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4. Reception Theory

Extending the concept of an active audience still further, in the 1980s and 1990s a lot of work was done on the way individuals received and interpreted a text, and how their individual circumstances (gender, class, age, ethnicity) affected their reading.

This work was based on Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding model of the relationship between text and audience - the text is encoded by the producer, and decoded by the reader, and there may be major differences between two different readings of the same code. However, by using recognised codes and conventions, and by drawing upon audience expectations relating to aspects such as genre and use of stars, the producers can position the audience and thus create a certain amount of agreement on what the code means. This is known as a preferred reading.

3. Uses & Gratifications

During the 1960s, as the first generation to grow up with television became grown ups, it became increasingly apparent to media theorists that audiences made choices about what they did when consuming texts. Far from being a passive mass, audiences were made up of individuals who actively consumed texts for different reasons and in different ways. In 1948 Lasswell suggested that media texts had the following functions for individuals and society:

• surveillance
• correlation
• entertainment
• cultural transmission

Researchers Blulmer and Katz expanded this theory and published their own in 1974, stating that individuals might choose and use a text for the following purposes (ie uses and gratifications):

• Diversion - escape from everyday problems and routine.
• Personal Relationships - using the media for emotional and other interaction, eg) substituting soap operas for family life
• Personal Identity - finding yourself reflected in texts, learning behaviour and values from texts
• Surveillance - Information which could be useful for living eg) weather reports, financial news, holiday bargains

Since then, the list of Uses and Gratifications has been extended, particularly as new media forms have come along (eg video games, the internet)

• Why Do People Watch Television? - an exploration of Uses & Gratifications by Daniel Chandler
• Uses & Gratifications/Dependency Theory - E Rossi

2. Two-Step Flow

The hyperdermic model quickly proved too clumsy for media researchers seeking to more precisely explain the relationship between audience and text. As the mass media became an essential part of life in societies around the world and did NOT reduce populations to a mass of unthinking drones, a more sophisticated explanation was sought.

Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet analysed the voters' decision-making processes during a 1940 presidential election campaign and published their results in a paper called The People's Choice. Their findings suggested that the information does not flow directly from the text into the minds of its audience unmediated but is filtered through "opinion leaders" who then communicate it to their less active associates, over whom they have influence. 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 diminished the power of the media in the eyes of researchers, and caused them to conclude that social factors were also important in the way in which audiences interpreted texts. This is sometimes referred to as the limited effects paradigm.

1. The Hypodermic Needle Model

Dating from the 1920s, this theory was the first attempt to explain how mass audiences might react to mass media. It is a crude model (see picture!) and suggests that audiences passively receive the information transmitted via a media text, without any attempt on their part to process or challenge the data. Don't forget that this theory was developed in an age when the mass media were still fairly new - radio and cinema were less than two decades old. Governments had just discovered the power of advertising to communicate a message, and produced propaganda to try and sway populaces to their way of thinking. This was particularly rampant in Europe during the First World War (look at some posters here) and its aftermath.

Basically, the Hypodermic Needle Model suggests that the information from a text passes into the mass consciouness of the audience unmediated, ie the experience, intelligence and opinion of an individual are not relevant to the reception of the text. This theory suggests that, as an audience, we are manipulated by the creators of media texts, and that our behaviour and thinking might be easily changed by media-makers. It assumes that the audience are passive and heterogenous. This theory is still quoted during moral panics by parents, politicians and pressure groups, and is used to explain why certain groups in society should not be exposed to certain media texts (comics in the 1950s, rap music in the 2000s), for fear that they will watch or read sexual or violent behaviour and will then act them out themselves.

Audience

Audience theory provides a starting point for many Media Studies tasks. Whether you are constructing a text or analysing one, you will need to consider the destination of that text (i.e. its target audience) and how that audience (or any other) will respond to that text.

Remember that a media text in itself has no meaning until it is read or decoded by an audience.

You need a working knowledge of the theories which attempt to explain how an audience receives, reads and responds to a text. Over the course of the past century or so, media analysts have developed several effects models, ie theoretical explanations of how humans ingest the information transmitted by media texts and how this might influence (or not) their behaviour. Effects theory is still a very hotly debated area of Media and Psychology research, as no one is able to come up with indisputable evidence that audiences will always react to media texts one way or another. The scientific debate is clouded by the politics of the situation: some audience theories are seen as a call for more censorship, others for less control. Whatever your personal stance on the subject, you must understand the following theories and how they may be used to deconstruct the relationship between audience and text.

Achievement Standard Media Studies 90989: Demonstrate understanding of how individuals interact with the media

Resource reference: Media Studies 1.1B

Resource title: How we use it

Credits: 3

Achievement criteria

Achievement	Achievement with Merit	Achievement with Excellence
Demonstrate understanding of how individuals interact with the media.	Demonstrate in-depth understanding of how individuals interact with the media.	Demonstrate comprehensive understanding of how individuals interact with the media.

Student instructions sheet

Introduction

This assessment activity requires you to demonstrate understanding of how individuals interact with the media. You will record and compare your own media interaction with the media interaction of another individal.

This information will help you to identify and describe key patterns in individual media use and explore the differences in people’s interactions with the media.

You will be assessed on your comparison of your media interaction with that of the other person. This comparison will be presented as a slideshow. In your slideshow:

· describe the key patterns you have identified

· describe the similarities and differences you notice

· provide reasoned explanations for these patterns, similarities and differences, linking to ideas around audience reception, interaction, and participation with media products.

· explain the significance of the identified patterns for the individual and/or media.

Note that you are not required to present your slideshow to the class. Hand in your notes, any information gathered, your hypothesis, and your final slideshow to your teacher.

This assessment is an individual activity. You have three weeks of in-class and homework time for this activity.

Task

This task includes the following steps:

· Decide and predict

· Gather information

· Identify patterns of use

· Present your findings.

Decide and predict

Select an individual to interview about their media interaction. Choose someone whose media interaction is significantly different to your use, in order to make in-depth comparisons.

CHECKPOINT ONE: Show/tell your teacher who you are going to interview.

Write a profile for yourself and your research subject. This profile should include information such as:

· Age

· Gender

· Ethnicity

· Hobbies/interests

· Occupation

· Where he/she lives.

Include any other relevant information, for example religious or political views. Refer to the example below:

Name: Michelle Tan

Age: 26

Gender: female

Ethnicity: NZ Chinese

Hobbies/interests: yoga, reading, travelling, shopping

Occupation: Political analyst

Where she lives: Wellington

Write a hypothesis (what you think you will find out) for your research. Consider your predictions about:

· the media products you and your research subject will interact with

· the time of day they will use this product

· the length of time they will use the product

· the way that they will use it

· the levels of engagement they will have with the media product.

You may also want to consider what media products you and your research subject will not interact with and the reasons for this.

State clearly your rationale for making these predictions. Refer to the example below:

I think that Michelle will have a high consumption of media products because of her age and interests. Her age means that she will be familiar with a range of media products and feel comfortable using them. One media product I think Michelle will use will be The Dominion Post as she is a political analyst and so she will be interested in finding out about how people she works for are shown in the news. The Dominion Post is also Wellington’s newspaper, which is where she lives. I think that she will also read the travel section of The Dominion Post as travelling is one of her interests. She will read the ‘Life’ section on Thursdays, as that is all about relationships and the latest fashion and targeted at people who have an interest in shopping and lifestyles. I don’t think that she will read the sports section as she is not that interested in sport. I think that she will read the paper regularly, maybe in the morning when she gets to work, or over her lunchbreak. I think that she will be fully engaged with this media product.

CHECKPOINT TWO: Submit your hypothesis to your teacher and have it approved before you proceed.

Gather information

Keep a log of your own media use for one week. Ask your research subject to keep a log of their media use for the same time period. Use the example below as a guide for how to set out your log.

Date	Medium	Duration	Setting	Involvement (What you were doing at the time)	Purpose (Explanation of why using media)
Monday 18/04	Facebook	9–10pm	In the lounge on the desktop at home.	I updated my status, then chatted with my friend Mike. I looked at some of my friends’ pages too. I was also watching YouTube clips, browsing Trade Me, and sending emails during this time.	I like using Facebook because it lets me chat with friends while multi-tasking. My friend Mike lives in Germany so it’s an easy way of keeping in touch.
Tuesday 19/04	Magazine	8–8.30am	I read this magazine while waiting for and travelling on the bus to school this morning.	I was listening to my iPod while flicking through the magazine. I read the article about the 10 best beauty buys and the 10 essential wardrobe buys. I also read the feature article that went behind the scenes on a film set.	I like reading this magazine because it keeps me informed about the latest styles and trends. I’m interested in film-making.

Using the logs as a guide, develop a list of questions to ask your research subject about their use and interaction with media products.

When writing the questions, keep in mind that you will need to identify patterns of media interaction, for example, location, time, and levels of engagement.

CHECKPOINT THREE: Get your questions signed off before you complete your interview.

Answer the questions about your own media interaction, then conduct your interview with the research subject. Make sure that your information is accurate.

You may wish to research one or more of the media products used by the research subject. Consider the purpose and target audience for the media products, for example, to inform, to entertain, or to promote feelings of community.

Find patterns of interaction

Read the logs and the answers to your interview questions. Look closely at:

· preferences for a particular medium or text type

· preference for use at a particular time

· patterns of levels of engagement

· patterns of setting for interaction

· patterns of purpose of interaction

· patterns for length of interaction.

What trends and patterns do you observe? What similarities and differences can you find? Organise this information in a Venn diagram, table, or chart.

Refer to the profiles you created for yourself and your research subject. How does this background information affect how you interpret their interaction of media products? Does this individual fit the profile of someone you would expect to be using this product?

Compare your findings with your hypothesis. Were your predictions accurate? What was different? What conclusions can you draw from this?

Present your findings

Use the information you gathered in the first three steps to create a slideshow presentation.

You should aim to make at least three statements of a reasonable length, which compare and contrast your media interaction with the interaction of your research subject.

These statements should describe and explain the patterns you have identified in your research, as well as the comparisons you have made. Give an explanation of the significance of these patterns for the individual and/or the media.

Include links to wider media theory, including research about media consumption and demographics.

Resources

None.

Blog Creation

It's now time to begin creating your blog that you will use this year for Media Studies.
Burnside media uses www.blogger.com to create our blogs as it is relatively easy to use.
To protect your privacy we would like you to use your student number as your user name and we also want you to create an avatar of your self which you will use instead of images of yourself.
Points to note:

• This blog is for educational purposes
• It will be used as an assessment tool
• It is not a social gathering place!!
  

The first couple of weeks

The course has been introduced and we started looking at how the media represents teenagers and how you see yourselves. We completed a brainstorm on how we see teenagers and how we think the media see us.
Some comments about how we see ourselves: normal, unique, caring misunderstood, most of us care about our education, there aren't that many of us that do what the media say we do, sporty, energetic, we think we're invincible.
The media see us as: scary monsters, selfish, couch potatoes who are on the internet all the time, that we're all the same, portray us negatively, that all of us are irresponsible, label us, that we're drunks. boy racers, moody, skanks, pregnant, that we're like US teens.

A New Year and a New Course

So Level 1 Media is actually happening!
This blog is here to keep a running reference to all the media "stuff" we will be discussing this year. It will include reminders and due dates and hopefully include all the links we use and duscuss in class.
All the best,
Ms M