Believes that audiences are no longer passive
Audiences more active wanting to interaction with media- explosion of technology has changed our expectations and behaviour
audiences prefer digital version
audiences like to speak back to media producers
equality of power with audiences and producers
End of audience Model
Old models of producer-audience have broken down.
New audience- groupings have grown up:
collaborative projects,
Crowd funding,
crowdsourcing,
publicity campaigns
run by volunteers.
‘End of Audience’ Model
"Every consumer is also a producer, and everyone can talk back.”
Media had been a hierarchical industry—in that one filtered first, and then published.
"All of that now breaks down….....
People are producing who are not employees or media professionals. So we now publish first, and then filter. ” It’s all about connections, participatory networks
Henry Jenkins Fandom Theory
Fans play a key role in media
fans can comment/share/interpret
his theory involves a key phase textual poaching
textual poaching audiences taking a media product and remaking or reworking it to create their own meaning
“The difference between watching a [television] series and becoming a fan lies in the intensity of their emotional and intellectual involvement.” There are two elements to fan cultures:
Social Aspect
• Media fans band together in either informally or formally structured groups (e.g. fan clubs) to share their mutual interest with others.
Interpretive Aspect
• Fans act as interpreters and producers of media content, thus have a far more intense viewing experience than other consumers of the same product.
See page 203 (OCR media studies revision) for how Fandom might be applied in interpreting LFTVD and how the theory is limited.
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-The Cultivation Theory, also known as the Cultivation Analysis or the Cultivation Hypothesis, is a social theory that studies long-term effects of media on viewers’ ideas and perceptions, especially through the television medium
-Its main causal argument is that “Mass communication, especially the TV, cultivates concepts of social reality of its viewers,” giving the theory its name.
-Gerbner observed on the basis of the “people religiously watching TV” that we know some things not because we have experienced them but because we see them on media. Therefore, according to this theory, there is a direct relationship between TV time, the frequency that a person watches TV, and reality perception, how realistic a person thinks something is. The more frequently viewers watch TV, the more they are likely to believe what they see on TV. Furthermore, in his 1982 Violence Index, the results showed that violence is at least ten times (10x) more on TV than in real life. In other words, violence and other “realities” shown on TV are exaggerated. So if this was what the people were seeing on TV, these people were likely to have believed a distorted perception of reality.
-The Cultivation Theory is considered a stalagmite theory. A stalagmite is a mass of accumulated deposits that grows on cave ceilings, and so, it is a metaphor for the long-term effects of media.
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How does Gerbner’s Theory and Shirkey’s Theory, impact the way consumers respond to news content within modern day media?
Use examples from the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph to back up your answers.
Use previous case studies and your own examples in support of your arguments
Gerbner's Theory of Cultivation impact the way consumers respond to news within modern day media significantly. Gerbner's argues the idea “Mass communication, especially the TV, cultivates concepts of social reality of its viewers". This means that the more frequent viewers watch TV or any media product, the more they are likely to believe what they see and become more easily influenced. This relate to certain news content, with right wing papers such as the sun and the Daily Mail. Consumers of that newspaper can become influenced in certain views on Brexit for example. Therefore viewers becoming more in favour of Brexit, however a more left wing newspaper such as
the Guardian can influence their readership to be more against Brexit. As well due to the advancements of digital technology consumers are more able to interact with the newspaper and so if they agree with the story readers are able to share , like and comment on it to express the views. Gerbner's theory applies more to newspapers where content analysis is widely used to study consistency in media. Gerbner's theory would most apply to newspaper messages that are delivered strongly and consistently across newspapers e.g the wrongness of terrorism, knife epidemic in London.
This supports the argument that newspapers should be regulated to avoid public harm.
However, this theory can be limited as newspapers messages are likely to be contradicted by messages from politically and socially opposing papers such as the guardian and the daily mail.As well the theory could potentially be outdated for online news as many newspapers producers and messages will be challenged by audiences in comments, tweets or other posts, reducing the effect of the original messages.
Shirkey's end of audience theory relates to the idea that old models of produce-audience have broken down with new hierarchies in place. This theory evolves around the theory that "Every consumer is also a producer, and everyone can talk back". People are producing who are not employees or media professionals. So we now publish first, and then filter. ” It’s all about connections, participatory networks. This is also centred around the belief that audience is no longer passive. This theory is impacts a massively with how consumers interpret and respond to modern day media. In news content, consumers will prefer to read or follow up on news digitally so through platforms such as Twitter,Facebook and Snapchat. This is evident as its shown by the decline in print media. These have been exploited by news companies such as the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph. Consumers are able to share/comment/like on their preferred news and can influence what news they want on their own timeline. Audiences can influence media products a lot using the James Gunn and Disney situation as an example, there was a petition of over 400,000 people, this convinced Disney to reinstate James Gunn as director for the new guardians of the galaxy.
This theory is useful as it draws attention to the potentially revolutionary effect of online media on news, and the threat this represents to traditional models of news gathering and distribution.
This theory can be limited as it doesn't apply to print media. The internet isn't regulated so anything can be said.
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