Audiences

Question 1

Reception Theory

Answer 1

Stuart Hall
- meaning in media texts is created through the interaction between the text and the audience
- there are three ways for an audience to decode messages: preferred reading, negotiated reading or oppositional reading
- viewers interpret media content based on their own experiences, beliefs, and social contexts

Question 2

Cultivation Theory

Answer 2

George Gerbner
- prolonged and repeated exposure to the media can shape perceptions of reality
- viewers of media are likely to adopt beliefs or attitudes that are represented in the media through a distorted version of reality, especially with violence and social stereotypes
- media cultivates a shared, but often unrealistic, worldview that influences how people understand their environment and society

Question 3

Media Effects

Answer 3

Albert Bandura
- media can implant ideas into the mind of the audience directly
- audiences aquire attitudes, emotional responses and new styles of conduct through modelling

Question 4

Fandom

Answer 4

Henry Jenkins
- fans are active participants in the construction and circulation of textual meanings
- fans appropriate texts and read them in ways that are not fully authorised by the media (textual poaching)
- fans can construct their social identities through borrowing and inflecting mass culture images
- audiences are part of a participatory culture that has vital social dimension

Question 5

End of Audiences

Answer 5

Clay Shirky
- internet and digital technologies have had an effect on the relationship between media and individuals
- audiences are now passive consumers of mass media content
- audiences are no longer tenable in the age of the internet
- consumers can now ‘speak back’ to the media, as well as creating and sharing content with others