Representation theory examines how media represent people, places, events and concepts through images, words and sounds. It considers how representations are constructed and how they seem natural to audiences. Representations are selective and involve processes of production, distribution and reception that shape meaning. Audiences interpret representations based on their own experiences and backgrounds.

1. Representation and Audience
Theory ... One step further

2. Media Representation Theory
Representation refers to the construction in
any medium (especially the mass media) of
aspects of ‘reality’ such as
people, places, objects, events, cultural
identities and other abstract concepts. Such
representations may be in speech or writing as
well as still or moving pictures.

3. What does 'representation' mean?
The easiest way to
understand the concept of
representation is to
remember that watching a
TV programme is not the
same as watching something
happen in real life. All media
products re-present the real
world to us; they show us
one version of reality, not
reality itself. So, the theory
of representation in Media
Studies means thinking
about how a particular
person or group of people
are being presented to the
audience.

4. Media Representation Theory
The term refers to the processes
involved as well as to its products.
For instance, in relation to the key
markers of identity -
Class, Age, Gender and Ethnicity
(the 'cage' of identity) -
representation involves not only
how identities are represented
(or rather constructed) within the
text but also how they are
constructed in the processes of
production and reception.

5. Representation and gaze
– Who is doing the looking?
How do men look at images of
women?
How do women look at
images of men?
How do men look at images of
men?
How do women look at
images of women?

6. Representations as constructions
A key concern in the study of representation is with the way in
which representations are made to seem ‘natural’.
All texts, however 'realistic' they may seem to be, are
constructed representations rather than simply transparent
'reflections', recordings, transcriptions or reproductions of a
pre-existing reality.
However, representations which
become familiar through constant
re-use come to feel 'natural' and
unmediated.

7. Representations are judged
Representations require interpretation - we
make judgements about them based upon our
own experiences and backgrounds.

8. Representation involves selection
Representation is
unavoidably
selective,
foregrounding some
things and back
grounding others.

9. Key Questions about Specific
Representations
• What is being represented?
• How is it represented? Using what codes?
Within what genre?
• How is the representation made to seem
'true', 'commonsense' or 'natural'?
• What is foregrounded and what is
backgrounded? Are there any notable
absences?

10. Key Questions about Specific
Representations
• Whose representation is it? Whose interests does
it reflect? How do you know?
• At whom is this representation targeted? How do
you know?
• What does the representation mean to you?
What does the representation mean to others?
How do you account for the differences?
• How do people make sense of it? According to
what codes?
• With what alternative representations could it be
compared? How does it differ?

11. Television and representation
‘Television is... the most rewarding medium to
use when teaching representations of class
because of the contradictions which involve a
mass medium attempting to reach all the
parts of its class-differentiated audience
simultaneously...’
(Alvarado et al. 1987)

12. Typing in representation
The director wants the audience to
be on the side of the protagonist
and hope that the antagonist will
fail. This means that the audience
has to identify with the protagonist
– they have to have a reason to be
‘on his/her side’. But directors only
have a couple of hours to make you
identify with the protagonist –
so, they have to use a kind of
‘shorthand’. This is known as typing
– instead of each character being a
complex individual, who would take
many hours to understand, we are
presented with a ‘typical’ character
who we recognise quickly and feel
we understand.

13. Character typing
There are three different kinds of
character typing:
An archetype is a familiar character who
has emerged from hundreds of years of
fairytales and storytelling.
A stereotype is a character usually used
in advertising and marketing in order to
sell a particular product to a certain
group of people. They can also be used
‘negatively’ in the Media – such as
‘asylum seekers,’ or ‘hoodies’.
A generic type is a character familiar
through use in a particular genre (type)
of movie.

14. Why is Representation Theory useful?
The way certain groups of people
are represented in the media can
have a huge social impact. For
example, would people’s attitudes
to asylum seekers change if they
were presented differently in the
media?
When media producers want you to
assume certain things about a
character, they play on existing
representations of people in the
media. This can reinforce existing
representations.
At other times, media producers can
change the way certain groups are
presented, and thus change the way
we see that particular group.
Changing these representations can
also create depth in a character.

15. Audience theory: How do audiences
receive texts?
Whether you are constructing a text or analysing one,
you will need to consider the destination of that text, i.e.
its target audience and how that audience (or any other)
will respond to that text.
For A-level you need a working knowledge of the
theories which attempt to explain how an audience
receives, reads and responds to a text.

16. Effects Theory
Over the course of the past century or so, media analysts have
developed several effects models, i.e. theoretical explanations of
how humans ingest the information transmitted by media texts and
how this might influence (or not) their behaviour.
Effects theory is still a very hotly debated area of Media and
Psychology research, as no one is able to come up with indisputable
evidence that audiences will always react to media texts one way or
another.
The scientific debate is clouded by the politics of the situation:
some audience theories are seen as a call for more censorship,
others for less control. Whatever your personal stance on the
subject, you must understand the following theories and how they
may be used to deconstruct the relationship between audience and
text.

17. The Hypodermic Needle Model
Dating from the 1920s, this theory was
the first attempt to explain how mass
audiences might react to mass media.
It is a crude model and suggests that
audiences passively receive the
information transmitted via a media
text, without any attempt on their part
to process or challenge the data.
(Don't forget that this theory was developed in an
age when the mass media were still fairly new -
radio and cinema were less than two decades old.
Governments had just discovered the power of
advertising to communicate a message, and
produced propaganda to try and sway populaces to
their way of thinking.)

18. The Hypodermic Needle Model
The Hypodermic Needle Model
suggests that the information from a
text passes into the mass
consciousness of the audience
unmediated, i.e. the
experience, intelligence and opinion of
an individual are not relevant to the
reception of the text. This theory
suggests that, as an audience, we are
manipulated by the creators of media
texts, and that our behaviour and
thinking might be easily changed by
media-makers.

19. Two-Step Flow Theory
The Hypodermic model quickly proved too
clumsy for media researchers seeking to
more precisely explain the relationship
between audience and text. As the mass
media became an essential part of life in
societies around the world and did NOT
reduce populations to a mass of unthinking
drones, a more sophisticated explanation
was sought. Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard
Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet analysed the
voters' decision - making processes during a
1940 presidential election campaign and
published their results in a paper called ‘The
People's Choice’.

20. Two-Step Flow Theory
Their findings suggested that the information
does not flow directly from the text into the
minds of its audience unmediated but is
filtered through "opinion leaders" who then
communicate it to their less active
associates, over whom they have influence.
The audience then mediate the information
received directly from the media with the ideas
and thoughts expressed by the opinion
leaders, thus being influenced not by a direct
process, but by a two step flow. This
diminished the power of the media in the eyes
of researchers, and caused them to conclude
that social factors were also important in the
way in which audiences interpreted texts.

21. Uses & Gratifications Theory
During the 1960s, as the first generation to grow up with television
became grown ups, it became increasingly apparent to media
theorists that audiences made choices about what they did when
consuming texts. Far from being a passive mass, audiences were
made up of individuals who actively consumed texts for different
reasons and in different ways. In 1948 Lasswell suggested that
media texts had the following functions for individuals and society:
• surveillance
• correlation
• entertainment
• cultural transmission

22. Uses & Gratifications Theory
Researchers Blumler and Katz expanded this theory and published
their own in 1974, stating that individuals might choose and use a
text for the following purposes (i.e. uses and gratifications):
Diversion - escape from everyday problems and routine.
Personal Relationships - using the media for emotional and other
interaction, e.g. substituting soap operas for family life.
Personal Identity - finding yourself reflected in texts, learning
behaviour and values from texts.
Surveillance - information which could be useful for living e.g.
weather reports, financial news, holiday bargains.

23. Reception Theory
Extending the concept of an active audience
still further ...
... in the 1980s and 1990s a lot of work was
done on the way individuals received and
interpreted a text, and how their individual
circumstances (gender, class, age, ethnicity)
affected their reading. This work was based on
Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding model of the
relationship between text and audience
- the text is encoded by the producer, and
decoded by the reader, and there may be major
differences between two different readings of
the same code. However, by using recognised
codes and conventions, and by drawing upon
audience expectations relating to aspects such
as genre and use of stars, the producers can
position the audience and thus create a certain
amount of agreement on what the code means.
This is known as a preferred reading.

24. Names in Narrative Theory
Meaning: Roland Barthes - texts may be 'open' (i.e.
unravelled in a lot of different ways) or 'closed'
(there is only one obvious thread to pull on).
Barthes also decided that the threads that you pull
on to try and unravel meaning are called narrative
codes.
Structure: Tvzetan Todorov - texts are constructed
around the basic scaffolding of equilibrium,
disequilibrium, new equilibrium
Character: Vladimir Propp - produced a character
typography of characters and their actions (31
character types in all)
Conflict and resolution: Claude Levi-Strauss -
recognised the constant creation of
conflict/opposition propels narrative. Narrative can
only end on a resolution of conflict.