Audience: Effects and Traditions

1. Audience: Effects and Traditions

2. McQuail’s six features of the audience 1. planning and organisation of viewing and listening, as well as of the performances themselves; 2. events with a public and ‘popular’ character 3. secular content of performance – for entertainment, education and vicarious emotional experiences; 4. voluntary, individual acts of choice and attention; 5. specialisation of roles of authors, performers and spectators; 6. physical locatedness of performance and spectator experience *

3. Audience and Effects Tradition The Agora: the political and commercial forum of Ancient Greece.

4. The Elizabethan Theatre

5. ‘On New Year’s Eve of that year, television in Ireland was officially launched with the broadcast of a grand party from the Gresham Hotel in Dublin. Eamonn Andrews, in a tuxedo and Fred Astaire hair, talking in his semi-English accent MC’d the party and introduced the acts. There were old Irish songs and smooth pop ballads. The Artane Boys’ Band, from the Dublin reformatory school for poverty-stricken and wayward boys, played too. Outside on the street a huge crowd gathered trying to catch a glimpse on a tiny TV set that had been placed on a pedestal. RTÉ ident, 1961 1961:Television arrives in Ireland

6. Before the concert from the Gresham, President Eamon de Valera – a man who had fought and killed for Irish independence, been jailed, and according to legend, had first entered the Irish parliament with a gun in his pocket – gave a speech to the nation. It was a warning. He sat in a book-lined study wearing a dark overcoat, and his weak old eyes peered at the camera. He said television could be a good influence and a bad influence. After the old man whom everyone called Dev came Cardinal D’Alton, the most important figure in the Catholic Church. He blessed the new broadcasting endeavour and warned too of its good and evil sides. The two old men talked solemnly, as if they knew that Ireland was to change utterly. When they stopped talking, the party started and the dancing began. (John Doyle, A Great Feast of Light, Aurum Press, 2006 pp. 6 - 7)

7. http://www.scoilnet.ie/lookathistory/Video.aspx?FolderId=1&Id=486&ref=1 (Dev) • http://www.scoilnet.ie/lookathistory/Video.aspx?FolderId=1&Id=487&ref=2 (Cardinal)

8. Effects tradition • ‘magic bullet/hypodermic needle’ (Frankfurt School) • ‘two step flow’ (Katz and Lazarsfeld) • ‘limited effects’ (Klapper) ‘ Mass communication does not ordinarily serve as a necessary and sufficient cause of audience effects, but rather functions among and through a nexus of mediating factors and influences (1960, p.8) in Taylor and Willis p. 159 • Psychological models of learning behaviour (Bandura in the 1960s)

9. Effects Tradition and ChildrenSocial Cognitive Theory • ‘Bandura's social cognitive theory revolves primarily around the functions and processes of observational learning (Bandura, 1986, 2002). That is, by observing others' behaviors, including media figures, one may develop rules to guide subsequent actions and/or be prompted to engage in previously learned behavior. Although moderated by observers' cognitive development and skills, observational (or social) learning is guided by four processes: attention to certain models and their behavior based on source and contextual features, retention of the observed behavior and its consequences, production of the observed behavior in appropriate contexts, and motivation to selectively engage in observed behaviors based on positive or negative reinforcement from one's own behavior, the observed feedback given to others, or internal incentives (e.g., self-standards).’ ( Nabi, 2008) • Bandura’s Bobo doll experiment http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdh7MngntnI. Aggressive behaviour which is rewarded is imitated. • N.B. thinness –depicting media and their influence on women’s self-image and behaviour. Pro-social behaviour in the Teletubbies. .

10. Limitations of Effects Research • Overemphasis on the power of the media to persuade, overlooking other, relevant factors • ‘The effects tradition claims neutrality and scientific objectivity with regard to methodology, yet its methods are often underpinned by loaded assumptions about which groups in society are at particular risk from the media.’ (Condemns individuals for their lack of education and social and cultural awareness - ideological reasons why this may be) Taylor and Willis p. 160 • Sees audiences as passive • Ignores the power structures at work in the production of media texts • Psychologistic account of individual behaviour, insufficiently sociological i.e pays no attention to influence of peers/group on individual behaviour.

11. Functionalist approach – ‘uses and gratifications’ • Approach developed by Katz in 1959. He argued ‘that there was a need, when thinking about effects to consider why audiences selected particular aspects of the media. People …as a result of their psychological disposition and their social surroundings, have particular uses for the media which are fulfilled through discerning what texts are suitable for satisfying their needs’. (News, weather – break from housework etc) → Selectivity in use and in interpretation • Moved away from the thrust of the effects tradition by suggesting that the question is not what the media do to the people, but what people do with the media. (Katz, 1974). • Acknowledged that the audience could be active.

12. Limits of the ‘uses and gratifications approach’ • Ignores media texts themselves (incl. the presence of preferred readings and audience responses to them). • Assumes audiences select certain media/media texts to satisfy needs, does not recognise that audience members might have particular preferences i.e. particular genres • Overlooks socio-historical context which may be informing choice.

13. Effects tradition in the 90s • Censorship: Film Board Classifications • Questions around the notion of what might constitute violence in the media. • Evolution of effects tradition – to address attention, gratification, selectivity and information-processing strategies. • Still no attempt to address the role of ideology in the construction of the individual/text.

14. Cultural Studies ‘Turn’ • Screen theory: ideology, hegemony, audience subject to dominant reading, resistance only possible in avant-garde texts/forms. • BCCCS (Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies). Stuart Hall: media encoding/decoding. • Sociological factors such as one’s class, age, gender, ethnicity etc affect the reading one might take. • Acc. Hall 3 possible decodings/readings for audience members 1) dominant/preferred 2) negotiated 3) oppositional. • David Morley empirical study on the Nationwide audience. • Also ethnographic, participant/observers studies carried out..in homes. See Taylor and Willis p. 175 - 183 (Lull, Hobson, Radway, Morley in 1986, Moores and Gray).

15. Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model (1974)

16. Cultivation Theory‘Television tells most of the stories to most of the people, most of the time.’ (Gerbner) • ‘Cultivation theory addresses the relationship between TV content and viewers' beliefs about social reality, primarily asserting that compared to light TV viewers, heavy viewers perceive their social environment as more similar to the world as portrayed on TV than it really is (e.g., Gerbner, 1969; Gerbner & Gross, 1976; Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, & Signorielli, 2002). A significant body of evidence supports this hypothesis (Morgan & Shanahan, 1996), and though initially these effects were believed to emerge regardless of genre, increasing evidence for genre-based cultivation outcomes has surfaced (e.g., Hawkins & Pingree, 1981; Segrin & Nabi, 2002).’ (Nabi, 2008)

17. Children and the Media • Children and, previously, women always seen as vulnerable/susceptible to media influence. Moral panics. • Payne Studies (USA, 1930s) • ‘For some children, under some conditions, some television is harmful. For some children under the same conditions, or for some children under other conditions, it may be beneficial . For most children under most conditions, most television is probably neither particularly harmful nor particularly beneficial (Schramm et al, 1961 p. 11). • Older children more affected by the violence they see in the news, younger children more affected by the violence they see in cartoons. There are of course debates around the definition of violence. • Ethnographic research vs. that of the type carried out by Bandura.

18. Moral Panics • Individuals and social groups can by their activities emerge as a focus for outrage expressed by influential members of society who perceive these activities as subverting the mores and interests of the dominant culture. • (Watson and Hill, p.179)

19. Cohen on Moral Panics (2002) • ‘ the objects of moral panic belong to seven familiar clusters of social identity: • 1. Young, working-class, violent males; 2.School violence: bullying and shootouts; • 3. Wrong drugs used by wrong people at wrong places • 4. Child abuse, satanic rituals and paedophile registers

20. Cohen’s 7 objects of moral panic cont’d • 5. Sex, violence and blaming the media • 6. Welfare cheats and single mothers • 7. Refugees and Asylum seekers, flooding our country, swamping our services. • ‘Generally such panics occur in relation to OTHER, for example when immigrants or asylum seekers are perceived, via media coverage, and the repetition of that coverage over time and by agencies with political motivation, as a threat; a problem about which those in authority seem to be doing nothing, or too little.’ (Watson and Hill, 2006)

21. Conclusion (1) • ‘ Different groups in the audience, for various reasons, interpret media differently, making diverse uses of its content.’ (Gillespie, 2005, p.30) • Sender → message → receiver (Lasswell, 1948) • Sender → (other factors) → message → (other factors) → receiver. ( Gillespie, p.31)

22. Further reading • See also Tim O’Sullivan et al, Studying the Media, 3rd Edition, London, Hodder Arnold, 2003, Chapter Five) and Marie Gillespie (ed) Media Audiences, Maidenhead, Open University Press, 2005) and Taylor and Willis, Chap 13. • Robin L. Nabi, Cosmetic Surgery Makeover Programs and Intentions to Undergo Cosmetic Enhancements: A Consideration of Three Models of Media Effects, Human Communication Research,Volume 35, Issue 1, Pages 1-27, 2008.

23. Children and Violence • ‘We need to begin by exploring what children make of the films and television programmes that they themselves identify as upsetting or indeed as “violent” – which, it should be emphasized, are not necessarily those that adults would identify for them. In a debate that is dominated by adults purporting to speak on children’s behalf, children’s voices have been almost entirely unheard (Buckingham, 2000: 73 74).

24. Legislation and Guidelines • See pages 7-10 of http://www.bcc.ie/legislation_codes/downloads/BCI_Code_Prog_Stands_Mar07.pdf • Also: http://www.bcc.ie/legislation_codes/downloads/childrens_advertising_code.pdf • Further guidelines concerning broadcasting standards are to be found in the Broadcasting Act, 2001 accessible at www.bcc.ie

25. Some questions for considertion • In what different ways is Teletubbies considered to be educational or not? • How do children understand the function of advertising? • How do children and parents discuss the suitability of television? • What are children’s responses to the soap opera depiction of family life?

26. Exam Reading • Vital reading in preparation for your exam: an account of David Morley’s Nationwide study, accessible here: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Modules/TF33120/morleynw.html • A very useful critique of the effects tradition, worth reading as part of your exam preparation: http://www.theory.org.uk/david/effects.htm