Reading 7 - Audiences: What do people do with the media?

This final week in the lecture and set reading, we looked further at audiences and what they do with media text. Audience will consume the same media however, they all interpret this media different ways, or in other words, they decode the text differently mainly through dominant, negotiated and oppositional readings (Stuart Hall 1973). It is considered that media can directly impact an audience’s behaviour and that they could maybe mirror the media text, however, its no longer reasonable to believe such things as theories such as the “hypodermic needle theory” is outdated. The hypodermic needle theory suggests that viewers absorb content from the media text they view, similar to the way in which a needle works. However, a theorist named Klapper suggests that mass communication does not effect audience directly, instead it “functions through a nexus of mediating factors” (Klapper 1960:8) (Long & Wall (2012) p.304)

It is suggested that audience sometimes choose to consume media text out of function to satisfy desires, “social needs” or use media for “purposeful and rational ends” (Long & Wall (2012) p.305), this is considered as the uses and gratifications theory. Putting this theory into practice, a consumer would consume a video game in order to satisfy their entertainment needs, this is considering the game is not too intellectually challenging and audience would prefer to relax and enjoy the game content. Juxtaposition to a documentary which would satisfy a consumer needs of knowledge and it carries it out in an entertaining fashion.

For my own set reading, I found a piece from Recuero, Amaral, Monteiro (2012) whom researched that twitter has a big fan base which promotes media texts they admire using hashtags. This group of people have created a small group who follow a similar convention to any other subculture groups. This research highlights the importance of active audiences such as this small group on twitter, as they a new stream for media producer to gain more revenue as they help to promote media text therefore raising awareness to that one media text.

 This research and understanding has proved that active audiences are vital to media producers, as stated above. It is said that with no audience comes no media thus intensifying the importance of an active audience as they are the people in which a media producer is aiming to please.

Reference:

P.Long & T.Wall (2012). Media Studies: Texts, Production, Context. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. 

Recuero, Amaral, Monteiro. (2012). 'Fandoms, Trending Topics and Social Capital in Twitter'.  IR 13.0 - Technologies [Electronic]. Association Of Internet Researchers. October, pp.2.