This document discusses institutions, audiences, ownership, convergence, and new models of media consumption. It addresses how media institutions are businesses seeking profit and how ownership affects their output. It also describes how convergence has merged technologies and industries and allowed audiences to become producers through interaction with media. Finally, it introduces the concepts of audiences fragmenting across niche interests and new models of "pull media" where consumers decide what and how they engage with media content.

1. Institutions and Audiences
Section B exam

2. Institution
• Refers to the companies &
organisations that provide
media content.
• For profit, public service or
other motives (artistic).
• Media is a business.

3. • You need to have a brief awareness of the
development of the British film industry. The
time line is sufficient for this.
• We are more concerned with how films are
currently produced and distributed in the UK.
• You need to consider the ownership,
convergence, technologies and globalisation.

4. Institutions and audiences
Ownership.
• The media is a business
• The relationship between providers and public is one
of power, and not from the top down.
• You need to know who owns what, what else they own
and how it affects their output.
• Who works in the media industry? It is far more diverse
than it used to be and far less well paid (only 46% earn
over £30,000). It is still not representative of the
population in general though and its unlikely that the
entire cross section of our society will be equally
represented by the media we are provided with.

5. convergence
• This describes 2 phenomena.
• 1. technologies coming together (eg mobile
phone with access to the internet)
• 2. media industries diversifying (eg film
companies marketing their new release on
facebook).
• The media do not exist separately, TV, video
games, films, newspapers, radio.
Magazines, music all converge and are inter
dependent on each other.

6. Audiences
• Audience theory
• You need to know how new media audiences and
digital media distribution and consumption have
allowed consumers to become producers, or at least
interactors.
• The ‘effects’ theory, or hypodermic syringe theory used
to portray audiences as passive receivers of the media.
• Now audiences are recognised as being active. Not
only bringing their own experiences to their
understanding but also interacting with the media.
• Eg ‘mash ups’

7. • One refers to audiences as ‘engaging’ with media,
rather than just watching or consuming. This is
because it implies that the audience is having a
relationship with the text.
• Bringing their own cultural identity to the form
and/or directly interacting with it.

8. • In recent years audiences
have ‘fragmented’, instead
of broadcasting (a few tv
channels which everyone
watches) we have
narrowcasting to niche
audiences.
• However!!! Csigo (2007),
suggests that convergence
has led to audiences ‘falling
together’ through multi
platform media.

9. 360-degree branding
• Films promotion seeks to surround us with
their brand, multi platform, converged media
forms.
• Your case studies should show this.
• They want to ‘trigger engagement’ (Csigo), in
audiences.
• You watch a film for half price from your
orange phone contract, then join in the
trending. #convergence.

10. A new ecosystem (Naughton)
• It’s a shift from push media to
pull media
• Push –producers push media at
us which we duly (dully)
consume.
• Pull- we decide what we want
and how we want to engage with
it (on demand).

11. David Gauntlett
• ‘new media erodes the
boundary between
producer and audiences to
the extent that it makes
little sense to talk about
media audiences any more.
We now have media 2.0’
• ‘Making is connecting’

12. • In 2008 Gauntlett proposed 'the
Make and Connect Agenda', an
attempt to rethink audience
studies in the context of media
users as producers as well as
consumers of media material.
• This argues that there is a shift
from a
• that harnessing creativity in
both Web 2.0 and in other
everyday creative activities will
play a role in tackling
environmental problems.