Audience Studies Blog Page

[kylebathfilm3p18]

Chapter 9

Chapter 9 closes off our discussion on the condition of audiences and media in a modern context in order to connect back to the beginning of this blog with the discussions on using media realms to generate content. People are now surpassing the conventional and now extinct method of becoming a cultural icon and instead can become a household name over night with the aid of social networks. This is the outcome of the proliferation of media infrastructures that enables users to navigate the World Wide Web easily and effectively thus, to circulate information more rapidly and proficiently. People are no longer simply passive users as the chance to create and influence media is granted. Alvin Toffler termed this position 'prosumers', suggesting that people are becoming the voices of products and have the ability to advocate the success or loss of corporations, products and brands (Sullivan, p. 215). Using social media, the promotion is performed by influencers, bloggers and essentially network users who use their voice to spread messages, persuade others and push demand. The Kombucha girl legally known as Brittany Broski became a viral sensation on TikTok because audiences found her video and shared it across social media.

The video circulated millions of views and generated a flood of memes that can be described as a form of textual poaching since the viral video has been re-built and re-circulated in ways different from the original edition.

Audience autonomy is a term that explains how the features added to media systems help to increase the degree of audience power over the media consumption process (Sullivan, p. 217). Via these social networking networks, consumers gain power of media consumption, allowing people to generate content produced by them and then share it across channels that transcend space and time. The textbook brings up the World of Warcraft example as a type of media produced primarily by its consumers. With the highly popular multiplayer video game, Fortnite, a more modernised form of this sort of user-generated content can be exemplified. Three distinct game modes are offered to users when playing the video game however, all three modes give users the ability to play with others in a virtual environment that enables them to create their own settings and battle arenas. What the game manufacturers have done so brilliantly and what makes the game a roaring success is their acknowledgment of online influencers (prosumers) and how they promote and ultimately further the company's success. Gamers are not only part of the community, but also the producers and marketers of Fortnite's content. The dances and emotes that users can buy with real cash are a nice addition to the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe2cE-eVhtg

Fortnite transforms common movements from popular culture, as shown in the above video, and converts them into a visual asset, which is then a prize that players will earn for their contribution and involvement to the game. Crowdsourcing is the act of using a network of entities to build company goods that would normally be performed by the company (Sullivan, p. 225) which is exactly what the creators of Fortnite have incorporated. The game is influenced by popular media trends and uploads the phenomena into the game, helping to sustain its success among users.

The video games success can also be credited to famous YouTubers who broadcast themselves playing the game for audiences to watch, which leads me to my next point in the emergence of a modern technological world where interactivity actually occurs. The digital media landscape enables users to create a participatory society in which, thanks to three patterns classified by Henry Jenkins, audiences have the liberty to create and circulate content. 1) Audiences are able to record, collect and recirculate mediated content 2) subcultures and their desire to produce media content and 3) the economic trends that favour the flow of pictures, thoughts and narratives across different platforms (Sullivan, p. 219). YouTube is a website that promotes a participatory community to a large degree, since it is an online forum for users to post and distribute content on the internet that virtually anyone can connect to and enjoy. As seen in a 2009 research report, the most popular accounts on YouTube are those created by ordinary vloggers known as YouTubers, making the rival industrial mass media networks fall second.

In conclusion, audiences have evolved from a 'null' state which saw them has only activated when subjected to media messages to key features in the production and distribution of content that consumes media platforms. In the 21st century, audiences can effectively build material that helps them to make sense of their world and position within it. I hope you have enjoyed learning about audiences and their impacts on media throughout this blog series.

References

Sullivan, J. L. (2020). History and Concept of the Audience. Media audiences: Effects, users, institutions, and power, p.

[kylebathfilm3p18]

Chapter 8

If there is one thing that is shared amongst all humans – it is our shared association with being a fan of something whether it is Led Zeppelin, the Stars Wars franchise, fantasy novels or Hello Kitty, it is human nature for us to pursue happiness and find enjoyment in different facets of life. It is important to put the concept of fandom in a historical context in order to address the subject of fan culture. In the early ages, being a fan of something was subjected to derogatory connotations, as the term was short for a fanatic which referred to a servant or devotee who belonged to a religious temple that was characterized by extreme enthusiasm (Sullivan, p. 192). Interestingly enough, Sullivan argues that the origin of the term 'fanatic' contributed significantly to derogatory stereotyping of fandoms, depicting those who engaged as “misguided at best and delusional at worst” (p. 193). With the 1980 assassination of John Lennon by a so-called follower of the singer, this belief of fandoms only intensified worse. Henry Jenkins, an American media scholar who observed fan culture concluded that this degree of fandom emerged from certain people being unable to distinguish the imagination of media texts from the facts of life and as a result, leads to a variety of negative circumstances (Sullivan, p. 193).

In a more contemporary context with help of the internet, the word 'fan' has outgrown its negative connotations to become a very nuanced term. Along with other constructions of our lives, fandoms have also developed a hierarchy in which even in the same fandom, individuals are split into multiple hierarchies based on their degree of involvement. This classification is considered the Continuum of Fandom where fans whom love the same media text or material in create a continuum or hierarchy within the fandom based on the levels in which they actively engage and participate in the fandom.

The first level begins with the consumer who simply consumes the media and that is how far their engagement goes. The second degree is enthusiast, where individuals begin to demonstrate a greater respect for the creation of the media, such as taking to public discussion forums to engage in dialogue with other like-minded individuals. The third level is known as the fan, which sees an individual analyze the text within its boundaries and brings their conversations of the media to more secluded spaces that go beyond “clubs” or fan pages. Fans have achieved the stage of emotional and analytical engagement with the media thus enabling them to emote extreme emotions. The final stage in the continuum is producer which moves away from passive actions to becoming active creators who re-interpret media content and create their own community within the subculture through the appropriating and remixing of popular culture content. Individuals in the producer level will often contribute to a career in which they create and sell fan fiction down to the lower end of the continuum.

           I have an example of when I was a producer of a fandom that I actively held for several years. Back in 2015, I collaboratively managed a Lana Del Rey fan account on Twitter where I helped to post updates on the artist. The account allowed users to exchange information which was then incorporated into the collected data available for the public. Within this time period of being a producer, I turned my fan activity into a profession and created merchandise that I myself produced and marketed the products to the general public. I was also able to build a strong network of friends who shared common passions as me which is a great aspect to being involved in a fandom because it gives people a sense of belonging that they are not alone in their interest and energy to a particular media text.

Fan culture, in addition, will generate movements that criticize institutional producers. An example of this is seen with the hit Netflix series, Stranger Things (2016–) which in an analysis found that the show interested consumers by the second episode of the first season which contributed to over 70% of viewers to complete the entire first installment (Pouls & Gilpin, 2019). With this, viewers were enraged when fan favourite character Barb was vanished in episode two and never returned. Hashtags such as #JusticeforBarb and #ImWithBarb began to spread across social networks after the series release along with several fan sites created solely in support of Barb. She did not return in the second season however; the Duffer Brothers used the movement on social media “Justice for Barb” as inspiration with characters in the showing displaying the same behaviours and fans ultimately receiving justice for the characters arc. This scenario illustrates the influence that members of the public have when it comes to the media industry, again blurring the distinction between media producers and viewers.

References

Pouls, S. & Gilpin, D. (2019). Socially mediated Stranger Things: Audience cultures and full-season releases. Southwestern Mass Communication Journal, 34(2), 1-11. 

[kylebathfilm3p18]

Chapter 7

This portion of the textbook inspired me to take a deep look at how my daily life is embedded in the media I use. I have addressed my uses and gratifications that emerge from me using media however, for this chapter I wanted to turn my attention to some of the undesirable effects that media and its technologies have on my domestic and personal life. My family and I used to interact collectively with the TV in the living room or as we called it the "family room" before the advancements in widespread digitalization and individualized technology devices. The space allowed everyone to come together as a family, watch television programmes that we were all interested in and caused us to maintain our social interaction with each other as we all lived busy lives during the daytime with school and work. My family and I would surround ourselves in the family room every Wednesday night at 9PM to watch Modern Family episodes and it quickly became a ritual amongst the household. Another example was with the show The Walking Dead which aired on Sunday nights at 9PM. Although our Sunday curfew was 8PM due to school being the next day, my parents would allow my siblings and I stay up to collectively watch the show as we were all a fan, and this continued with the spin-off show Fear the Walking Dead. These viewing traditions in my family no longer occur due to a number of reasons which made me interested in looking at how the advent of digital media technology has altered the forms in which media material is consumed in the domestic setting.

Media innovations have reshaped all aspects of our lives and has managed to overthrow the leisure time that was once spent as a family in most households, including my own. Mackay and Ivey’s 2004 ethnographic study on the use of media inside the home contributes to this argument by recording that people are much more likely to interact with media in privatized spaces, such as their bedroom, which relates to the findings of scholar Sonia Livingstone in her 1997 analysis on the same subject where she coins the term ‘bedroom culture’ which applies to the isolated area where the bulk of family members spend their time (Sullivan, p. 172-73). In my own household setting, this phenomenon is apparent as we all use media predominantly in our own bedrooms rather than in spaces together. This isolation is attributed to the rise in media technology and portable and human technologies, i.e. laptops and smartphones that are of personal use. Every bedroom in my house is connected to a smart TV, which has access to streaming video channels all on one screen and can also be paired to other media devices. Streaming services such as Crave and Netflix have a significant influence on the downturn of family gathering as they allow thousands of different shows to be watched at any time and location with user profiles. No longer do humans have to watch programs on cable television at a specific timeslot – streaming services have introduced a new way of viewing content that works at their own discretion. We now binge in our rooms instead of viewing television as a family in a common space and now we ask, “Have you watched Stranger Things yet? No? You must start! I binged it within a day.” As streaming channels continue to reign the supreme form of content viewing with no indication of stopping, the challenge to connect and communicate inside the domestic space becomes increasingly more difficult.

It is worth noting that a prominent aspect of mobile technology is its power to connect you with friends and relatives, however the devices have only reduced the level of contact among family units in several studies and within my own personal experience. As a family, we connect more frequently through cyberspace than face-to-face and quite often the contact is done by commenting on a post either created or shared. Facebook is a social networking platform that has been adopted by my parents into their everyday activities and has managed to help them feel connected to my siblings and I as our generation is more tech savvy and committed to using social networks to share aspects of our lives. With the potential for media to be portable, digital technologies offers an avenue to escape and remove oneself from human contact therefore, working to enhance the social relation within the family structure is more crucial than ever. I delved internally into my use of technology when writing this blog and was able to see how it plays a large part in the lack of contact that has shifted in my household. As a result, I called my mother to suggest things we could do as a family over the holidays which will increase the quality of family time spent such as game nights and movies, which are activities that have been missing in my household for quite some time due to the chaos of life combined with personal technology devices that results in the weakening of a families bond and feelings of comfort, trust and most profoundly, love.

References

Sullivan, J. L. (2020). History and Concept of the Audience. Media audiences: Effects, users, institutions, and power, p.

[kylebathfilm3p18]

Chapter 6

This chapter discusses how people interpret and respond to facets of media content. The chapter gives attention to the model of communication established by Stuart Hall and for this section, I will address how individuals make sense of the material they want to absorb by applying it to discourses on film and television. Hall argues that all communication exchanges result in a procedure of encoding and decoding. In relation to the film and television business, producers create material that is encoded with signals and ideals which are in turn deciphered by their audiences in various ways within their own contexts that differ from the initially intended message depending on the plethora of cultural experiences and understanding of the encoded signs and codes.

In his 1980 essay titled Encoding/Decoding, Stuart Hall explains three distinct ways in which viewers decode texts. The first way audiences might comprehend a text is to acknowledge and comply with what is being conveyed by taking the intended meaning created by the messenger. This method of decoding refers to taking a dominant hegemonic position and is only plausible if the person is able to connect to the represented themes and grasp and obey the messages communicated. For example, director D.W. Griffith’s movie The Birth of a Nation (1915) about the return home of a Confederate soldier after the Civil War and his role in generating the Ku Klux Klan generated a lot of interest amongst the white community as America witnessed an intensified anti-immigrant stance during that time that draws parallels with current relationships of the country to immigrants with the presidency of Donald Trump. The film is one of the earliest blockbusters in America, with white fans complacent with the racist messages that were presented and believing them as historical reality. The video clip below is one example of the sorts of messages and stereotypes that the film spread to the mass public.

As presented in the clip, black men were projected as monstrous and a threat to humanity as he is shown chasing down a young innocent white woman. As this film was celebrated by white viewers for its portrayal of the Civil War and the South, a lot of backlash and riots across America were also encountered, correlating with the second decoding position known as oppositional reading. This type of decoding refers to the dismissal of the intended message by forming one’s own sense of what the text is representing. Implementing the same film example of The Birth of a Nation, riots and marches erupted when citizens disagreed with the messages being promoted. The film hired white actors to play black communities which allowed for the film to have complete control over their representation. Backlash ensued predominantly from African American communities who argued their culture was being presented in a negative and untruthful fashion to keep with the management of hegemonic ideologies. However, if large groups of citizens disagree with the desired interpretation of a media text, repercussions can occur as seen with the film being banned in several theatres as a direct result of the protests – thus giving power to the people. The third method of decoding is negotiated reading which is a variation of the two positions already described. Negotiated reading arises when the audience accepts perhaps some of the transmitted messages, but they still decipher the material with their own perceptions and viewpoints. This method relates to the audiences reception of the show Dexter where many of the viewers grasped the premise of the show but did not completely agree with the delivered messages on the basis of their own morals, as explained in the Granelli and Zenor article. Empathy with the protagonist is plausible while at the same time disagreeing with his behavior, as viewers of the show described, “Sometimes I feel bad enjoying this” (Granelli & Zenor, 2016). 

The encoding and decoding paradigm of Hall advanced the notion that audience members become more active participants in the circulation and consumption of media messages since they have the ability to construct their own meanings from media texts that can differ from what the producer intended since their ideals and beliefs may not align. For example, art is media form that communicates emotions, tells a story and conveys an intended message. The way you look at a piece by Jackson Pollock can vary from the way I view the artwork. Why is this? Well, because our perceptions, comprehension, conditioning and idiosyncrasies vary from human to human and due to this fact, we will react, evaluate and perceive stuff in ways that differ with each other and that's completely fine because it then opens the door for discussions. I want to finish this chapter with a video from the REACT YouTube channel that publishes videos of individuals responding to various media content. In this particular video, parents and their teenagers are reacting to popular TikTok stars. The ways in which audience members construe media can be affected by several variables, and this reaction video reveals that one's age is a major factor as different values, preferences and life experiences come with age. 

References

Granelli, S., & Zenor, J. (2016) Decoding “The Code”: Reception theory and moral judgment of Dexter. International Journal of Communication,10, 5056-5078.

Sullivan, J. L. (2020). History and Concept of the Audience. Media audiences: Effects, users, institutions, and power, p.

[kylebathfilm3p18]

Chapter 5

This chapter reflects significantly on the uses and gratifications theory that touches on how audiences engage with media without the control of outside influences. The concept suggests that people, creatively and knowingly, make their own choices about their exposure to media – an idea that was unheard of before the 20th century which used media and their mediums to objectify the public masses. Uses and gratifications theory was introduced in the 1940s as researchers became interested in why people preferred to use certain media communications over others. To explain particular media uses for audiences, theorist Elihu Katz proposed that audiences link their own common ideals, beliefs and needs to the media content and platforms in which they participate with. Each person has a collection of needs that they carry with them and hope to fulfill when engaging with media. When I was thinking of the ways that I participated with media, three main reasons came to mind: communication, information seeking and content creating. Each reason connects to one of the needs organized by Katz into social and psychological functions. My reason for using media as a way to communicate with others fits in with my social needs, seeking information belongs to cognitive needs and lastly, using media as a way to create content that can be spread across time and space fits in with affective needs which refers to needs which help to strengthen aesthetic, pleasurable and emotional experiences (Sullivan, p. 114). Although, I use media for entertainment purposes as well which would fit in the need for escapism from the real world which is a tool that film and television have mastered. In addition, the desire to enhance confidence and identity will also apply to aspects in which I interact with the media when I use social media platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat to show off parts of my life.

           The reasons I engage with media are based off psychological and social needs that can be provided, thus referring to the gratification part of the theory. My smartphone allows me to fulfill all of my gratifications which is why it is my main source for engaging with media. Scholars Fishbein and Ajzen formulated the theory expectancy-value, which suggests that people carry with them a variety of convictions and expectations when faced with a new situation or media technologies. For a number of years now, I have been an avid user of the smartphone and therefore, I know what to expect and the ways I can use the device to receive the specifics needs that were listed above. I have agency over the content that I engage with as I am in control over my smartphone and when I do come across content that I may not expect or particularly agree with, I am able to remove/block these types of situations with tools offered by media sites.

           With all the various distributed media platforms, the availability of information has never been greater and easier to obtain. I can go on the web to look for whatever my heart desires and find several sources that provide me with the knowledge needed to achieve educational results. My background in film and media studies has given me the knowledge to also seek out what sources are reliable and what is fabricated media. Secondly, my use of media for communicating is critical and is readily accessible through technology devices, which attain social networking sites that allow users not only to keep in contact with the world and loved ones but also to share ones own ideas and opinions on the issues and causes that are of interest. We now live in a modern digital technology universe that keeps people social and actively participant in becoming more than just consumers which connects to my third usage of media – the production of content. My affective needs are satisfied by producing content that I then can share on social network services for others to engage with such as with sites like YouTube where I would post videos that I filmed myself, Twitter where I would post funny memes that I created and with Tumblr where I post my own photography and poetry. These are all examples of media sites that allow me to create my own content that adds to the contribution and distribution of my emotional experiences and overall gratifications.

A screenshot of my personal Tumblr ^^

           Overall, the popular theory of uses and gratifications offers autonomy to members of the public rather than to institutions, and furthermore sees people as mindful of their personal media needs and of the decisions they make to gain certain particular satisfactions. The theory considers personal utility to be far more important than other influences that can be argued as lacking the effects that media and social contexts have on how people consume content, although I would suggest that the theory provides a range of claims over how modern-day audience members consume and perceive media which is important when looking at audiences-as-agents.

References

Sullivan, J. L. (2020). History and Concept of the Audience. Media audiences: Effects, users, institutions, and power, p.

[kylebathfilm3p18]

Audience Studies (3P18) Introduction

Hello and welcome to my blog post! My name is Kyle and I am a student majoring in film studies at Brock University. The purpose of this blog is to discuss all things pertaining to audiences. While we live in a rather peculiar time to which audiences (the way we knew of them) do not seem to exist much at all due to the global pandemic, this blog will focus on how audiences prior to 2020 have operated in relation to the media. The theoretical ideas and approaches that are to be mentioned will be supported with the textbook Media Audiences: Effects, Users, Institutions, and Power by John L. Sullivan, assigned articles and with the help of real-world examples and my own personal experiences. Hopefully, by the end of this blog you will have a better understanding on the many ways audiences effect and are effected by different mediums.

[kylebathfilm3p18]

Chapter 1

Throughout the entirety of this blog, audiences will be discussed and analyzed at great lengths starting from the earliest stage of introduction to the 21st century world that we live in today where there are thousands of audiences happening simultaneously due to mass media. To begin, the textbook written by John Sullivan provides two distinct views of the term “audience” which differ in their perspective on the communication process. The first analysis is known as a transmission view of communication which emphasizes the verbal transaction that occurs between audiences and highlights the transportation of messages and their content. The idea that communication is a procedure of transmitting intentional messages to a large audience for the purpose of control. In every act of communication there is always a creator who produces and sends the messages through a channel which reaches people either interpersonally or massively who as a result, become the receiver(s).

An example of this notion in motion can be seen with political leaders who spread, transmit and circulate knowledge, ideas and information with goals of controlling the population and space at a much more rapid pace than before due to the introduction of social media which has affected the ways people consume and perceive political content. This shift has radically altered how government institutions and political world leaders operate and communicate their messages. New media has challenged the political system and made the public rethink the role of journalists. Since the beginning of print media, these sources have served as essential parts to democratic society and its participation. Audience structures and agency are powered by the media that surrounds us daily – they teach us how to behave, what to believe etc. For there to be order, a society must share the same beliefs and values and therefore, the objective of these messages was to have society follow with the ideologies/messages that are being presented. However, when we get on the topic of audiences as agents of media texts, we will examine how this type of communication process is challenged. The other concept of audience communication is known as the meaning-based view which is a process between the messenger and the receiver that stays at a constant pace. This notion focuses more on the receiver and the meanings they take from the distributed messages. A key factor to this model is social feedback which allows for audiences to respond and react to the ideologies and discourses being presented which has an impact on how messages are received and what the sender communicates.

Now that we have situated the two basic notions of what is considered an audience according to Sullivan and how that relation works, we can discuss the earliest stage of audiences and what that looked like. The earliest records of group gatherings began with the Greek plays that were organized and planned, situated at a particular time and place. Often actors were on a stage performing for a crowd whom where talkative and responsive to the actors by reacting to the acts being performed whether through clapping or through the acts the discontent such as throwing stones. Being apart of an ‘audience’ is a role in which people perform momentarily and in doing so, the people create representations of the audience (Sullivan, 6). Since the beginning nature of the audience, power and class has impacted the ways audiences are situated and whom was given what based on their status. For example, peasants and women were given seats in the back while the rich had the privilege of sitting closer to the stage with more comfort. The YouTube video below by CrashCourse gives a further explanation of the early theatre plays which are one of the starting examples of audiences.

The first couple weeks of the course focuses mainly on one of the three models of media audiences constructed by James G. Webster; audience-as-outcome which views people as being influenced and powered by the media thus, having the capacity to achieve outcomes that have a lasting effect on the populations (Sullivan, 6). Implying the communication transmission model of James Carey where the emphasis is centered on the transfer of information or message from one point to another, the central question around this model is based on: what do media do to people? This model has led to the development of different theories of media impact and has helped legitimize the field of communication as when the discipline was emerging, this theory created and refined communication models and produced a body of literature.

The Livingstone article studies audience research and considers powerful members of an audience as those who are asked about their experiences through the use of interviews. Livingstone (2010) argues the importance of identifying audience members as individual people who receive media texts and create meaning for themselves which should not be ignored. By interviewing audience members, we can become aware of how they approach the texts transmitted and the influence it has on them individually because the media texts are authorized by those in power who have specific messages that are spread with a purpose. Furthermore, Livingstone discusses how new media innovations position audiences in a concept that challenges the classical theories of audiences as a stable, fixed notion. According to Livingstone, new media places audiences at the core of its design and use as it moves away from merely mass communication to a medium that invites communication amongst peers through the various social networking sites that flood the Internet, in addition to the audience interaction with new media production that can be seen in example with competition shows that give audiences the opportunity to voice their opinions which in turn produces the outcomes of the content. The discursive construction of audiences is emphasized by Livingstone who questions the conventional theories and approaches to audience research and suggests that there be a significant shift in how the concept of the audience is sought out.

References

Livingstone, S. (2010). Giving people a voice: On the critical role on the interview in the history of audience research. Communication, Culture & Critique, 3(4), 566-571.

Sullivan, J. L. (2020). History and Concept of the Audience. Media audiences: Effects, users, institutions, and power, 1-21.

[kylebathfilm3p18]

Chapter 2

This chapter focuses solely on the idea that audiences are objects to the media texts and the effects that these messages has on a mass scale. As I come from a film background, I will center my focus on the ideas and theories presented in this chapter that pertain to motion pictures. The premise of this notion of audiences as objects is that the general public is unable to construct their own ideas and opinions furthermore, it considers the audience to be easily influenced by what is being transmitted. This ideology brought forward concerns over what media messages are being produced and how they can have a negative and potentially damaging effect on the human psyche. With this, a number of case studies and research on media effects were introduced and concluded that the media does carry information that if exposed to, can lead to changes in a persons ideas, behaviours and beliefs (Sullivan, 26). Charles Horton Cooley was one of the first to observe the impacts of media by linking an individuals psyche and worldviews with 1) their surroundings which include where they grew up, when they grew up, their social group, the institutions they are apart of etc.; and 2) the communicated messages delivered by mass medias (Sullivan, 27). The motion pictures was one of the first mediums to market at a much larger demographic of people as tickets were affordable and pictures were distributed and exhibited across the globe, therefore creating mass audiences which Sullivan explains as individuals who are dispersed across time and space, act separately and have little to no knowledge of each other (p.6). As a result, those in powerful positions of creating the media messages realized they could use the medium to control and influence audiences to side with their beliefs at a more efficient and larger rate than indicated prior to the 19th century. Cooley’s emergence of mass media and its potential impacts led to a number of systematic studies and theories that would highlight the idea around audiences as outcome.

Hugo Münsterberg is an important film theorist who was attracted in researching how audiences engaged with moving pictures. In his book, The Photoplay: A Psychological Study, Münsterberg examined early cinema and came up with a certain theory on how audience members sense of reality became altered while watching a moving picture. Münsterberg argued that spectators had to escape the realities of their world in order to be fully engaged with the films story which meant having to accept, for the duration of the film, the constructed images projected (Sullivan, 28). This theory concerned Münsterberg who suggested that in time, the practice of entering the altered reality implemented in movies and becoming vulnerable to the images and messages could leave a lasting impact as the medium could be an effective tool in humans psychological formation of the world. The ideas presented by Münsterberg created a proliferation of studies on the effects of mass media that began in the 19th century as America was becoming more industrialized and people were moving to urban environments for job opportunities.

German sociologist, Ferdinand Tönnies analyzed the large shift from rural to urban environments that produced a social organization he called Gesellschaft which refers to a large group of individuals that live together in an urban environment (Sullivan, 30). Tönnies argued that those living in urban environments felt a sense of displacement as they were surrounded everyday by different people whom may not share the same culture, background etc. Unlike those who resided in smaller rural communities that were deeply rooted in social connections which Tönnies coined as a Gemeinschaft, individuals in larger cities were in fact isolated more which established the Mass Society Theory that examines the role media has on industrialized societies and poses the statement that the media is harmful as it has “the capacity to directly influence the attitudes and behaviours of individuals” (Sullivan, 31), which links to Tönnies thoughts on the vulnerability of audiences when confronted with forms of mass media.

A quick background on the early history of cinema:

Films in the beginning were very short in duration due to the belief that audiences could not concentrate for a long period of time. People watched them either individually or in small groups, as they were shown in temporary locations usually positioned in front of storefronts. The shorts consisted of single shots that portrayed everyday life and activities whether staged or authentic such as people getting off a train which was a short created by The Lumière Brothers in 1895.

There were hardly any cinematic techniques however people were fascinated with the introduction of moving photographs and by 1914, theatres that allowed for larger audiences and wider screens were constructed along with the public demanding lengthier films with storytelling and narratives. As the need for information, education and entertainment was strong, companies saw a commercial value in the industry and began producing large numbers of films annually and by the 1920s, film became the most powerful mass medium on societies around the world. As a result of this growing mass media, studies on the perception of how movies affected viewers were performed in the late 1920s referred to as the Payne Fund Studies which is important in the understanding of media effects as the comparisons between the 20s and today are evident.

The Payne Fund Studies was organized by social scientists with the goal of examining the impact of films mainly on the culture of America’s youth with scientific evidence. Questions of whether films inspired acts of violence, what ideas do children receive from watching movies, how emotionally effected are children after watching, and how often do children engage with this form of media were addressed in the studies. The subjects used in the studies not only responded emotionally, but they also mimicked many of the acts and attitudes they experienced. Another finding in the research was the increased emotional impacts that were established through the viewing of content that evoked fear and anxiety thus creating moral panic.

In the 1930s, government intervention in cinema grew, symbolized by the enactment of the Film Law, which gave the state more control over the film industry. The government encouraged the production and promotion of propaganda films which was a tool used to install fear into American audiences about the ‘enemy’ that as a result influenced their attitudes, beliefs and behaviours. Sullivan describes media propaganda as a “deliberate attempt by one party to control or manage the information environment of another through the manipulation of symbols or psychology” (36).  During the Vietnam War, American cinema was embedded in telling stories about their military systems and portraying their country as the heroes in contrast to the Orient’s image, idea and personality which were presented in a negative light. The way Hollywood narrates the events of the war in Vietnam is a classic example of Orientalism. Hollywood commercialized the war and cultivated a dominant discourse to Americans that there was an external threat that should be fear which ultimately dominants the publics feelings and thoughts. The most effective approach to inject propaganda theories into the minds of the public is to use entertainment as with this type of means, individuals do not realize they are being manipulated by the media. And as I do not intend to ruin your childhood, this practice was used by one of the biggest contributors to popular culture, Disney. In its earlier years, Disney displayed various racist stereotypes which contributed to American ideals of the world.

Walter Lippmann explored the notion of stereotypes and the effect that mass communication has on our knowledge as we are presented with images of what is considered reality before we even get to experience it for ourselves and therefore, through these dominant stereotypes that are continuously projected, thoughts and beliefs begin to form about the world around us that are not our own which then become self-perpetuating, meaning we do not question them. Often marketed to a younger audience, these films are vital in shaping their expectations of the world based off the representation and narratives provided which effects their psychological viewpoint. This brings me to my final theory in this chapter on the effects of media messages, Cultivation Theory. The media provides people with perspectives into environments that may be vastly unfamiliar plus the media could potentially be their only exposure, and the cultivation theory looks at the long-term effects of media on children behaviours and their attitudes towards reality, suggesting that television is to be held accountable for the conceptions of social reality. Therefore, it is important for voices that are excluded, censored, suppressed and silenced to be given the opportunity to be represented through mass mediums in projections that do not illustrate negative stereotypes in order to fight back against the hegemonic ideologies.

References

Sullivan, J. L. (2020). Effects of Media Messages. Media audiences: Effects, users, institutions, and power, 25-52.

[kylebathfilm3p18]

Chapter 3

As I mentioned in the last chapter, the rise of motion pictures in addition to the shift of urbanization environments gaining momentum in America sparked much controversy over how mass media can be used to shape and manage audience members. Now that we have an insight into just how powerful media messages can be to creating audiences as objects, we can shift our attention to institutions which in this context refers to both formal and informal integrated systems that structure social interactions such as the family, universities, governments, religion penal systems and yes, mass media. Institutions are an important concept to examine while discussing audience studies as the structures that help contain order throughout society have the ability to affect individual agency with the power to govern and constrain the actions and choices available to the mass public. The next two chapters will consider the purposes for identifying and measuring audiences by institutional constructions.

In modern day society, the ‘public’ is recognized in large by quantitative, cross-sectional surveys of the population which provides feedback to institutions as a way for them to gather information. However, this concept of public opinion which allows for citizens to deliver their views on issues that are of public interest back to the institutions through methods such as public polling and surveys has not always been the way of gathering public opinion. Prior to the twentieth-century, who was allowed to speak their opinions depended on who was given permission into the public sphere which is defined as a social area where individuals join together to publicly debate and define societal issues which then through the informed discussions influence political action. In the Middle Ages however, the public sphere did not exist as there was only one ruler who was the representative and spoke for the rest of the society. The king would gather members in social environments, not to participate in discussion but rather to listen and watch which relates back to the discussion on the earliest stages of audience formations mentioned in Chapter 1. During the eighteenth-century, individuals gained more independence due to the rise of capitalism and consequently citizens desire to be heard by authorities grew momentum thus creating a new form of social organization known as the bourgeois public sphere. This era saw citizens forming together to discuss societal problems without the state influencing their conversation in spaces that moved away from private, domestic spaces to more public locales such as the salons. The press provided records of citizen conversations which would then be printed and spread across space and time, thereby allowing the general peoples opinions to be made known and announced.

Moving to the nineteenth-century, public opinion truly formed itself into expressions often of political matters. Public rallies and uprisings became a recurring practice that is still performed today in locations around the world. This year in 2020 we have seen a worldwide protest in support of the Black Lives Matter movement that reappeared in response to the injustice killing of an African-American named George Floyd. Over sixty countries took to the streets to peacefully protest against the unlawful actions and just in the United States of America alone, between fifteen to twenty-six million people participated according to interviews with scholars and crowd-counting experts (Buchanan, Bui, & Patel, 2020), thus making it the largest protests in American history. The demonstrations catalyzed a cultural evaluation of racial inequality in the United States and led to various legislative initiatives at federal, state and local levels which were aimed at addressing police corruption, institutional racism, qualified immunity and police violence in the United States. The multitude of protests and expressions for equal justice indicates just how important public opinion can be and the impacts it can generate within society.

Furthermore, public opinion shifted to means of quantification that were measured by numerical counts using surveys by the twentieth-century. As population began to grow massively, surveys had the ability to measure larger groups of people more accurately and employs the technique of sampling which allows institutions to sample a specific demographic that is most appropriate for the information they are seeking. However, if wanting a more national standpoint, probability sampling is another technique which instead selects individuals randomly to generate a more wide and representative collection within a population (Sullivan 2020, p.63).

We have briefly discussed how the history of how public opinion measurements and their ability to alter the decision-making of institutions. But it is important to also look at how institutions shape public opinion. Walter Lippmann suggest that citizens information about their surroundings are mainly influenced by the news media as the news create a pseudo-environment in which only certain ideas, events and outlooks are broadcasted (Sullivan 2020, p.69). There is no secret that news programs present what they want the public to be aware of and hide information that could go against their beliefs, morals and values. Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw studied a number of news coverage channels during the 1968 election to see what types of information and events were at the center of attention before going to public polls to ask individuals what issues were most important to them in order to see if they were any similarities between the public and news agenda (Sullivan 2020, p.70). Their study found that the issues that citizens believed to be important were compatible to what was being broadcasted by the media. This technique employed by news media brought forth a what McCombs and Shaw coined as the agenda-setting theory in 1917 which initially proposed that the media establishes what the public ought to think about and if you are not thinking about the topics being mentioned, then you should. Further investigation into the works of news media has unveiled that besides having an affect on what audiences deem to be of particular importance, they also impact the conclusions that the public gather from those issues. Political news channels are divided by the two main parties (Republican and Democratic) and the two differ on what stories and perspectives are being brought up. Although both may touch on the same topic, their approach to how they discuss said topic varies drastically. For many news outlets, their audience is based on the ideologies that side with their own as shown below in the line graph that indicates the news outlets and where they position between the two parties.

It is important to note that the average audience member of Breitbart, the Sean Hannity radio show and Rush Limbaugh’s radio channel lean to the Republican party as the political views correlate with the right side. Whereas Vox, the Huffington Post and Vice are the news outlets most consumed by Liberals as their stories share the democratic perspectives. Fox News, although being a channel consumed largely by Republicans, still has numbers of more mainstream Republicans and Democrats thus it is closer to the middle of the graph.

This chapter has taught us that institutions, in particular news media can place a constraint on audiences’ formation of their own meaning-makings which thus have an affect on the nature of opinions that are measured and identified. If there is one thing you take from this chapter, I hope it is that although human beings are capable of functioning freely, the choices we make come from somewhere and that somewhere is often situated within institutional and social structures.

References

Buchanan, L., Bui, Q., & Patel, J. (2020). Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html

Sullivan, J. L. (2020). Public Opinion and Audience Citizenship. Media audiences: Effects, users, institutions, and power, 55-76.

[kylebathfilm3p18]

Chapter 4

The final chapter in the first part of my blog on audience studies centers mainly around the theory of the commodity audience and how corporations such as Nielsen measure audience ratings. An article for Deadline reported that linear, conventional television ratings have skyrocketed amidst the global pandemic and are expected to continue to increase as people are forced to stay home (Andreeva 2020). As more people engage with primetime television on broadcast cable networks that airs commercials, the more they are subjected to media corporations and their advertisements. Media scholar, Dallas W. Smythe argued that mass media was a tool that was used for the selling of product purposes which is known as the audience commodity (Sullivan 2020, p.81). Audiences while actively participating in the viewership of a television program are also being recruited to product placements in the form of commercials that air several times throughout. Smythe reassures us that while we believe that watching traditional television is simply a leisure-based activity, we are also being marketed at which benefits the economic value of corporations.

You might ask “How are commodity audiences defined?”, and the answer to that is through ratings. Although not being the most accurate measurement of realistic numbers, ratings are beneficial to media corporations and advertisers as they allow businesses an insight into consumer data which is critical in helping them decide which broadcasters to give their advertisements to. With this in mind, the commodity audience compared to the general audience is similar to toothpicks that is a metaphor mentioned by Sullivan in the textbook. This rather odd analogy has a deeper meaning which implies that the research done of audience ratings only “digs” at the surface of the actual audience viewership of a particular network which is then used to estimate the ratings on a larger scale. Mass audiences are very difficult to accurately measure, therefore companies are only concerned with the rating measurement of spectatorship at a particular moment in time and space – which is similar to a toothpick which helps fix a problem such as food stuck in-between teeth for the time being even though we know that we will have to fully clean our teeth later using a toothbrush.

The reading targeted for this specific chapter examines market information regimes while looking at the development of one of the largest measurement organizations, the Neilson rating system. Karen Buzzard (2015) mentions that ratings were a way of measuring more accurate feedback to companies than ever seen prior and help with the production, distribution and audience consumption of products (p.515). Audience ratings was a ploy that was useful for the success of advertisers looking to sell their brand as they would seek out the networks and television shows that would bring in the largest number of people on a weekly basis as well as a way for them to access not only their own performance but the performance of their competitors (Buzzard 2015, p.512).

Ultimately, the rating system is just another tool that helps further audiences to act as objects to the media. The way the media is structured to constantly be communicating the political economy is something that is often not discussed or even realized. With this in mind, I found it interesting to think about just how much of our individual purchasing decisions are our own? To gain an understanding of product success, customer loyalty and the quality of a product, online shoppers including myself look at the ratings and feedback. Also, we are shown products through mass media such as through ads on television which help to influence our choices. These choices of what brand of car or makeup or shoe are not just our own but rather heavily impacted by the media. Amazon recommends us products based off our consumption behaviours and furthermore will suggest the highest rating product at the top of search engines. Not to mention the predominant ideologies that are being reinforced in advertisements as most are owned by the government. These philosophies that are essentially all around is are hardly ever challenged as mentioned in these four chapters due to the lack of agency amongst the general public. Ads have a purpose and that is to encourage people to view their consumption favourably even though they are marketed to serve the interests of those that are in power of the institutions. The constructed meanings therefore help to maintain and sustain the present social organization.

References

Andreeva, N. (2020). TV Ratings Climb as People Rediscover Live Linear Viewing Amid Corona-Imposed Stay at Home. Deadline. Retrieved from https://deadline.com/2020/03/tv-ratings-climb-people-rediscover-livelinear-viewing-coronavirus-imposed-stay-at-home-1202887224/

Buzzard, K. (2015). The rise of market information regimes and the historical development of audience ratings. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 35(3), 511–517.