The media violence debate has also extended to include thoughts concerning media output and its influence on human behaviour. In the past this has been documented in many high profile violence and murder cases such as the James Bulger case and the Columbine killings. Livingstone (2005:12) suggests that the media has often been the scapegoat for the “supposed moral impact of family life, on ethnic stereotyping or on crime statistics”; however this is contested by an audience research agenda which is driven by the conflict of interests surrounding the issue (ibid., 2005). Violence is only one such representation which is discussed in terms of media output and the influence upon audiences, other popular topics include: politics, health, racism and war (Iyengar, 1997). When approaching the subject of direct media influence upon crime rates using stimulus/response research, Berkowitz and Macaulay (1971, in Berkowitz and Heimer Rogers, 1986) found significant increases in the rate of violent crimes following several sensational murders in the 1960’s. However, Berkowitz and Heimer Rogers (1986) go on to propose that these incidences are not like for like copycat incidents. They claim that the concept of cognitive-neoassociationism provides a framework to analyse these phenomena. They state that, “people’s reactions to what they read, see, or hear in the media depend considerably on the way the message is interpreted and the thoughts and memories that are consequently activated” (ibid., 1986:58). The media and popular culture are hypothesised to be part of a set of factors that contribute to societal violence as it is difficult to measure human thought or to precisely know how media influence their audiences (ibid., 1986). This particular stance further supported by Lull (2000:100) who argues that “people mediate the influence of the media”, particularly if they are within a setting that allows for social mediations to occur, i.e. with family, friends or peers. This allows recipients to raise questions, pose criticism or reinforce positive messages.
Lull (2000) claims that the media audience has not changed much, but that it has just taken researchers longer to describe the complex relationships between the media and its’ interpreters. As an alternative to principally analysing the direct effects of media output, research has shifted to include the audience into the large body of research.
Allor (1988, in Mosco and Kaye, 2000:31) suggests that “the concept of the audience…is the underpinning prop for the analysis of the social impact of mass communication in general”. Though Moores (1993:1), finds difficulty in defining what the audience actually is, suggesting that “there is no stable entity which we can isolate and identify as the media audience”. To Mosco and Kaye (2000) the concept of audiences was born out of companies who were marketing products through the media. To the discipline of mass communication, large groups of people who are exposed to media texts are commonly known as the audience. Though Moores (1993:2) prefers the use of the plural, audiences, which denotes “several groups divided by their reception of different media and genres, or by social and cultural positioning”, both Moores (1993) and Mosco and Kaye (2000) articulate a conceptual difficulty with the term and express their concerns for further study into researching the concept of audiences. This however, appears to be the definition which authors such as Mosco and Kaye at present (2000) settle upon for use in the media studies domain in determining and explaining media audiences.
Some of the earliest work concerning media output and the audience as a combined entity was carried out by Stuart Hall. Classical work from Hall (1973:1) suggests that the “communication between the production elites in broadcasting and their audiences is necessarily a form of ‘systematically distorted communication’” which propagates the mediated re-presentation of realities and events to the viewing audiences (Whannel, 1998). Hall (1973:1) further argues that the aspect of communication production which distinguishes itself from other types of production as different is the notion that “the ‘object’ of production practices and structures in television is the production of a message”. Achieved by specific organisation and adherence to particular codes “within the syntagmatic chains of a discourse”, messages are produced within mediated texts and circulated to audiences (ibid., 1973:1).
Kinkema and Harris (1998:34) believe that “although it is clear that audiences interpret media texts in a variety of ways, texts are thought to sway audiences towards particular interpretations rather than others”. Media texts may encompass manifest or latent meanings by which textual/content analysis can uncover different layers and levels of meaning. Additionally, preferred readings of media texts are constructed to encourage a dominant or consensual interpretation. However, the idea of polysemic texts denotes that media texts are capable of many potential meanings and readings and may be decoded in a variety of ways according to many factors, particularly the situated culture (O’Sullivan, Dutton and Rayner, 2003) and cultural capital of the reader (Bourdieu, 1986).
It is the suggested polysemic nature of media texts which strengthens the competence of Hall’s (1973) encoding/decoding model in which the audiences, in relation to social positioning, hypothetically may wholly accept the preferred meaning of the text, may accept parts of the text whilst rejecting others, thus creating a ‘negotiated’ meaning, or may reject the text’s preferred meaning in its entirety, thus creating an ‘oppositional’ meaning. The model allows the consumer to decode media texts in relation to their cultural competence and class position, fundamentally allowing for a variation in responses and interpretations (Moores, 2000). This particular framework was adopted in Morley’s (1980) analysis of audience responses in relation to a television news/cultural affairs text in which different demographic groups were devised by the division of profession and cultural background. Hall’s system of categorisation was used and to a certain extent was successful as various groups accepted, negotiated or rejected the preferred meaning, however, particular groups felt the text had little relevance to them and furthermore proposed an oppositional reading of a different kind in that they displayed a refusal to engage with the text (Moores, 2000). In this study, the categories of Hall’s model “lacked the subtlety to cope with certain contradictions which arose in an analysis of the group responses” (ibid., 2000:28). The responses in many cases could be simply attributed to tastes and preferences of the group (Morley, 1992). Morley (1992: 89-90) identified that the “readings can then be seen to be patterned by the way in which the structure of access to different discourses is determined by social position”. This notion regarding differential access to discourses can be related to the various kinds of 'capital' outlined by Pierre Bourdieu - particularly 'cultural capital' (which relates the construction of 'taste') and 'symbolic capital' (communicative repertoire) of which interpretation is a key field. Klapper (1966:18) theorises that generally people will “expose themselves to those mass communications which are in accord with their existing attitudes and interests”. With this in mind, it is taste and pleasure which Ang (1985) and Radway (1991) emphasised was a key positive effect that audiences derived from media texts, which Ang (1985:17) further comments is an idea “which is at odds with the doctrine that mass culture primarily manipulates the masses”. Though Marxist beliefs will detail that the pleasure derived from texts is a “false kind of pleasure…a trick of manipulating the masses more effectively in order to lock them in the eternal status quo of exploitation and oppression” and to further the capitalist economy, it only presents one side of the argument because to successfully sell a commodity, such as a media text, the commodity itself must have some usefulness (ibid., 1985:17-18).
Morley (1992) added that there is the potential for different individuals or groups to operate different decoding strategies in relation to different topics and different contexts. A person might make 'oppositional' readings of the same material in one context and 'dominant' readings in other contexts. He further noted that in interpreting viewers' readings of mass media texts, attention should be paid not only to the issue of agreement (acceptance/rejection) but to comprehension, relevance and enjoyment (ibid., 1992: 126-127).
Further Criticism of Hall’s model raises the question; does the preferred meaning actually exist?. Moores (1993:28) asks of the preferred meaning, “Where is it and how do we know if we've found it? Can we be sure we didn't put it there ourselves while we were looking? And can it be found by examining any sort of text?”. Moreover, Morley (1981:6) pondered whether it might be the “reading which the analyst is predicting that most members of the audience will produce” and wondered whether the concept may be applied more easily to news and current affairs than to other mass media genres.
Based upon the assumption that “widely available communication forms play an important role in mediating society” (Matheson, 2005:1), both Matheson (2005) and Wareing (2004) highlight the potential ability of language to create new meanings and inflict power upon society. The previous discussion regarding the media and violence authors such as Denham (1999) and Matheson (2005) detailed the process by which media discourse and verbal reduction may shape forms of representation and ultimately create meaning and agenda. A conflicting view on media output, specifically related to broadcasting media, may demonstrate how modes of address work to include audiences into discussions rather than positing a direct influence on them, and forms a relationship between the broadcasters and the audience (O’Sullivan et al., 2003). Within media broadcasting both classical and recent work has researched the development of modes of address, the subsequent effects upon media reception and the ways in which modes of address cater for the audiences. Work from Paddy Scannell in Broadcast Talk (1991) charted the social history of British broadcasting and posed the argument that broadcasting has developed a communicative ethos which employed the use of relaxed, informal and spontaneous modes of address to heighten the sense of familiarity between the broadcasters and the audience and creates a sense of intended sociability, rather than expressing a paternalistic attitude which was often seen in historical broadcasting (Scannell, 1991). In analysis of popular television discussion shows, chat shows and studio magazine programmes such as Wogan and Blind Date and more recently in programmes such as Richard and Judy and The Wright Stuff, there is evidence of relaxed forms of talk which are designed to be sociable and accessible and which adopt a populist mode of address (ibid., 1991). Scannell (1991) further argues that the reasons for this are concerned with the physical absence of the audience as they are viewing chiefly from the domestic setting; however, studio audiences are present in some television shows. This style is employed as it is deemed necessary by the broadcasters to ensure that the audience’s attention is retained as the broadcasters lack control in this situation, and furthermore it is deemed appropriate also by the audiences whom Matheson (1933, in Scannell, 1991:3) claims do not want to be lectured within the private sphere of the home. This work supports the claims of previous research undertaken by Horton and Wohl (1956) who stated that the spoken discourse of television presenters addresses the audience as if they were acquaintances and is furthermore supported by the similar idea of Tolson (1991) who goes as far to suggest that this incidence has assumed a position of dominance. This is achieved by the use of the second person/collective pronoun ‘you’ (Thornborrow, 2004) and by looking direct to camera thus giving “the illusion of a face-to-face relationship with the performer” (Horton and Wohl, 1956:215). It works to create a simulation of conversational give and take between the television presenter and the audience in a situation where a dialogical two-way flow of communication is not, in the definitive sense, physically possible (ibid., 1956).
Langer’s (1981) research into television personalities emphasises that television broadcasting traditionally has domestic circumstances for consumption and draws a useful distinction between the stars of the Hollywood institution and the personalities of television broadcasting. Langer (1981:355) proposes that through cinematic operation, the stars are presented as “the inaccessible, the imaginary, presenting the cinematic universe as ‘larger than life’, the personality system is cultivated almost exclusively as a ‘part of life’” thus creating “intimacy and immediacy” whereby personalities conversely are typically presented as acquiring a particular “’will to ordinariness’” which in turn assists in them becoming “accepted, normalized and experienced as familiar”. This view is similarly shared by Monaco (1978, in Langer, 1981:351) who perceives television personalities as “ordinary people…made strangely important”. The creation of personalities and the ways in which they address the audience is of specific interest to media broadcasters, as Horton and Wohl (1956) suggest “whoever finds the experience unsatisfying has only the option to withdraw” as there is “little or no sense of obligation, effort, or responsibility on the part of the spectator”, thus suggesting that the audience has the power of choice and freedom to remove themselves from the situation without prejudice. This would be a concern for all broadcasters; both public service and commercial, but particularly from commercial channels in television, as the audience provide the basis for advertisement revenue. Therefore catering for the audience’s ‘needs’ and ‘wants’, is imperative to viewing figures (Hagen, 1999).
In relation to audience consumption, Tolson (1991) proposes that progressions in presenting and delivering a more relaxed approach to spoken discourse during broadcasting, is building an assumption that the television audience is increasingly sophisticated. This theory is compatible with the fundamentals of Everett’s (1962, in Williams et al., 1994) diffusion of innovations model and the decoding strand of Hall’s (1973) encoding/decoding model, which both place emphasis on human agency in the formation of attitudes and acceptance or rejection of ideas. The idea of the audience as skilled consumers, which is also addressed within basic realms of ‘Reception Theory’, is taken on board in the uses and gratifications approach when researching audiences. The uses and gratifications model developed by Blumler and Katz (1974, in Katz, Blumler and Gurevitch, 1974) addresses media audiences as active consumers who use media texts to meet certain demands and fulfil their needs. It proposes that audiences use media texts as: a source of diversion (escapism/release), to aid personal relationships (companionship/sociability), to create a personal identity (sense of self), and to provide surveillance (information) (ibid., 1974). Furthermore, ideas derived from the basis of reception theory as previously mentioned, suggest that; audiences actively consume media texts, claim that individuals are skilled consumers invested with cultural capital – similar to the assertion made by Bourdieu (1986) and argues that individuals can (re/mis) interpret meanings within texts (O’Sullivan et al., 2003; Holub, 1984). The reception theory model itself however is not without controversy. Alternative and adapted models exist and whereas the text before the birth of reception theory “reigned supreme” as Holub (1984:148) wrote, reception theory has undermined the once “interpretive practice by viewing the text as a function of its readers and its reception”. The conception of a text with a single, deterministic meaning has been replaced by “a variety of models in which the essence of the work is a never-completed unfolding of its effective history, while its meaning is constituted by the interaction between text and reader (ibid., 1984:148).
The arguments proposed above help to indicate the difficulty in reaching a conclusion regarding what the makers of meaning are; the media output or the consuming audiences and their uses of the media texts. If viewing the media as an agent/agency, Giddens (1984:14) suggests that “to be an agent is to be able to deploy casual powers. An agency ceases if the capability to ‘make a difference’ and to exercise some sort of power is lost”. With this view in mind, including the various competences of the effects models and applying our assumptions of how broadcasting is often ‘constructed’, it may well be fair to conclude that media output has the potential to make meaning for the audiences. The key word in the debate of direct media effects however, is the word ‘potential’. Schramm, Lyle and Parker (1961, in Lull, 2000: 100) claim that “the media influence some people, some of the time, about some things” which Lull (2000:100) highlights as a quote which “perhaps still best exemplifies the complexities and uncertainties of media direct effects theory”.
Hall’s (1973) encoding/decoding model is possibly one of the most influential media production/audience reception models in addressing media audiences as ‘active’ as opposed to ‘passive’. Though the model does possess flaws and comes under debated criticism, it still yields applicability to audience reception research. In agreement with Cumberbatch (1989, in Gauntlett, 1998), it dismisses that all audiences respond in the same or similar ways when they consume a media text and proposes a connection with social influences (identity, positioning, cultural and symbolic capital) and the interpretation of the text. Previous comments from Lull (2000) highlighted that the researchers are now researching the more complex relationships between media audiences and the interpretation of media output. Though this style of research is in its infancy compared to direct media effects research, it is allowing audiences to be viewed as active recipients and presenting them and their concerns in ways which were never or rarely previously addressed within direct media effects research. The body of research regarding audiences is still small in comparison to effects research and supportive models and theories such as; encoding/decoding model, reception theory and the uses and gratifications model remain criticised by authors and theorists. What audience research acknowledges, which effects theories tend not to, are the psychological and sociological processes as components of the audiences when viewing texts (Cumberbatch, 1989, in Gauntlett, 1998). Psychological and sociological processes are relevant to all individuals who represent audiences and therefore further research should continue to develop these areas. Moores’ (2005) work on media communications and its connectedness with contemporary social theory, highlights a possible route for new audience research to be undertaken. The key themes Moores (2005) discusses are: time, space, relationships, meanings and experiences. This work appears to be based ideas developed by sociologists such as Anthony Giddens in relation to social theory and presents an interesting route which audience research should take. Further study into these areas would potentially discover a new stem of audience research, aid the development of new theories and models to coexist with current audience reception models and possibly strengthen the case for the audiences in the ongoing debate of who creates meaning within contemporary media cultures.
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