Course Notes
COMM 3P18 Lecture Notes
Monday September 9, 2013
Why Audience Studies?
We are all audiences.
We are bought and sold.
We are fans.
We are active.
The Cultural Industries
Post WW1
Interested in how propaganda worked.
Concerned with TV, Radio, etc.
But…
Effects models cant explain the complex relationships we have with texts.
We aren’t docile, passive audiences.
We don’t believe everything we read/see.
Example of switching Barbie and GI Joe Voices in dolls and sold them.
Monday September 16, 2013
Core Concepts: Debates & Approaches to Studying Audiences
1. What is an audience?
2. Why do audiences matter?
3. Historical Debates
4. Contemporary Issues
1. What is an Audience?
Inglis:
“The public is defined by conventional media theory as audience, and an audience only listens.”
“To cast a society as consumes is to see its members as creatures to be fed, housed and kept quiet.”
Definition A:
A mass of undifferentiated people who are anonymous to the producer of mediated message(s) and become a collective of unorganized individuals centered on the use or exposure to a particular media text (Glynn, Herbst, O’Keefe & Shapiro 1999: McQuail, 1997).
Definition B:
A network of people who have the potential to interact with one another about a particular object of interest in the media.
Whether you agree with A or B:
Either way, audiences are studied as collectives, aggregates of individuals; an individual when studied is more typically referred to as an audience member or media user.
2. Why Study Audiences?
To Understand Markets
Demographics
Appropriation of Texts
Fandom
Circuit of Culture
How do audiences create meaning from texts? How are they affected by texts? Audiences can be seen as:
Receiving texts (reception theory) actively, having power over the messages they receive.
OR
More passive being affected by the media (effects theory) or changed over time as a result of exposure to the media
Monday September 9, 2013
Why Audience Studies?
We are all audiences.
We are bought and sold.
We are fans.
We are active.
The Cultural Industries
Post WW1
Interested in how propaganda worked.
Concerned with TV, Radio, etc.
But…
Effects models cant explain the complex relationships we have with texts.
We aren’t docile, passive audiences.
We don’t believe everything we read/see.
Example of switching Barbie and GI Joe Voices in dolls and sold them.
Monday September 16, 2013
Core Concepts: Debates & Approaches to Studying Audiences
1. What is an audience?
2. Why do audiences matter?
3. Historical Debates
4. Contemporary Issues
1. What is an Audience?
Inglis:
“The public is defined by conventional media theory as audience, and an audience only listens.”
“To cast a society as consumes is to see its members as creatures to be fed, housed and kept quiet.”
Definition A:
A mass of undifferentiated people who are anonymous to the producer of mediated message(s) and become a collective of unorganized individuals centered on the use or exposure to a particular media text (Glynn, Herbst, O’Keefe & Shapiro 1999: McQuail, 1997).
Definition B:
A network of people who have the potential to interact with one another about a particular object of interest in the media.
Whether you agree with A or B:
Either way, audiences are studied as collectives, aggregates of individuals; an individual when studied is more typically referred to as an audience member or media user.
2. Why Study Audiences?
To Understand Markets
Demographics
Appropriation of Texts
Fandom
Circuit of Culture
How do audiences create meaning from texts? How are they affected by texts? Audiences can be seen as:
Receiving texts (reception theory) actively, having power over the messages they receive.
OR
More passive being affected by the media (effects theory) or changed over time as a result of exposure to the media
Cited: