applied to children as they are still being socialised and moulded
• Gerbner = Hollywood films have an affect on the young
• But it is not just violence = Feminists (Wolf/ Orbach) argue portrayals of women encourage eating disorders and porn encourages negative attitudes towards women
• Dines further argued that the new media has opened this up to younger men and boys - growing up being influenced by misconceptions about sex.
• Frankfurt School (Mx - Marcuse) argues that mass culture is injected into the minds of the people to divert their attention away – ruling class propaganda.
• Norris (99) – media coverage of politics can influence voting.

Bandura:

• A study of 36 boys and 36 girls from the Stanford University Nursery School took part in the initial 1961 study.
• Each child was invited into a playroom with lots of activities to enjoy.
• They were soon joined by an adult who was also asked to play with the toys.
• Some adults ignored the Bobo doll. In the other group, however, the models verbally and physically attacked the doll.
• Bandura was then able to compare the children's aggression levels after being exposed to either of these conditions.
• The study suggested children who are exposed to violent models are more likely to behave aggressively.
• The researchers also identified some interesting gender differences.
• For example, boys engaged in twice the number of physical aggressions compared to girls and, if the model was same-sex, girls were more likely to copy verbal aggressions.

A03: However, these theories do not explain the full complexity of human behaviour. Just because we see violence on television does not mean we are going to commit violent acts in real life. Bandura acknowledged this limitation and renamed his concept the social cognitive theory in 1986.

Disinhibition effect: McCabe (2005) – normal rules can be suspended and violence can take place as violence is seen as 'cool' / heroic. Young people see this behaviour and replicate it – normal rules are suspended. e.g. road rage. Footage of this online has led to an increase of incidents. Bulger murder case.

• Desensitisation: Newson (94) – so much violent exposure that young people become desensitised to it.
• 'Drip drip' effect on young people and normalise it – often seeing it as a way of problem-solving.
• Newton's work led to censorship - age related censorship for films and an agreed watershed of 9 pm.
• Programmes were also warned before violent, sexual or disturbing content

A03: Livingstone and Lunt: it is hard to regulate the media, due to the vast nature of the internet. Lack of regulation with streaming services, sites like YouTube.

• Huessman (03) – longitudinal study – 8 y.o – 20s. Those who watched violence in their early teens are more likely to be violent in their 20s. Johnson (02)– more TV in childhood – more likely to be violent.

• Peter and Valkenburg (08)– watching porn – more likely to engage in casual sex. Overall A03:

• Some sociologists decided that this theory was too simplistic in explaining how adults view media content

• Critics also point out that not all audience members react in the same way.

• The growth of new media means that audiences can directly influence the media too: During the refugee crisis in 2015, photographs of the body of 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi, a Syrian refugee who drowned off the coast of Turkey were shared on social media

• Lots of people used the images to criticise European governments and their approach to the crisis

• After this mainstream media messages about refugees became more sympathetic Critique:

1. Catharsis: Violence acts as a 'vent' and makes people less violent (Sanger (71)). 300 boys TV 6 weeks – some violent programmes others non-violent. Others claim ppl become more sensitised to violence (Ramos (13)). Increases empathy, especially when people know they are watching real violence. Groups exposed to violence were in fact less violent. A03: it is an old study, is it still applicable today?

• No real explanation of who it might affect and how - presumes the audience is homogenous

2. Methodological problems: Lab experiments are artificial and do not truly reflect people's real behaviour.

• Hawthorne effect at play – subjects wanting to please the experimenter – playing up to the cameras?
• Studies do not answer the Q: what is violence? Different types? Context also impacts interpretation of it – Pulp Fiction – meant to be humorous?
• Difficult to know whether the media makes people violent – how do we now know they aren't violent in the first place? A03: Many say plenty of evidence supporting HSM despite method criticisms. No doubt there is a direct influence – advertising!

3. Children can distinguish, they are more sophisticated than we think: Children can distinguish between fictional and non-fictional violence. (Hargreave (03)).

• They do know not to imitate. 2015 research found that many children don't question what they see online, (YouTube etc) and therefore are more vulnerable. Many don't think critically, most do not know how YOUTUBE/vloggers are funded.

• Institute for Public Policy Research – teenagers watching porn – seeing it as mainstream, information about sex, increased pressure on young people to look a certain way. A03: Ofcom report (15): children do not question online material, likely to believe SM (YT especially).

• Children often do not know advertising is the main source of funding for YT and vloggers endorse products.

4. Scapegoating the media: mass media often blamed for violent acts – Columbine / Parkland / Bulger case. What about all the other aspects that might impact – mental health, family, parents, childhood trauma, poor parenting?

• Mass media is part of it but not the sole influence.
• Ferguson – huge increase in violent video games in the USA and youth violent crime dropped. Are they playing this violence out or is it that they are not on the street in the first place to carry out such violence?! Easy to blame the media – lazy argument – lynch mob mentality.

5. Other:

• Reductionist – states that there is a simple top-down one directional relationship between media and audience – it is more complicated.

• Sensitisation – seeing suffering and pain does make us less likely to do it (Young). Audiences are not homogenous – age, class, gender, education, family – all affect the impact of media. Active audience models:

• Audiences are not homogenous

• They are diverse and will have different characteristics

• They interpret it and make active choices

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Two-step flow model:

• Was developed in the 1950s and states that the media does influence people but not everyone is directly influenced
• The first step is the media message reaching an audience member. All simple so far.
• The important second step is how their understanding of the message is shaped by social interaction with other audience members. For example, if workers in an office chat about a soap opera during their coffee break then these discussions affect individuals' opinions of the storyline and characters.
• Katz and Lazarsfeld (1955) said that there were key individuals in each community whose reactions directly influenced others. These 'opinion leaders' openly expressed their reactions and opinions, and others followed their lead.
• Katz and Lazarsfeld studied media influence on American voters. They concluded that most people followed the opinion leader's views on who they should vote for, but the opinion leaders themselves often got their ideas straight from the media messages.
• It doesn't have to be just two steps - a message can go through several stages of interpretation.
• Hobson (1990) studied an office environment and found that a few key individuals influenced what the others watched on television and their reactions to the programmes. These opinions were passed on to another bunch of colleagues. A social norm of what to watch spread through the whole office. New recruits had to conform to fit in.

A02: Campaign to bring Joseph Kony, a Ugandan war criminal to justice.

• This spread with the use of celebrities and 'opinion leaders' on board with the campaign and promoting the cause.

• It almost became a trend. A03: Opinion leaders may have been subjected to other effects – desensitised / imitative and therefore the media has had an influence on them and that is what hey are 'passing on.

• ' People marginalised - More vulnerable people in society might not have friends / access to OLs who would interpret the media in a healthy way.

• Are people that easily influenced by peers ? OLs? What about other factors?

• However it is likely to be more than two steps – it's more complex. Uses and gratification model:

• Blumler and McQuail: (1995) Active audience People use the media to satisfy particular needs Biological, psychological, social.

• CAGE shapes / influences these needs.

• The audience actively chooses what media to experience, using such cutting-edge tools as free will and the remote control.

• Uses and gratification theory is functionalist - it says that the media exists to serve the needs of the public. 4 Basic needs:

• Diversion: escapism – divert our attention away from reality – sexual content, virtual worlds.

• Personal relationships: compensate for real life poor community relations – elderly people especially see soap operas as companions

• Personal identity: helps omit a particular identity – gay teen may identify and use media to help him/her deal with it. Social Media massively helps young people especially shape their own identity.

• Surveillance: obtaining news and information about the world – helps with opinion about issues, now it is more interactive – using Reddit, Wikipedia people can interact as well. Overall A03:

• Methodology: too reliant on researchers' interpretations, and their motivations. Subjective?

• Does not accept / appreciate that different groups may use the same media differently. Interpreting comedy differently – offensive / funny.

• Marxist: The audience does not have this choice, it is an illusion. MM has an agenda and it is difficult to see outside this agenda – Royal Family is always presented as positive. Selective filter model - Klapper 1960

• This theory says the audience chooses which media to experience and also control, which parts of the media messages to pay attention to and engage with

• The audience pick out parts of a message which fit in their views of the world and ignore the rest/

  1. Selective exposure: audience must choose to consume media. (depends on their interests, CAGE, education etc)

  2. Selective perception: the audience may reject the media's message depending on whether it 'fits'; with their ideas. Festinger (57): ppl seek out media messages that confirm their existing beliefs.

  3. Selective retention: message has to 'stick'. We only remember what we agree with Berry – 60% is remembered only minutes after viewing. Postman (86) three minute culture.

A03:

Strength: this theory emphasises the power of the individual to control his or her experience of the media and says that people use media in sophisticated ways - it's a little postmodern in a way

Weaknesses: it has been criticised for overestimating the control of the individual over very powerful media messages

Cultural effects model - Marxist:

• Cultural effects theory introduced the idea that social context is important when looking at the effects of the media. In short, this theory claims that different people interpret the media in different ways.

• The idea is that an audience interprets the media in the context of the culture they already belong to

• This means that the effect of the media is quite complex - it's not the same for everyone. 'Culture' refers to the small, subcultural groups an individual belongs to and also to the wider, general culture of society.

• For example, in England an individual's response to Arsenal winning the Premiership will depend on whether the individual supports Arsenal.

• But the audience response to media reports of England winning the World Cup would be broadly similar for most of the population because there's a cultural norm of supporting your country's sports teams.

• The effect of the media is less immediate than suggested by the hypodermic syringe model Marxist model which suggests that the media is a very powerful tool in transmitting capitalist ideas, norms and values.

• The model suggests that the media content contains strong ideological messages that reflect the values of those who own, control and produce the media.

• Marxists would argue that audiences have been exposed over a long period of time to a slow 'drip drip' effect process

• Media content gradually gains ideological values which are transmitted over a long period of time

• Eventually, most people come to accept the preferred reading of such events in the mass media

• We even start to accept capitalism as the way things are and even legitimise it.

• Neo-Marxist Stuart Hall (1980) argued that the media has dominant ideological messages 'encoded' into it, but that people of different backgrounds can 'decode' these messages differently - with varying degrees of agreement or opposition to the ideology expressed. Overall A03 evaluation:

• Very difficult to measure

• Pluralists argue against and say journalists are objective and people have the power, they are not submissive. Any biased messages are what they audience already knows, they are not being brainwashed.

• Society is hugely diverse (especially in a globalised world) and audience is not homogenous. Reception analysis model:

• People interpret the media differently because of their CAGE… Morley – studied people watching news programmes.

• People interpreted in one of three ways: Preferred: reflects the consensus / legitimate – people accepting the Royal Family. Oppositional: minority opposes the message – anti royalists.

Negotiated: reinterpret and change it to suit their opinion.

• People are different and belong to different sub cultures: educated, British, Jewish, young man – how would he interpret the Israeli Palestinian conflict news report? Educated – sees through the bias? British – little impact on them Jewish – identification with Israel Young – little interest in politics.
• Audiences are active and create polysemic interpretations (lots of interpretations)
• Hall / Morley (80): media producers intend a certain message – that of the dominant class – 'dominant hegemonic viewpoint'. e.g. hierarchy of credibility / supporting capitalism. Most decode the message this way. Others however will interpret differently: -'Negotiated reading': accept some / most of the above but due to their own experiences and CAGE question some.
• 'Oppositional reading': oppose the media's message and challenge the general brainwashing.

Postmodernism model - media takes the place of reality

• Media central to defining people's identities Consumers can use a wide range of media to help shape their behaviour and find themselves'.
• Postmodernists sees their ideas as an extension as the reception analysis – but it is not about groups and cultures influencing how we interpret the media's message
• For the PM it is down to the individual.
• Definitions are constantly changing – no fixed truth.
• All depends on what is seen and who is seeing it.
• Very individualised. '
• Truth and reality in the eye of the beholder'.
• All interpretations have relative value – impossible therefore to see how the media affects us – positively or negatively.
• The media presents so many different images and stories woven into everyday life - boundary between reality and the media is blurred = the media becomes reality
• The exposure of reality TV and the obsessive interest people have with soap stars is a good example of this
• People treat the unreal situation (reality tv)
• The news isn't objective truth - but it is presented as reality
• This idea is related to the postmodernist idea of simulacrum - something that looks real but isn't
• Baudrillard suggests that everything has been replaced by simulacra - the replacement of reality (hyperreality) - suggesting that the hyper-real images seemed more real then the real. A03: criticised for being too theoretical - lack of empirical evidence as it is to complex to study.