In carrying out good Media research you must show awareness of
- Audience reading theories
- Target Audience
Audience Reading Theories
Hypodermic needle, Passive or Effects model
Academic or Active Model
Many researchers who have written about the Media, particularly in the past, have treated the Media negatively in terms of its effects on audience.
The Effects model
In this model the media is seen to have power to create a simple cause and effect relationship with the audience which is perceived as negative indoctrination. Effects include
- Inactivity (couch potato)
- Manic activity (such as performing sexual or violent acts
- Attitudinal change (changing or morals, values, beliefs systems)
Such theories when they are raised periodically have caused moral panics in certain sectors of the public and have led to Government action to curb the Media.
These moral panics particularly surround sectors of the audience who are perceived as ‘vulnerable’ – children, young working class males, particularly those with a low IQ, unemployed or from broken homes, disturbed individuals
Examples are fear of the effect of ‘Child’s Play 3’ and the James Bulger case, ‘Natural Born Killers’ (Oliver Stone, and Nathan Martinez), and the US Music Industry, lyrical content and recent killings in US schools. Currently computer games are being ‘shown’ to have adverse effects of brain development in children.
An influential example of the effects model is the agenda setting model proposed by McCombes and Shaw which proposed that topics that the Media selects for attention, and the attention and priority they give to the topics selected, has a matching effect upon what the audience perceives as important.
The effects arguments are largely rejected by Media theorists as producing a conspiracy theory of the Media and a passive view of the audience. The preference is to see the audience as Active in creating their own meanings
The Effects models are seen to:
- Exaggerate the influence of the mass media
- Portray sources in the media as having deliberate intentions to control issues and their debate in a manner that resembles conspiracy theory
- Portray the audience as all the same, unthinking, need protecting, easily manipulated (passive)
There has been much research, often widely quoted in the press, that has supposedly ‘proved’ Effects Theories, dating back as far as the 1960’s and the Bobo Dolls experiment. The audience is always assumed to be a passive ‘victim’, and the blame for societies ills is always placed on the Media.
When you study this kind of research, you should always ‘question’ the following:
-who is conducting the research
-what is their initial starting point/personal attitude towards the media
-what is their purpose
-who is financing the study – do they have a vested interest in a particular result being
‘proven’
-what was the sample selected for the study
-where did the study take place
-what methods were used to obtain results
-what methods were used to analyse results
-what conclusions were drawn
If you know the answers to these questions, you can then ascertain how influential these
factors were on the outcomes. It is important to problematise the conditions that research is conducted in. Most effects research is considered to be utterly flawed by media theorists (such as David Buckingham), and therefore results ‘proving’ the effects of the media have been widely discredited among academics.
However, the results of this kind of research makes good headlines (‘HALF of all our children have seen a video nasty’ Daily Mail 1984,) because it a sounds really shocking and sensational.
Also it supports what the majority already believe to be true - this is called The ‘Common Sense’ approach – of course TV is bad for you!, and gives credibility to popular myths around the influence of the media. (‘Horror film made boys kills Jamie’ The Sun 1994, ‘Research proves negative effects of video nasties’ Guardian 1995).
No research is without flaws – and all research should be problematised as part of the study, in order to understand its context. It is impossible to treat Media research in a totally scientific manner as measuring influence, attitudes etc is a cultural thing, and therefore is more suited to a cultural approach. This is where academic research into the media is relevant.
Effects research is usually undertaken by professors/doctors, with backgrounds in psychology/ medicine or with expertise in studying children and childhood. They usually have no experience of/ awareness of traditions/ theories/ academic approaches in Media Studies. Academic Media Research is usually undertaken by academics specialising in Media Theory.
The Academic or ‘Active’ Model
The academic approach to media research is the opposite to the Effects Model. Its starting point is that the audience is ‘active’ when consuming the media, therefore this kind of research is often called ACTIVE RESEARCH. Where Effects research explores what the media does to the audience, the active approach explores what audiences do with the media.
It does not start with any assumption that the media is to blame for anything, and it is often not trying to ‘prove’ a hypothesis, but attempting to investigate or explore cultural developments, such as the popularity of a particular TV genre, or the way TV audiences have reacted to multi-channel TV.
This is the way we have always approached audience study throughout Media GCSE and A level, and this is the kind of study you will be undertaking.
It is based on cultural, qualitative methodology and explores the relationship audiences have with the media, why they consume it, how they consume it and what it does for them. Consumption and reception theories are very relevant here. There are three key features to this
1 This is to do with understanding who the audience is (demographics, lifestyle, tastes,
background etc) and why people consume or ‘read’ texts differently (the way we consume or read a text relates to who we are).
2 The second point is that there is an understanding that media consumption is about a two – way flow ie the way we consume a text is not just about a ‘personal or individual response’, but is also one that is also determined by the way the text has been constructed – the editing, camera work, style, layout – these all determine our responses, as well as who we are as a person. Understanding how the media works and how it’s made helps us to understand how and why we consume it.
3 The third point is that the industry shapes our responses in another way, through careful
gatekeeping, scheduling, marketing, classification and censorship – many of our responses are pre-determined according to the choices that have already been made for us, institutionally. If we understand this, we can understand that the relationship between audiences and the media they consume is a complex one, not easily explored through superficial study, generalisations, or scientific/ rigid methods – this relationship is a product of the cultural and social structures around us and should be treated as such. There are many examples of academic studies in the department for you to look at.
However the Effects model will raise itself with your topic areas and you need to establish if there are parts of the effects theory that you do think are relevant to your topic. Indeed, under the topic area of Children and TV, you may want to study the whole area of effects from an academic perspective ie does the media have the power to instill violence in children. Under Popular Music and Youth Culture, the Music Industry’s construction of the audience and that effect on young people may be relevant, and in Sport the Media’s ability to highlight certain sports and male sports personalities as more important.
Effects theories are more persuasive in commercial media like advertising and pester power and the Music Industry where people are buying into an image or sub-culture.
The Uses and Gratifications Model
The Uses and Gratifications Model sees the Media positively and gives the audience an active role in making meaning. Therefore it is an example of an academic approach to audience study that you may want to draw upon.
This model sees the media as a medium used by the audience to create gratifications of a wide variety of sorts. Uses and gratifications were classified by Arthur Asa Berger in 'Media Analysis Techniques' as:
To be amused - to see authority figures exalted or deflated – to experience the beautiful – to have shared experiences with others – to satisfy curiosity and be informed – to identify with the deity and the divine plan – to find distraction and diversion – to experience empathy (sharing in the joys and sorrows of others) – to experience, in a guilt-free and controlled situation extreme emotions such as love and hate, the horrible and the terrible, and similar phenomena – to find models to imitate – to gain an identity – to gain information about the world – to reinforce our belief in justice – to believe in romantic love – to believe in magic, the marvellous and the miraculous – to see others make mistakes – to see order imposed upon the world – to participate in history (vicariously) – to be purged of unpleasant emotions – to obtain outlets for our sexual drives in a guilt-free context – to explore taboo subjects with impunity and without risk – to experience the ugly – to affirm moral, spiritual and cultural values – to see villains in action.
These have been grouped into 4 categories -
1 Surveillance 2 Social 3 Personal Identity 4 Distraction
You will need to apply and ascertain the relevance of the Uses and Gratifications Theory to your topic area
What are the ideologies being promoted in your topic area and how able is the audience to ‘resist’ messages?
Mainstream media texts usually reflect dominant ideologies. Audience are generally 'positioned' by the construction of media texts to accept this message but they do have choices in their reading.
These have been analysed as:
- Dominant response (dominant reading) - the dominant values and existing society are wholly accepted by the viewer.
- Subordinate response (negotiated reading) - indicates general acceptance of dominant values but the viewer is critical of certain aspects.
- Radical response (oppositional reading) - the viewer wholly rejects the values.
Target Audience Theories
The Media constructs target audiences through audience research in the following ways:
Mainstream and Niche: The Nuclear Family, The Football fan, The hip-hop fan
Demographics: Socio-economic status
Social Minority Groups: Age, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation etc
Lifestyle Profiling: The Business Woman, The University Student, Newly-weds,
Yuppies, Tweenies
Psychographic Profiling: Aspirers, Succeeders, Carers, Leaders
NB: Demographics is about dividing the audience into demographic groupings is to see the audience in terms of class and wealth. See the chart in your folder for the break down of groupings
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