Post 15- Reflecting on theory.

When looking at media theories, as a class we talk about them discuss them, and put across our personal feeling towards these ideas. Thus far on the A2 course we have looked at three theories, Audience reception theory, Narrative theory, and finally genre theory.

Audience Reception theory.
Audience theory provides a starting point for many Media Studies tasks. Whether you are constructing a text or analysing one, you will need to consider the destination of that text , its target audience and how that audience will respond to that text. A media text in itself has no meaning until it is read or decoded by an audience.


The Hypodermic Needle Model

This theory was the first attempt to explain how mass audiences might react to mass media and suggests that audiences passively receive the information transmitted through a media text, without any attempt on their part to process or challenge the data.The Hypodermic Needle Model 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. It assumes that the audience are passive and heterogenous. This theory is used to explain why certain groups in society should not be exposed to certain media texts, for example rap music and computer games for fear that they will watch or read sexual or violent behaviour and will then act them out themselves.

Hypodemic = Passive  -  Producers___Message___ Audience

Two Step Flow
Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet analysed the voters decision-making processes during a 1940 presidential election campaign, 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.

This theory asserts that information from the media moves in two distinct stages. First, individuals, opinion leaders who pay close attention to the mass media and its messages receive the information. Opinion leaders pass on their own interpretations in addition to the actual media content. Opinion leaders are quite influential in getting people to change their attitudes and behaviors and are quite similar to those they influence. The two-step flow theory has improved our understanding of how the mass media influence decision making.The theory refined the ability to predict the influence of media messages on audience behavior, and it helped explain why certain media campaigns may have failed to alter audience attitudes an behavior.

Two step flow = Passive - Producers__Film Critic__Audience
          

Uses & Gratifications

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

Researchers Blulmer and Katz expanded this theory and published their own in 1974, stating that individuals might choose and use a text for the following purposes

•Diversion - escape from everyday problems and routine.
•Personal Relationships - using the media for emotional and other interaction, eg 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 egweather reports, financial news, holiday bargains

Although audience reception theory seems to cover all the points and give a good explanation, there are still some issues raised as to weather this theory can really be used and applied in all situations. Firstly, the whole theory is based on assumption, that in the dynamic society that we live in, do not hold true. As well as this, the theory generalises the audience, which again does not hold true, people have needs and wants and this is not shown in the theory. Finally it is dependant on the environment in which you partake the text as to how you view it and what you get from it.

In media terms, narrative is the coherence/organisation given to a series of facts. The human mind needs narrative to make sense of things. We connect events and make interpretations based on those connections. In everything we seek a beginning, a middle and an end. We understand and construct meaning using our experience of reality and of previous texts. Each text becomes part of the previous and the next through its relationship with the audience.

Narrative theory

The human mind needs narrative to make sense of things. We connect events and make interpretations based on those connections. In everything we seek a beginning, a middle and an end. We understand and construct meaning using our experience of reality and of previous texts. Each text becomes part of the previous and the next through its relationship with the audience. Story is the irreducible substance of a story (A meets B, something happens, order returns), while narrative is the way the story is related (Once upon a time there was a princess...)" (Key Concepts in Communication - Fiske et al (1983).

Reality is difficult to understand, and we struggle to construct meaning out of our everyday experience. Media texts are better organised; we need to be able to engage with them without too much effort.Successful stories require actions which change the lives of the characters in the story. They also contain some sort of resolution, where that change is registered, and which creates a new equilibrium for the characters involved.

When unpacking a narrative in order to find its meaning, there are a series of codes and conventions that need to be considered.

•Genre
•Character
•Form
•Time

It is only because we are used to reading narratives from a very early age, and are able to compare texts with others that we understand these conventions. A narrative in its most basic sense is a series of events, but in order to construct meaning from the narrative those events must be linked somehow.

Narrative Structures

There are many ways of breaking down narrative structure. News stories have their own structure. A lot of work has been done by literary theorists to develop ways of deconstructing a narrative.

Tvzetan Todorov - suggests narrative is simply equilibrium, disequilibrium, new equilibrium.

Vladimir Propp - Russian Fairy tales, characters and actions, 31 functions of character types. 8 characters as follows, Hero, Villain, Princess, Helper, Dispatcher, False hero, Princess' father, Mentor.

Claude Levi-Strauss - Constant creation of conflict/opposition propels the narrative. Narrative can only end on a resolution of conflict. Opposition can be visual, for example light/darkness, movement/stillness or conceptual, love/hate, control/panic. This theory states that narratives develop by the binary opposites.
Barthes´ Codes

Genre Theory

Genre is important for both the readers and creators of texts...

Audiences - Audiences select texts on basis of genre, often because texts are arranged at retail outlets by genre. Also, certain genres are considered appropriate to certain ages/genders in society, and choices are made accordingly eg teen movies, 'chick flicks'. Audiences have systems of expectations about the content and style of a text, according to its genre. This enables them to take particular pleasures in the text, those of repetition, and of predicted resolution. Pleasure may also be drawn from differences. Finally they identify with repeated elements in generic texts and may shape their own identity in response.
Producers- Producers market texts according to genre because a niche audience has already been identified as taking pleasure in that type of text, as well as this they standardise production practices according to genre conventions, thus cutting costs.

Genre can provide structure and form which can allow a great deal of creativity and virtuosity, especially when a genuine reworking of generic conventions comes along. Genre provides key elements for an audience to recognise, so that they may further appreciate the variation and originality surrounding the representation of those elements.