What is audience?
'Audience' is a very important concept throughout media studies. All media texts are made with an audience in mind, ie a group of people who will receive it and make some sort of sense out of it. And generally, but not always, the producers make some money out of that audience. Therefore it is important to understand what happens when an audience "meets" a media text.
Hypodermic Theroy
'Audience' is a very important concept throughout media studies. All media texts are made with an audience in mind, ie a group of people who will receive it and make some sort of sense out of it. And generally, but not always, the producers make some money out of that audience. Therefore it is important to understand what happens when an audience "meets" a media text.
Hypodermic Theroy
Examples:
This theory was very popular in the 1930s, especially after H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" broadcast in 1938, and the recent war of the world film which was broadcasted in 2008. Below is the trailer of this movie in order to show how the director of this movie has used the concept of the world is going to end. From this there were many conspiraces on whether the world will end.
Another example maybe celebrities. The famous rihanna has recently pulling of the red hair look which has led to many indiviudals folllowing the trend due to the influence of media. People mainly fans, may have done this inoorder to feel closer to the artist or they may feel that they are wanting to look like rihanna and so they think dying their hair would help thier chance.
Two step flow theory.
Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet analysed thier findings that suggested 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.
Example: Here is a video that shows the two step flow. Firstly the girl is being portrayed as a person who is broke and after she is seen played by a machine the whole video changes and she is shown as rich woman. She is dressed in red where she is seen to be revealing which therefore may not be not so innocent and people then tend to feel that she is vulnerable but she aint. if i was an opinion leader then i would say she is so not wearing the right clothes because she is degrading the female body as some people look at her as inspiration and a model.
Uses and Gratification Theory
This is a theory which explains of how people use media for their need and gratification. In other words we can say this theory states what people do with media rather than what media does to people. According to uses and gratification theory, it is not so people make use of the media for their specific needs. This theory can be said to have a user/audience-centered approach .Even for communication people refer to the media for the topic they discuss with themselves. They gain more knowledge and that is knowledge is got by using media for reference. There are several needs and gratification for people they are categorised :
- People use media for acquiring knowledge, information etc., Among the audience some of them have intellectual needs to acquire knowledge this is not common to all only certain people have their need, each person have a different need for e.g. quiz programs on TV, in order to acquire knowledge and information you will watch news to satisfy the need.
- People use media like television to satisfy their emotional needsThe best example is people watch serials and if there is any emotional or sad scene means people used to cry.
- People use media to reassure their status, gain credibility and stabilize. so people watch TV and assure themselves that they have a status in society for e.g. people get to improve their status by watching media advertisements like jewelry ad , furniture’s ad and buy products, so the people change their life style and media helps them to do so.
Criticism of Uses and gratification theory :
- The uses and gratification theory does not consider the power of media
- More audience-centered
- Positive point of the uses and gratification theory is it focuses attention on individuals in the mass communication process.
Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes. Semiotics is closely related to the field of linguistics, which, for its part, studies the structure and meaning of language more specifically.
Saussure is one of the founding fathers of linguistics but also of what is now more usually referred to as semiotics.
Saussure is one of the founding fathers of linguistics but also of what is now more usually referred to as semiotics.
Key information on Saussure:
- Born 26 November 1857 in Geneva
- Died 22 February 1913
- He was a Swiss linguist
- He is one of the founding fathers of semiotics
- His most influential work was Course in General Linguistics published in 1916
- He studied Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and a variety of courses at the University of Geneva
- Saussure published a book entitled (Dissertation on the Primitive Vowel System in Indo-European Languages).
Saussure begins his theory by proposing that language is composed of “signs”; he says the linguistic sign unites, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a
sound-image
Science which studies the roles of signs as part of social life.
He defined a sign as being composed of:
a 'signifier’ - the form which the sign takes; and
the 'signified' - the concept it represents.
His concept of the sign/signifier/signified/referent forms the core of the field. Equally crucial, although often overlooked or misapplied, is the dimension of the syntagmatic and paradigmatic axis of linguistic description.
Key information on Roland Barthes:
The key principles of the theory is that when you see something you interpret different meanings for example when a wine bottle is presented in front of you with a wine glass then you know that this is for the wine whereas when you see a beer glass near the wine bottle then you know that this is not right.
- He was born on 12th November 1915 and he was born in Cherbourg.
- He was a French literary theorist, critic, semiotician and a philosopher.
- He died on 25th march 1980 in Paris. The cause of his demise was due to “pulmonary complications” due to the accident he had from after coming out of the lunch.
- He was unconscious and his nose was bleeding so he was taken to the
- Salpêtrière hospital, where it took so many hours to establish who he was.
His theory:
