Media studies

Media reception is 'situated', part of people's everyday lives; people interpret messages in the context of and for the purposes of their immediate experience and personal ideologies and goals. Society is not monolithic; it has many sub-cultures , and people have different orientations in different circumstances and at different times The meanings of mass mediated communication are controlled (at least in part) by the receivers of the communication; consequently the meanings that people make, and the reasons and contexts in which they make them, must be studied -- through reception and ethnographic studies

Encoding-decoding
Three major reading positions. The idea is that any text encodes an intended, or "preferred", meaning, but that the reader may not decode the message within the 'preferred' interpretive frame. within the frame of the dominant code: decoding as the encoders would have it, or, within their interpretive frame; adopting a negotiated position: the reader accepts some aspects of the dominant meaning, but rejects and alters others, to suit their understandings and goals; reading from an oppositional point of view: reading subversively, against the dominant or preferred meanings.

 Marxist theory Media as means of production Ideology Media as amplifiers The constitution of subject

Media as means of production

The mass media simply disseminate the ideas and world views of the ruling class, and deny or defuse alternative ideas The mass media functioned to produce 'false consciousness' in the working-classes

Ideology
Ideological positions are a function of class positions, and the dominant ideology in society is the ideology of its dominant class ideology is 'false consciousness'

Media as amplifiers
media thus reproduced the viewpoints of dominant institutions as the central and "obvious" or "natural" perspective

The constitution of subject

mutually interactive relationship between the subject (human agents) and the object (the conditions of their existence) Individuals are 'constituted' as the bearers of positions through the effects of social relations

Marxist variant
Frankfurt School 1st generation Althusser Gramsci Stuart Hall (British Cultural Studies) Habermas (Frankfurt School 2nd generation) Postmodernism (Baudrillard, Foucault, and Derrida)

Frankfurt School
Critical Theory, in media theory -the first Marxist attempt to theorize about the media Associated with the Institute for Social Research, founded in Frankfurt in 1923 but shifted in 1933 to New York The role of media in shaping mass consciousness by its mass production and promoting mass culture Distinction between high culture and mass culture

 Developed a critical and transdisciplinary approach to cultural and communications studies, combining critique of political economy of the media, analysis of texts, and audience reception studies of the social and ideological effects of mass culture and communications Coined the term 'culture industries' to signify the process of the industrialization of mass-produced culture and the commercial imperatives which drove the system

Louis Althusser
Neo-marxian and structuralist philosopher Althusser rejected two kinds of Marxist essentialism: economism (economic determinism- economic laws determine the course of history and mans effort to survive) and humanism (in which social developments were seen as expressive of a pre-given human nature) young Marxs theory of alienation of the labourer in a capitalist society as opposed to mature Marxs Das Capital wealth of society as commodity i.e - labour power

 Ideology, for Althusser 'represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence' In Althusserian theory mass media texts 'interpellate the subject' whereas many current media theorists argue that the the subject projects meaning onto the media texts.

Antonio gramsci
Gramsci used the term hegemony to denote the predominance of one social class over others The domination not merely repressive and in political economy realm. Involves willing and active consent from those who are subordinated by accept it as common sense and natural

Form

values worthiness

Genre
kind; sort; style Aristotle's discussion of the mode or manner of imitation in poetry in The Poetics poet can take on another personality, or speak in his own person, unchanged - or he may present all his characters as living and moving before us distinction between epic, lyric, and drama

Style and Tone

Style: Slick, continuity editing Tone: serious, light, formal.

Codes and Conventions

 Film uses language which is both literal (denotative) as well as symbolic (connotative) in meaning. This language includes codes such as camera shots, image, costume, music and sound, lighting and editing. The way these codes are used are called conventions

Audio codes
Music, background noises, sound effects and spoken words Spoken words : What words, Who is speaking How the words are spoken makes character more believable The use of silence; we hear this too.

Symbolic Codes (representation)- we make assumptions about characters in film based on what they are wearing, how they look, body language, facial expressions and movements.

Technical codes

Edits, cuts, dissolves, framing

Codes and Conventions

Film codes and conventions convey a message about the man - what are the symbolic codes (connotative meaning) used and what do they imply?

Characters

Genre uses stock character types to assist the audience towards understanding the direction the narrative will go. Look carefully at the characters above. What sort of persons are they? How do you know?

Character
Todorov came up with his theories after making a study of Russian folk tales. So too did Vladimir Propp, who came up with the theory that there are only a certain number of characters, who crop up in most narratives.

Narrative Conflict
As well as Aristotle deciding that 'all drama is conflict' in the 4th century BC, 20th century theorist Claude Levi-Strauss suggested that all narratives had to be driven forward by conflict that was cause by a series of opposing forces. he called this the theory of Binary Opposition, and it is used to describe how each main force in a narrative has its equal and opposite. Analysing a narrative means identifying these opposing forces : light/dark good/evil noise/silence youth/age right/wrong poverty/wealth strength/weakness inside/outside

 and understanding how the conflict between them will drive the narrative on until, finally, some sort of balance or resolution is achieved.

Representation
We all decode representations according to our own life experience, where we've lived, how old we are, social class etc. Producers often assume that the audience is one homogenous mass that will all decode the representation in the same way. However, people see even the most basic images in different ways. Look at the two famous optical illusions below. What do you see first?

Old or young woman? Duck or rabbit?

 The problem with representing any kind of reality in a media text is that it's never going to be 100% accurate. Representation always involves the construction of a version of reality, not reality itself

 Visual representation is a very powerful tool when it comes to persuading your audience what to think about a topic

 What choices have been made about framing, lighting, make up, cropping, costume in each case? What does each image make you think about Lindsay? How do you think these very different representations affect her image as a star? Do you think either one of these images is the 'real' Lindsay?

Representation

Difference between narrative and story

Story = a sequence of events, known correctly as the plot Narrative = the way those events are put together to be presented to an audience.

 Analysing a narrative will involve the following: Technical Codes This refers to all the aspects of narrative construction that involve technical decision making. Therefore anything to do with camera angles and movement, lighting, sound, props. shot framing and composition, design and layout and editing. What do each of the choices made tell you about what is going on - for instance, is a character shot from a high or low angle and how does that make you, the audience, feel about them? How are sound effects used to help you make sense of what is going on?

 Verbal Codes The use of language - written and spoken and signs contained in graphics. We learn a lot about a narrative from what we are told in this way, but the best narratives show rather than tell, leaving the audience to draw their own conclusions.

 Symbolic Codes These are the signs contained in the narrative that we decode as being significant and having meaning - for example a ragged coat worn by a character may mean that they are poor and possibly hungry. Think of them as clues that have to be followed, and different viewers/readers will follow clues in different ways.

 Structure Russian theorist, Tzvetan Todorov, suggests that all narratives follow a three part structure. They begin with equilibrium, where everything is balanced, progress as something comes along to disrupt that equilibrium, and finally reach a resolution, when equilibrium is restored.

Audience
All media texts are made with an audience in mind, i.e. a group of people who will receive it and make some sort of sense out of it. And generally, but not always, the producers make some money out of that audience. Therefore it is important to understand what happens when an audience "meets" a media text.

Demographics
income bracket/status age gender race location

Mass Society theory

Mass Society is more than just lots of people We can classify different types of mass societies by their structure and by their function.

For instance AlvinToffler says we are currently in an Information Society (or Age).

Comte, Durkheim

Marx, Marcuse

Darwin, Spencer

Mead

 In the early 20th century, structural functionalist theories were combined with fashionable theories of human psychology (behaviorism) to formulate the first theories of how and why mass communications affected large groups of people e.g Pavlovs experiment.

Restudying of media effects models.for eg. The Magic Bullet theory

the media, individuals, their interpersonal environment, and the social environment have dependency relationships with each other

Reading Media Texts

The media constructs a version of reality for the audience.

The media student analyses, or deconstructs, what has already been put together in order to see how it works or how to make sense of it.

TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

The purpose of textual analysis

is to move beyond telling what another essay means by including analysis of how another essay is written.

Textual analysis
What is this text about? (subject/content)

1. WHAT is this text about?

How does it create meanings? (language features/techniques)

(subject/content)

1. WHAT is this text about?

Making the WHAT of the text

MAKE THE CONNECTIONS..

(subject/content)

SUBJECT
What is this text about? What is it's subject? Brief synopsis or plot summary

PURPOSE
Is the PURPOSE to: PERSUADE INFORM EDUCATE DESCRIBE EVOKE EMOTION or COMBINATION OF ANY OR ALL OF THESE?

MESSAGE Does the text carry an underlying message or moral?

Tone?
Music Style of characters Attitude of characters Mocking? Playful? Irreverent? Angry? Balanced Sympathetic Concerned Personal (Opening Paragraph) Political?

CONTEXT

What is the historical, social and/or political CONTEXT of the text? Of the composer? What is the EFFECT or INFLUENCE of this on the text?

AUDIENCE

Who is the text's AUDIENCE, and how does this influence the production of the text? How is the AUDIENCE POSITIONED or made to feel in response to the text? How successful is the composer in doing so? How might other responders' perceive this text? Why? How?

FORM

What type of text is this? Narrative? Type of poem? Film? Website? What MEDIUM is the text delivered through?

POINT OF VIEW

PROSE FICTION
CHARACTERISATION

THEMES
TONE VOICE

STRUCTURE (PLOT, CHAPTERS, PARTS) WORD CHOICE

SYNTAX
VOCABULARY GRAMMAR LANGUAGE (FORMAL, CASUAL, EMOTIVE) SYMBOLISM

POETRY
VOICE FORM REPETITION

RHYME

RHYTHM
TONE JUXTAPOSITION
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FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE Metaphors Similes Personification Onomatopoeia Alliteration Assonance

PUNCTUATION

DIALOGUE CAMERA ANGLES

FILM

CAMERA SHOTS

EDITING
LIGHTING

CASTING SOUND
MUSIC MISE EN SCENE

MAKE-UP & COSTUMING

DRAMA & PLAYS

CHARACTERISATION MUSIC SOUND IRONY

THEMES STRUCTURE/PLOT PROPS

LIGHTING SYMBOLISM STAGE DIRECTIONS

COSTUMES

SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA
IRONY

DRAMATIC IRONY
RHETORICAL DEVICES IMAGERY PUNS & OTHER WORD PLAY PROSE v. BLANK VERSE

SOLILOQUIES
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TEXTURE

VISUAL TEXTS
SHAPE

COLOUR

SYMBOLISM

VECTORS SALIENCE FONT & POINT SIZE

POSITIONING
INTER-TEXTUALITY LANGUAGE FEATURES

NEWS REPORT
HEADLINES
Puns Stereotypes Figures of Speech Columns

Short paragraphs

LAYOUT
Sub-headings

Inverted Triangle Most important points to Least

ACTION VERBS MAY BE PAST OR PRESENT TENSE DEPENDING ON MEDIUM DIRECT SPEECH/ QUOTES

FOCUS ON THE 'WHAT' ASPECTS

GRAPHICS

FEATURE ARTICLES

More in-depth, detailed focus, usually on contemporary social issues or newsworthy individuals. May be more subjective than news reports ie: composer's opinion influences their writing. Think CONTEXT and AUDIENCE. Reader interest maintained through narrative techniques, including: IRONY HUMOUR DESCRIPTIVE WRITING IMAGERY ANECDOTES LESS FORMAL LANGUAGE/COLLOQUIAL Layout features: Catchy headlines Drop quotes, to summarise and highlight

SPEECHES
Alliteration Repetition

Irony Emotive language

Euphemism

Hyperbole

Imagery
Similes Metaphors Personification

Opposites

Onomatopoeia

Reading text and images together.

Any image can be read in the same way that a piece of text can. An audience decodes, or makes sense, of the meanings contained in a picture to understand its intended meaning. However the same picture could have several different meanings for different people. An image that can be interpreted in more than one way is said to be polysemic. By adding text to an image it is possible to ensure that everybody understands it in the same way. This process is called anchorage. It works in the same way that an anchor holds an object steady- in this case the preferred meaning of a picture.

Look at these examples Is it possible to understand them just by looking at the content?

or could they have more than one meaning?

Look at how the meaning of each image can be changed by simply adding some text in the form of a caption. Now, everybody reads it in the same way - the meaning is anchored by the text.

School students enjoy working on a project on recent school trip.

Homeless pair find water to drink from culvert after earthquake.

Adding text makes it polysemic without text to anchor the meaning, it could mean anything.

Worker identifies fault in furnace.

Practical joke goes wrong in horrific factory accident.

Anchorage is just one way that can determine the meaning of a media text. Cropping an image can also alter its meaning.

2 4

Here is an image from a journalists web page. Each cropped section is important in creating new readings for the picture in the same way as the last example.

2 4

Revealing section 1 creates one version of this image.

1 4

Section 2

2 4

Section 3 opens up lots of other connotations

2 4

3 & 4 change focus from his face to his weapon

And finally here is the complete uncropped image-with all of its layers of meaning.

Inter-textuality -Kristeva.

Intertexuality implies the insertion of history (society) into a text and of this text into history It is a place where many texts meet together through allusions, citations, or any form of reference, whether subtle or more direct.

Theory of inter-textuality

Any one text (literature, film, tv show, song etc) is read in relationship to the other

Inter-textual relations
Two dimensions Horizontal: relations between primary texts (books) explicitly linked Vertical: relations between primary (book) and secondary(publicity, criticism)/tertiary texts (letters,gossip,conversation)

Inter-textuality in The Matrix series

A line from Morpheus: "The dead are fed intravenously to the living." He says it when he is explaining to Neo how the humans are kept alive by the machines for use as "batteries. Morpheus's description is a perfect analogy for inter-textuality. The Matrix participates in a free play of intertextuality, almost celebrating its relationship to the various other texts.

 In the first film, great use is made of Alice in Wonderland. Neo is first told to "follow the white rabbit," which he does, and which begins his adventures in the strange world into which he enters. We see large chessboard floors, again calling Alice to mind.

 And it is this language that Morpheus uses to introduce Neo to the Real World. "I imagine you're feeling a bit like Alice, tumbling down the rabbit hole," he says, sitting before the distorted looking glass. In taking the red pill, Neo is invited to "stay in Wonderland, see how deep the rabbit hole goes.

 Similar references to images from popular culture are made throughout the films. Neo's ability to fly is referred to by Link in the beginning of the second film as "doing the Superman thing

 In referring to other texts which are familiar to the audience, it makes use of signs they already know how to decode in order to draw them quickly into its world, giving them a point of entry. The film uses the shared codes of the American cultural community.

Inter-textuality in ads

 Several advertisements exist in four independent worlds: the world of the sender; the fictional world of the characters; the fantasy world of the receiver; and the real world of the receiver.

 Therefore, the aim of the sender is to push the product into the real world of the receiver. An ad seeks to create enough contact between fiction and reality, sender and receiver, characters and consumer, fantasy and reality, for the passage of the product from one world to another to be feasible

 The semiotic analysis of advertising believes that meanings of adverts are to move out from the page, to lend significance to the audiences experience of reality. Audiences are encouraged to experience the advertised, in terms of the mythic meanings on which adverts draw

Step 3: Analyze how the language positions you

 Adverts are often build around codes and symbols, which highlights the fact that the argument most often used when buying a product, is that it is related to the individual on an emotional level. Asger Liebst - ordered the symbols of advertising in a schematic form of codes.

A syntagmatic relationship is created with the model and the bottle in her hand. Model creates connotations of richness, beauty and power. The strength and masculinity of the tower has been transferred to represent the absent vodka bottle

 Receivers can read the connotations that the visuals denote, as if they were signs in some kind of restricted language, a code

Pertinent Questions
What exactly is being advertised? Where and when did the ad appear? Why might it have appeared there and then rather than elsewhere? What appears to be the intended audience? What suggests this? In what ways does it utilize features of the particular medium used (poster, television, film, radio or magazine)? What graphic mode(s) is/are used (e.g. still photography, drawing, animation, live action)? What id the overall design like?. Where is it set in space and time? Who are the participants? What do they do? What key objects are featured?

 What part is played by words (choice of words, typography/voiceover)? What part is played by the use of sound and/or light? Which features are foregrounded and which are backgrounded? What significance might all of these features have for the intended viewers/readers/listeners? What key inferences must the viewers/readers/listeners make to make sense of the ad? What intertextual references can you discern (to other ads, to other genres, to other people etc.)? How else does the ad seek your involvement?

 With what is the product associated? What does the product seem to symbolize? What does the ad seem to suggest about gender roles, class/status, age, ethnicity or self-identity? What cultural assumptions and values seem to be involved? What use is made of humour, and to what effect? What do you regard as the most likely preferred interpretation offered in the ad? What scope does there seem to be for alternative interpretations?

Story Components in Ads

CHARACTER(S): the people in the ad and the personalities they seem to have.

Story Components in Ads

PLOT: the event that is shown in the ad itself and the events that you imagine have occurred before, or will occur after that moment.

Story Components in Ads

SETTING: where and when the scene shown in the ad takes place.

Story Components in Ads

SYMBOLS: an object that stands for something more than itself.

Story Components in Ads

SUB-TEXT: a meaning that goes beyond the surface meaning suggested in the ad.

Semiotic Analysis Saussure offered a 'dyadic' or two-part model of the sign. He defined a sign as being composed of: a 'signifier - the form which the sign takes; and the 'signified - the concept it represents.

If we take a linguistic example, the word 'Open' (when it is invested with meaning by someone who encounters it on a shop doorway) is a sign consisting of: a signifier: the word open; a signified concept: that the shop is open for business.

 A sign must have both a signifier and a signified. The same signifier (the word 'open') could stand for a different signified - a different sign: if it were on a push-button inside a lift ('push to open door), on top of a packing carton, a small outline of a box with an open flap for 'open this end)

The signifier is now commonly interpreted as the material (or physical) form of the sign - it is something which can be seen, heard, touched, smelt or tasted.

The German hat company, Hut Weber, controversially used Adolf Hitlers iconic hair and moustache to promote its product. The man on the right is Charlie Chaplin, the 1920s comedian.
Their clever slogan, Its the hat, suavely suggests that ones entire persona and reputation can be improved by donning something as simple as a bowler hat.

The advertisement naturally indicates that the man on the left is a sign that one does not wish to represent (i.e. Adolf Hitler Nazism The Holocaust); the man on the left, in contrast, alludes to the film industry (not to mention the film The Great Dictator). There are two signifieds (two values) being represented in this advertisement: that of Germanicity which is connotative, and that of the silent film era.

This ad in a glamour magazine strongly relies upon this use of photographic imagery. It features an advertisement for the fragrance 'Dune Pour Homme.' The advertisement uses a variety of signifiers which publicize both the identity of the brand, and an image which is in line with the ideology of the text in which it appears, which, in this case, is the youthful, glamorous magazine.
The adv predominately features a male model in his early to mid twenties, and he is kneeling on a sand dune.

Adjacent to him is an iconic image of the product itself, which is projected as being disproportionately large. Underneath this image of the product are the words: 'Essence Of Freedom,' and together these separate components form an effective and unified message.
On a simple level it is easy to deduce two obvious things. Firstly, that the subject, (the image of the man) provides a youthful element of glamour, and secondly, that the image of the sand dune is a physical reiteration of the product name.

However, the more interesting semiotic elements of the ad exist within its notion of freedom, which is the ad's primary signified concept.
The notion of freedom is conveyed by the image of this lone man; who, in his lonesome location; seems extremely at ease, and unrestricted by normal life, thus providing a sense of liberation which is also conveyed by his loose, unorthodox, clothing. The softly focused quality of the photography, and the colouring of gentle blues and pale browns are further signifiers which contribute to this dreamy, utopian image of liberation.

 However, these images alone certainly do not convey this central signified concept. This happens only by the inclusion of the advertisements of the statement: 'essence of freedom.' Thus, a strong relationship is allowed to be forged between the 'signifiers,' (the photographic image of the protagonist and his physical environment) and the 'signified' which is the linguistically expressed 'essence of freedom.

Kings Speech
Posters are another part of the marketing campaign designed to introduce an audience to the film. Displayed in cinemas, bus stops, railway stations or on billboards they are designed to catch the eye and convey a range of information to attract the viewer.

 It's important to remember that movie posters are advertisements. The goal of a poster essentially is to "sell" the movieto make you want to see it. How does it do that? The poster may have the movie title in a big and bold font. Images of the movie's attractive actors are usually featured.

 In addition, the actors' names are probably included somewhere on the poster to remind you that the movie has big-name stars. Designs, colors, and fonts are used to appropriately reflect the mood and tone of the film. And the poster probably includes a catchy sentence or slogan that heightens your interest and makes the plot seem intriguing.

Framing The positioning of objects, actors, and text within the frame of a poster to achieve a particular effect. For example, a movie poster for an action film might feature the main actor framed in such a way as to make him seem attractive, strong, and invincible. Mood The feeling created for a viewer by the director's use of details, music, and cinematography. Slogan A catchy and memorable phrase or sentence on a movie poster. An effective slogan should convey the mood, tone, and main idea of the film without giving too much away. It should capture viewers' attention and make them interested in the story. Tone The filmmaker's attitude as reflected in the movieironic, serious, and so forth.

Texts as syntagmatic structures

The syntagmatic analysis of a text (whether it is verbal or non-verbal) involves studying its structure and the relationships between its parts. Semioticians seek to identify elementary constituent segments within the text - its syntagms.

 Whilst narrative is based on sequential (and causal) relationships (e.g. in film and television narrative sequences), there are also syntagmatic forms based on spatial relationships (e.g. montage in posters and photographs, which works through juxtaposition) and on conceptual relationships (such as in exposition or argument)

 Many texts contain more than one type of syntagmatic structure, though one may be dominant.

Spatial syntagmatic relations include: above/below, in front/behind, close/distant, left/right (which can also have sequential significance), north/south/east/west, and inside/outside (or centre/periphery).

 Exposition relies on the conceptual structure of argument or description. The structure of an argument involves three basic elements: a proposition or series of propositions; evidence; justifications.

 How is the information structured? What could you say about the balance between image and text? Taking both posters together, consider how elements such as colour, message, image and layout give the viewer a sense of the films subject matter, genre and style.

 CHARACTERISATION The film focuses on the professional and personal relationship between Prince Albert, or Bertie (later to become King George Vl), and Lionel Logue, his speech therapist. Look closely at how these two characters are portrayed in the film poster :

 Examine how the following elements are designed to convey character, status and relationships: positioning, costume, body language, expression, gaze.

 List any background information a viewer/reader will need. Describe the film. What is the basic plot? What are the key moments of change? What is the setting and time period? List any necessary background on the characters. For example, describe the main characters using demographic characteristics (age, class, education, gender, ethnicity, etc.), supporting your points with evidence. List the values or themes supported in the film (gender roles, definitions of success, moral/ethical arguments, standards of beauty or happiness, etc.), including the consequences of the characters actions. Use specific examples as evidence. Describe the intended audience for the film, using demographic characteristics. What evidence led you to conclude this group was the intended audience? State what this film reveals about contemporary culture: values, goals, acceptable roles in society, etc. List evidence to support your conclusions.

AUDIENCE ANALYSIS

 Media theory is committed to the integrated analysis of production, texts, and audiences. Although the importance of all three elements of the media system has never been in doubt, the analysis of production and texts has often been of primary concern, while analysis of the interpretative activities of audiences has until recently been neglected, or taken for granted within media studies

 Audience reception theory aims to rectify this tendency. Audience reception research is rendering audiences 'visible' within media and communication studies

The Early Intuitive Model of Audience Understanding

Under this approach, the subjective, often instinctive, judgments of content producers, distributors, and exhibitors regarding audience tastes, preferences, and reactions were the primary mechanisms via which organizational decisions were made

 E.g Harry Cohn, President of Columbia Pictures in the 1930s and 40s, who claimed he had a foolproof method for predicting the success of a movie: If my fanny squirms, its bad. If my fanny doesnt squirm, its good

 Similarly, historical accounts of the newspaper industry emphasize how decision-making regarding news content was driven largely via the application of the news values and editorial judgment cultivated within the journalistic profession, with the audience existing as a somewhat distant abstraction from the standpoint of journalists and editors

 The result of this approach was frequent information vacuums in terms of the nature of the interaction between content and audience.

 Economic conditions for these early mass media were relatively favorable created little demand for more rigorous empirical analyses to guide strategic decision-making Most motion picture executives were content to let product improvement and sales policies rest on their intuitive insight of what the public wanted, rather than on direct contact with the consumer

Early Steps Beyond the Intuitive Model

early media organizations were not completely lacking in information about their audiences, nor was the relationship between media organizations and their audiences a pure one-way, one-to-many model.

 Early motion picture audience researchers, for instance, were well aware that box office figures could not be interpreted purely as an indicator of a films audience appeal, as these figures could be a function of other factors such as advertising and promotional strategies

 Other feedback mechanisms, such as audience correspondence with the content provider Movie studios, for instance, would measure and weigh the amount of fan mail received by their performers and deduce from its increase or decrease the rise or fall in the popularity of the recipient. Most of the studios had dedicated fan mail departments to organize the mail according to the writers estimated age, gender, and geographic location

 In the early days of radio, stations utilized a variety of approaches to providing advertisers with audience estimates....

- mapping the stations coverage area against the areas population size and demographic data - gathering data on the number of radios sold in a listening area

 No concrete information about the size or composition of the actual listening audience; rather, they simply provided a rough estimate

Early Stages of Rationalization

1930s - a key starting point in the progression to more rationalized approaches to audience understanding

Great Depression - key driver in the development of marketing, advertising, and audience research, as media organizations, found themselves under pressure to provide tangible evidence that money was being spent logically and effectively

 Another important cultural shift taking place during this period involved the transition from a production culture to a consumption culture.

This transition brought with it the need for goods manufacturers to know much more about their potential consumers, how best to identify and reach them, and how best to appeal to them

The Integration of Specialized Knowledge and Skills

This process of the rationalization of audience understanding involved the integration of new types of professionals into the operation of the media organizations obviously those with strong research backgrounds and/or quantitative analytical skills

 Psychologists became increasingly integrated into the work of advertising agencies Renowned public opinion pollster George Gallup (a psychologist by training) spent the early part of his career conducting newspaper audience research

 Paul Lazarsfelds survey research work played an integral role in the development of many areas of commercial audience research His work with the Lazarsfeld-Stanton Program Analyzer, a device that was used to gather and aggregate data on audience appreciation for media products ranging from radio and television programs to motion pictures

 The program analyzer was used within the motion picture industry to re-edit films, as well as to determine general likes and dislikes of various audience segments in order to guide future production decisions Extensions of the analyzer, such as the Cirlin Reactograph were employed by motion picture industry research organizations

 Magazine publishing now included demographic and behavioral characteristics of magazine readers. Also the beginnings of the systematic charting and reporting of the popularity of recorded music

1940s
emphasis on scientific, objective analysis - pre-testing of completed films-the pretesting of film titles and concepts, survey research examining the popularity of individual stars

Audience Fragmentation
Audiences have changed as the physically contiguous mass spectatorship of the eighteenth century theatre or show shifted to the spatially separated 'virtual' mass of audiences in the 19th and 20th century. Dividing various main views of consumer research into economical, psychological and sociological approaches. -The economical approach is based on neoclassical thinking which views consumption as utility

- The psychological consumer research is dominated by the cognitive approach which emphasizes the structures of perception, memory and attitudes.

Lean back and lean forward

The views on audience and media consumption have oscillated between two poles: Theories at one pole stress the power of media and cultural industry and see the audience relatively passive and powerless (lean back) Among the passive views on audience could be counted the MCR tradition of the early Communication research. This approach views the receiver, the audience, as the end point of the communication process. Against this, at the other pole, there are a variety of approaches that emphasize media consumption as active process (lean forward).

 According to this view the media consumers do not only actively select from the media products at hands, but also use and decode the meanings of the media contents in different ways.

Target group in marketing

Marketing management theory divides target marketing often in three stages: segmenting of the markets, targeting, and positioning Market segmentation means that the whole market is divided in relatively homogeneous groups that are users of similar products and services.

 Market segmentation can be done with several variables: region (such as country, culture), demographics (age, life cycle, gender, family/household structure, social class, income, profession, education, religion, citizenship), psychographics (life style, personality) and behavioral segmentation (occasions, benefits, user status, loyalty, attitude).

 The notion of target group refers to groups of consumers that have some common characteristics relating to their consumption behaviour.

 Solomon, Bomossy and Askegaard (1999) divide the contemporary consumer research paradigms in to positivist and interpretative approaches. The positivist approach is based belief that scientific research can discover and uncover the objective truth.

 The interpretative approach emphasizes the symbolic and subjective experience and believes that the meanings are socially, culturally and historically constructed. It lays stress on the differences among consumers and different ways of experiencing consumption.

 Positivist view of the consumer-audience is still dominant in marketing, whereas the various interpretative approaches have become established in audience studies of communication research and sociology.

 Cultural audience research may be further divided in three stages: reception studies, media ethnography and constructionism . The reception studies were launched by Stuart Halls (1974) legendary idea on encoding and decoding which emphasizes the sending and receiving of messages as active process.

The floating audience

Nico Carpentier (2004) views the audience as a floating signifier that is articulated in different ways in different discourses in research and practice. Often the views on audience, and on consumer as well, have been thought only on the dimension of active/passive. Carpentier develops even further more complex dimensions of audience: the dimensions of public/private, micro/macro and community/society.

 The theories of the micro dimension lay emphasis on individual differences in terms of viewing, reading or listening experience. The macro theories usually view the audience as mass, market or public. Audience as mass does not necessarily have to mean that the audience is seen as passive and manipulated. But the mass may be seen as critical mass that acts and exercises power independently, even though it may be unorganised.

 The new paradigm of cultural studies took influences from linguistics and psychoanalysis. In Ethnographic studies, Media use was studied from the perspective of the lived experience of the members of the culture or social group. The main question was how people use media as part of their every day life.

Ethnography and realism

An ethnographic approach intends that the researcher enters into a close and long-term relationship with people being researched in order to understand their behavior more accurately. There are differing underlying philosophies associated with ethnographic research: Realism looks for a reality that is independent from the researcher where the aim of research is to produce accounts corresponding to that reality. Constructivism is a strand of ethnography that pushes in a different direction. Constructivism believes that people construct the social world through interpretations and actions based upon those interpretations.

 Ethnographers dont merely attempt to represent an independent reality, but create a representation of a social world that is no more or less true than the ones that they are studying. Concepts of realism or relativism:

Realism
Surface realism also known as getting the details right or making it look real. Looking at texts in terms of locations, or setting, or costumes and props, or even the right accent spoken by a character. Inner or emotional realism of characters. The audience knows the character and identifies with him or her because the character behaves in a realistic way or says the right thing, or shows an identifiable response or emotion. Plausibility of the narrative or plot. What happens in the text is credible could happen in real life. (If the plot is too far-fetched or out of character then the audience wont accept it. (Look at the Harry Potter films and ask exactly why the very unreal events succeed in capturing the audiences imagination. Harry Potters world is utterly unreal, but its made to seem to be real How is this done?) Technical codes and symbols corresponding with what is expected and recognised by the audience. (like background music, canned laughter, computer SFX, Dolby surround sound) If it sounds right, its real, even if it isnt.

 Depending on the form or the genre, the audience will apply something called a MODALITY JUDGEMENT, which is Mediaspeak for is this the right or wrong way of representing reality in this text.

 Relativism is how we perceive something in relation to rules or norms. For example when you look at a girl and how she is dressed. Because she is wearing certain type of clothes does not make her a stereotype, but because of our society, what we see and think is what we believe is true. Social/cultural/political relativism

Framing
Framing is used to describe the manner in which we as human beings package messages in order to bring about a particular interpretation in the receiver

Framing
Framing has a long history in the social sciences generally. We could identify strands of thought starting from Goffmans (1974) concept of frames that define social situations; or from Tversky and Kahnemans (1981) work on the design of positive or negative message frames and their influence on decision-making

 [t]o frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation."

 The most relevant to media psychology is the work of Bransford and Johnson (1972), whose experiments demonstrated the increase in recall and comprehension when a picture is presented as a meaningful aid to understanding an otherwise disconnected set of sentences. For e.g the impact of visual images on the reader of a newspaper or website, or the viewer of a television news bulletin.

 Entman specified four stages to his analysis: agency (who is doing what to whom), identification (with people in the stories), categorization (for example, the use of adjectives), and generalization (to other news stories, long-standing debates and so on).

 One more could be a the narrative, because many persuasive media texts borrow heavily from formulaic styles of storytelling in the local culture and unraveling these should be a key component of the framing analysis.

 The agency stage could be extended to incorporate a study of dramatis personae effectively drawing up a cast list of the characters that populate the human drama unfolding in the various media

Discursive Cues
Discourse analysis is a way of evaluating the use of language, and when this process is used to investigate psychological themes, it is known as discursive psychology (DP).

 The actual words spoken by an individual, intonations in speech, gestures, and other nonverbal cues are all important aspects of discourse that are analyzed and interpreted. Even the relationship between the speaker and the subject of the statement, or the speaker and the listener can influence discourse. These are called discursive cues.

 Frames are the discursive cues, consciously or not, used to evoke, or align, its message with certain pre-existing understandings Frames have at least four locations in the communication process; the communicator, the text, the receiver, and the culture

 1) Frames define problems determine what a causal agent is doing with the costs and benefits are, usually measured in terms of common cultural values. 2) Diagnose causes identity the forces creating the problem. 3) Make moral judgments evaluate causal agents and their effects. 4) Suggest remedies offer and typify treatments for the problems and predict their likely effects.

Frame Viability
Narrative Fidelity and Empirical Credibility One of the most important viability attributes of frames is their narrative fidelity, that is, the congruence of a frame with the life experience of its addressees For e.g , city residents faced with pollution/smoke, will easily pick up on the notion that industrial development is threatening the "natural" balance of the ecosystem. In contrast, invisible risks such as radioactivity require a more elaborate mediation of the same framework, as they cannot be directly observed and play practically no role in the everyday life of most people.

 Even if individuals cannot directly relate a frame to their personal experiences, empirical credibility the fit between a frame and real world events plays a major role in the acceptance of a frame

 It denotes the ease with which audiences reconcile a frame with what they consider their experiences, which can even be derived from mass media discourses. For e.g the Bhopal Gas tragedy has rendered the risk frame more credible, even with those audiences not directly affected by the disaster.

Identifying frames in the news

One approach is inductive in nature and refrains from analyzing media texts with apriori defined media frames in mind. Frames emerge from the material during the course of analysis. A second approach is rather deductive in nature and investigates frames that are defined and operationalized prior to the investigation.

Researchers supporting the inductive approach talk about certain criteria that a frame must meet. First, a news frame must have identifiable conceptual and linguistic characteristics. Second, it must be possible to distinguish the frame reliably from other frames.

Third, a frame must have representational validity (i.e. be recognized by others) and not be merely a figment of a researchers imagination

 When working with a deductive approach, the relevant question is: what (which components) in a media text constitutes a frame? Entman suggested that frames in the media text can be examined and identified by the presence or absence of certain keywords, stock phrases, stereotyped images, sources of information etc

 Other researchers identify framing devices that condense information and offer a media package of an issue. They identify (1) metaphors, (2) catch-phrases, (3) depictions, and (4) visual images as framing devices.

Framing mechanism or focal points for identifying and measuring news frames:
1. headlines 2. subheads 3. photos 4. photo captions 5. leads 6. source selection 7. quotes selection 8. pull quotes 9. logos 10. statistics and charts, and 11. concluding statements and paragraphs

Framing War and Peace Journalism stories

WAR JOURNALISM APPROACH
PEACE JOURNALISM APPROACH

Reactive Visible effects of war Differences-oriented Focuses on here and now Dichotomizes the good and bad Two-party orientation Stops reporting and leaves after war WAR JOURNALISM LANGUAGE Uses victimizing language Uses demonizing language Uses emotive language

Proactive Invisible effects of war Agreement-oriented Causes and consequences of war Avoids labeling of good and bad Multiparty orientation Stays on to report aftermath of war PEACE JOURNALISM LANGUAGE Avoids victimizing language Avoids demonizing Avoids emotive language

Frame Taxonomy
Generic Frames (Journalistic Schemes) Studies of journalistic practices have shown that the routinizing element of the profession have produced general patterns in news stories. These patterns are usually called "generic frames" or "structural themes", or "content frames"

 episodic and issue-oriented (thematic) framing Issue-oriented frames embed issues in their wider context and focus on issues and policies. In contrast, episodic frames, which are far more common in news discourses, focus on events and persons and divorce issues from their wider context.

 Episodic framing depicts concrete events that illustrate issues, while thematic framing presents collective or general evidence. E.g- subjects who viewed stories about poverty that featured homeless or unemployed people (episodic framing) were much more likely to blame poverty on individual failings, such as laziness or low education, than were those who instead watched stories about high national rates of unemployment or poverty (thematic framing). Viewers of the thematic frames were more likely to attribute the causes and solutions to governmental policies and other factors beyond the victim's control.

 Master frames and Meta narratives Meta narratives (authors voice) are critical for identity building. - an abstract idea that is thought to be a comprehensive explanation of historical experience or knowledge Meta = about Narrative = a story constructed in a sequential fashion

 The identification of empirical instances of metanarratives is called master frames (McAdams,1994)

e.g. for analyzing international media coverage/hype surrounding the effectiveness of cancer therapy drug Herceptin

Articles coded for four framing variables : one general frame, based on the perspective from which the story was written (i.e., individualistic/patient-focused vs. broader society), and three drug-specific thematic frames (efficacy, costs and the funding approval process).

A typical media analysis can answer the following questions:

What is the primary media frame? (taxonomy) How do the media frame public discussion of an issue (by repeating various story elements, using common metaphors, quoting similar people, etc.)? (framing devices) Who are the main spokespeople on a particular topic, and how are they being quoted? Are they mainly advocates, policymakers, academic experts, etc.? (episodic framing) How often are various spokespeople quoted and in what context? What topics are being covered, and what topics are being ignored? (issue-oriented framing)

 Which outlets are covering or ignoring an issue or organization that they should be covering? Is there a time of year when an issue or organization is more likely to be covered than others? Is a topic or organization front-page news, and if not, where in the paper is that topic or organization covered? Which reporters are writing on this issue/organization? What messages are being used?

Master Frame

 choose a high profile event and examining the reporting of it in different media outlets across the world

 Develop search terms (low-wage workers) Craft a list of different labels most commonly used in reference to low-wage workers (such as low-income worker, low-wage worker, working poor etc). Set time-frame Classified stories by type-- opinion, news, or feature.

 Opinion pieces can be letters to the editor, opeds, columns, or editorials. News pieces are straightforward articles which report on the latest events in the world. Feature stories are usually more in-depth pieces, sometimes lighter pieces, and often profile stories.

 It is important to take note of where each story ran in the newspaper or magazine. Observe if a story ran on the front page, the national, international, business, or metro section, or if it was published in the lifestyles, arts, sports, or a special section. Editors make important decisions regarding where to place each story, and these decisions should be noted for each article.

 Important to analyze when stories ran. Coverage of certain issues is tied to the calendar.

Look at story topics. Topics show how an issue is being covered. Leads to Framing Dimensions

Spokesperson Analysis Whoever is quoted about a particular issue within a news story has increased impact on how that issue is portrayed to the public. Usually spokespeople fall into the following categories, although categories vary depending on the focus of the analysis: advocates, business leaders/professionals, public/government officials, members of the general public, and academics. One should tally which groups are quoted most often, along with how many people in each group are quoted, and create a chart to help analyze why some groups are quoted more than others.