Reading: Audiences and Effects

Thursday 10th March, 2011 - 11:23am with 0 comments

Subject: Audiences, Users, Publics, Communities
Reading: Burton, G. (2010). Audiences and effects: defining audiences and exploring their relationships with texts. Media and society: Critical perspectives. Maidenhead, UK, Open University Press: 82-107. Esp. p.102.

• transmission model for media: unqualified effects on the audience
• institutions generate texts, texts generate meanings and meanings affect audiences
• dynamic process model: parts standing in a more equal relationship with one another
• media remake versions of society but are themselves shaped by forces within that society
• ethnography: examines relationships between media/audience
• narrowcasting: film not just about theatres, music not just about CD sales
• audience – a coherent term
• large, small, general and specialised audiences
• consumer, user, receiver, participant, social being, etc.
• audience becomes a commodity to be bought and sold
• audience defined in terms of preference hence interests
• active audience – audience can clean house or eat while they ‘watch’ television; active in changing channels and using technology
• people motivated in their ‘needs’ with text, be it personal, social or informational
• reading audience – in a state of engagement
• preferred reading: preferred by the producer
• alternative reading: produces meanings not intended by producer but don’t challenge the dominant meaning
• oppositional reading challenges dominance and applies intellectual autonomy in the reader
• macro: quantitative
• micro: qualitative (ethnography)
• attitude change – orientation
• cognitive change – values/beliefs
• affective change – emotions
• agenda setting – through news material, prioritised set of issues for public sphere and denying importance of other issues
• moral panics – anxieties about given social groups, behaviour or phenomena
• socialisation: setting norms
• reality formation: what constitutes ‘the real’
• social control – law and order
• endorsement of ideology – dominant values

Posted on: Thursday, March 10th, 2011 at 11:23 am
Categories: University
Tags: Audiences · Communities · media · Publics · readings · Users
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