2. Starter Activity
Who is the target audience for your music
video? (how would you classify them?)
Brainstorm on A3 Paper
Gender
Age range
Ethnicity
UK Tribes Category
Social Economic Class
How did you try to
appeal to your target
audience in your
video?
5. John Fiske (1997) Semiotic
Democracy
Fiske rejects that audiences
are ‘cultural dopes’ and passive
Also rejects the idea that any
one text conveys the same
message to all people.
Audiences are required to
analyse texts in order to
expose their meaning and
these meanings are often
POLYSEMIC (more than one)
6. Stuart Hall
Looked at the role of
audience positioning in
the interpretation of
mass media texts by
different social groups.
People react to a media
text in different ways
which can be
determined by their
cultural
background/values and
ideologies.
7. Reception Theory Stuart Hall –
(1993)
Stuart Hall described three main ways spectators
tend to
respond to the way they are positioned:
1. A dominant (preferred) reading
2. A negotiated reading
3. An oppositional reading
8. Encoding and Decoding
Dominant Reading: audience fully accepts the
preferred reading so that the code seems
natural. The preferred reading is often one that
reinforces dominant ideologies.
Negotiated Reading: audience largely believes
the code and broadly accepts the preferred
reading, but sometimes modifies it in a way
which reflects their own position, experience, and
interests.
Oppositional Reading: audiences’ social
position places them in oppositional relation to
the dominant code. They reject the reading.
9. Uses and Gratification Theory -
Denis McQuail (2000)
The basic theme is the idea that people
use the media to get specific gratifications
People are not helpless victims of the
powerful media, but use media to fulfil
their various needs
10. Denis Mcquail (2000)
Escapism
Social Interaction
Identification
Inform and Educate
Entertainment
11. David Gauntlett (2008)– Role
Models
A ‘role model’ seems to be popularly
understood as ‘someone to
look up to,’ and someone to base your
character, values or aspirations upon:
12. Six Types of Role Models
The ‘straightforward success’ role model
The ‘triumph over difficult circumstances’
role model
The ‘challenging stereotypes’ role model
The ‘wholesome’ role model
The ‘outsider’ role model
The family role model:
13. Apply theories of Audience to ONE
of your media productions
1. Who was your target audience?
2. What was the dominant (preferred
reading)? How did you position your
audience to get the dominant reading? (did
you promote any dominant ideologies?)
3. How might people from other groups view
your representations?
4. What uses and gratifications might the
audience get from your video?
5. How did you construct your artists as role
models and how should the audience
respond to them?
14. Key Terms
Dominant Ideology
Passive Audience
Active Audience
Dominant Reading/Negotiated
Reading/Oppositional Reading
Role Models
Polysemic (more than one meaning)
Target audience
15. Refer to at least two theorists…
Stuart Hall: Reception theory
John Fiske: Semiotic Subversion
Blumler & Katz:Uses & Gratifications
model
David Gauntlett: Role Models
Editor's Notes
Media messages are always open and polysemic (having multiple meanings) and are interpreted according the context and culture of receivers
Firstly, communicators choose to encode messages.
Media messages are given a preferred reading, or what might now be called spin.
Secondly, receivers (decoders) are not obliged to accept messages as sent but can and do resist ideological influence by applying negotatiated or oppositional readings, according to their own experience and outlook
focus on how various types of audience members make sense of the specific forms of content.
Hall was concerned with media power, including how it propagates particular social values to create dominant ideologies i.e. framing public debate about certain issues
The mass media create and define issues of public concern and interest through audience positioning
Polysemy – is the capacity for a text to have multiple meanings.
argued that most texts can be read in several ways but there is generally a preferred or dominant reading that the producers of a message intend when they create a message, as a critical theorist, Hall assumed that most popular media content will have a preferred reading that reinforces the status quo (or dominant ideology)
