Why is media studies so preoccupied with audience? and key theory 16/17

Introduction - why is media studies so preoccupied with audience?


  • Because media wouldn't exist without the audience
  • Audience is essential in media studies. We as consumers are targeted and positioned according to our culture, class, gender and ethnicity. 
Demographics - social status/class 

E.g upper class, lower class, working class, middle class, Skilled working class 

Psychographics - The classification of people according to attitudes, aspirations and other psychological criteria's:

E.g.     Aspirers: people who want to appear rich and attractive

Reformers: people who want social change, are unimpressed by status and make decisions based on their values

Explorers: adventurous people who like taking risks 

Mainstreamers: people who 'follow the crowd'


Key theory 16 - George Gerbner - cultivation theory

Does TV manipulate our own ideology of things? 
  • "The idea that prolonged ad heavy exposure to (TV) cultivates", as in grows or develops in audiences "a view of the world consistent with the dominant or majority view expounded by television" 
  • Television (and by extension other tools of mass media distributions) present a mainstream view of culture, ignoring everything else.
  • In doing so, television (etc) distorts reality
  • heavy television users are therefore more likely to accept this edited and distorted view of reality. 
Issues with this particular theory:

  • Not everyone watches excessive amounts of TV, More social media.
  • While this theory may have been useful in the 1970s with only three channels , the ridiculous amount of ways we have of accessing media now challenges the idea that any ideology can be mainstream. 

Key Theory 17 - Stuart Hall - Reception theory 

  • 'Preferred reading' - The 'Right' way of reading a particular text, which can be enforced by positioning. 
  • This concept has to be approached carefully: often texts intentionally have multiple meaning/readings, and of course, as we have discovered, audiences can potentially get whatever they want out of any media source. 
  • Hall categorised audience response into three separate groups.
  • These can help us to understand whether or not an audience sticks to the preferred reading or if they decide to make their own decision as how to decode a particular text. 
Dominant reading: The audience agrees with the dominant values in the text 

Negotiated reading: The audience generally agrees with what they see, but they may disagree with certain aspects. 

Opposition reading: The audience completely disagrees with what they see, and rejects the dominant reading. 

Example : Nike 'just do it' advertisement

 Dominant: These people are amazing, very inpsiring, motivating and emotional 

 Negotiated: Really inspirational and well-filmed. However, it can be controversial. 



























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