MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION THEORY
CHAPTER 8 – AUDIENCES AND CREATORS
The Active Audience: Balancing Agency and Structure
Analyses suggest that various behaviours and attitudes among audience members were
shaped by structural forces beyond their control (economic structure of media industry,
political structure of capitalist state and psychic structure of human mind). People were
often indoctrinated by media; they didn’t even realize they were being dominated.
By focusing exclusively on forces like economy and politics, we downplay the role of
audience members. So researchers began paying more attention to audiences. 2 streams of
research:
- Uses and gratifications approach focuses on 2 basic issues:
What are people doing with media?
Why are they using media?
Media users could play an active role in choosing media, and often did to meet
particular needs.
- Critical cultural studies focused on how people interpret and make meaning out of
the media content they use. Audience is active. Media content doesn’t have a single
meaning, people interpret content in variable ways, often connected with social position.
Polysemy: Media’s Multiple Meanings
Polysemy: multiple meanings can coexist in media content, or ‘texts’. Texts are structured in
ways that make it possible for people to ‘read against the grain’. Media content of all sorts
contains elements that can be used to construct different – and sometimes contradictory –
meanings. Because polysemic texts are ‘open’ to interpretation, they can be enjoyed by a
broad range of people.
Interpretive Constraint: Encoding/Decoding and Social Structure
Polysemy doesn’t mean that texts are open to be interpreted in a limitless number of ways.
There are a variety of constraints on possible interpretations.
Media producers typically have some preferred reading for their work the primary
meaning they wish audiences to take away.
- Encoding: authors encode their work with meaning (consciously or subconsciously) by
using broad cultural references and conventions of a particular medium.
Example: film uses lighting, music and camera angles to suggest a particular
understanding to the viewer.
- Decoding: process for the audience of using implicit knowledge of both medium-specific
and broader cultural codes to interpret the meaning of a media context.
, By using familiar codes and cultural understandings, media producers can steer the audience
to a preferred reading. Although meaning is constructed by audiences and alternatives are
possible, one interpretation is likely to be most common because it fits with the underlying
values of the dominant culture.
Audiences’ interpretations of media content are influences by their social locations (old vs.
young, educational backgrounds, genders, etc.).
Decoding Meanings and Social Position
Class and Nationwide News
According to research on the program Nationwide, people from different socioeconomic
classes tend to interpret the meaning of the television program in different ways. The
interpretation of bank managers differed from management trainees and trade unionists,
students from different classes differed.
Social class does not determine how people interpret media messages. It plays a key role in
providing us with cultural ‘tools’ for decoding. These are discursive tools, giving people a
language and framework for understanding the world. We can easily imagine oppositional
readings of media content among other groups with sufficient discursive resources.
Our social positions provide us with differential access to an array of cultural tools, which we
use to construct meaning. The meanings we assign to different media products will be
related to social position. The result is a model of humans as active agents constrained by
specific structural conditions.
Gender, Class, and Television
Study Women Watching Television focused middle-class and working-class women
interviewed. These women used different sets of criteria for evaluating programs and
identifying with television characters.
- Working-class women were likely to view televised depictions of middle-class life as
realistic, middle-class women did not expect it to be realistic. Working-class women
devalued their own class position because they didn’t measure up to the media images.
Race, News, and Meaning Making
Hunt examined the ways that differently ‘raced’ groups interpreted television news coverage
of the 1992 LA riots. Responses to this did not vary much by gender or class but there were
significant racial differences in how viewers interpreted the news.
- Black viewers were much more likely than Latino or white viewers to use solidarity (we,
us, our) or distance (they, them, their) pronouns in the group discussion.
- African-American and Latino groups were more visibly active than the white groups as
they watched the news segment.
CHAPTER 8 – AUDIENCES AND CREATORS
The Active Audience: Balancing Agency and Structure
Analyses suggest that various behaviours and attitudes among audience members were
shaped by structural forces beyond their control (economic structure of media industry,
political structure of capitalist state and psychic structure of human mind). People were
often indoctrinated by media; they didn’t even realize they were being dominated.
By focusing exclusively on forces like economy and politics, we downplay the role of
audience members. So researchers began paying more attention to audiences. 2 streams of
research:
- Uses and gratifications approach focuses on 2 basic issues:
What are people doing with media?
Why are they using media?
Media users could play an active role in choosing media, and often did to meet
particular needs.
- Critical cultural studies focused on how people interpret and make meaning out of
the media content they use. Audience is active. Media content doesn’t have a single
meaning, people interpret content in variable ways, often connected with social position.
Polysemy: Media’s Multiple Meanings
Polysemy: multiple meanings can coexist in media content, or ‘texts’. Texts are structured in
ways that make it possible for people to ‘read against the grain’. Media content of all sorts
contains elements that can be used to construct different – and sometimes contradictory –
meanings. Because polysemic texts are ‘open’ to interpretation, they can be enjoyed by a
broad range of people.
Interpretive Constraint: Encoding/Decoding and Social Structure
Polysemy doesn’t mean that texts are open to be interpreted in a limitless number of ways.
There are a variety of constraints on possible interpretations.
Media producers typically have some preferred reading for their work the primary
meaning they wish audiences to take away.
- Encoding: authors encode their work with meaning (consciously or subconsciously) by
using broad cultural references and conventions of a particular medium.
Example: film uses lighting, music and camera angles to suggest a particular
understanding to the viewer.
- Decoding: process for the audience of using implicit knowledge of both medium-specific
and broader cultural codes to interpret the meaning of a media context.
, By using familiar codes and cultural understandings, media producers can steer the audience
to a preferred reading. Although meaning is constructed by audiences and alternatives are
possible, one interpretation is likely to be most common because it fits with the underlying
values of the dominant culture.
Audiences’ interpretations of media content are influences by their social locations (old vs.
young, educational backgrounds, genders, etc.).
Decoding Meanings and Social Position
Class and Nationwide News
According to research on the program Nationwide, people from different socioeconomic
classes tend to interpret the meaning of the television program in different ways. The
interpretation of bank managers differed from management trainees and trade unionists,
students from different classes differed.
Social class does not determine how people interpret media messages. It plays a key role in
providing us with cultural ‘tools’ for decoding. These are discursive tools, giving people a
language and framework for understanding the world. We can easily imagine oppositional
readings of media content among other groups with sufficient discursive resources.
Our social positions provide us with differential access to an array of cultural tools, which we
use to construct meaning. The meanings we assign to different media products will be
related to social position. The result is a model of humans as active agents constrained by
specific structural conditions.
Gender, Class, and Television
Study Women Watching Television focused middle-class and working-class women
interviewed. These women used different sets of criteria for evaluating programs and
identifying with television characters.
- Working-class women were likely to view televised depictions of middle-class life as
realistic, middle-class women did not expect it to be realistic. Working-class women
devalued their own class position because they didn’t measure up to the media images.
Race, News, and Meaning Making
Hunt examined the ways that differently ‘raced’ groups interpreted television news coverage
of the 1992 LA riots. Responses to this did not vary much by gender or class but there were
significant racial differences in how viewers interpreted the news.
- Black viewers were much more likely than Latino or white viewers to use solidarity (we,
us, our) or distance (they, them, their) pronouns in the group discussion.
- African-American and Latino groups were more visibly active than the white groups as
they watched the news segment.
