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Academic Ideas and Arguments:

Theory Summaries...

(Industries)

Curran and Seaton-
Power and Media Industries:
  1. Patterns of ownership and control are important in how the media functions.
  2. Media industries are capitalist and aim to increase concentration of ownership; this leads to a narrowing of opinions represented in the press, affecting plurality.
  3. Owners pursue profit at the expense of quality or creativity.
  4. The impact of the internet on the ownership of news is nominal and it is still controlled by an oligarchy.
Hesmondhalgh-
Cultural Industries:
  1. Cultural industries follow a capitalist pattern of increasing concentration and integration so production is owned and controlled by a few conglomerates.
  2. Risk is seen in terms of loss of money. Risk is high because production costs are high.
  3. Companies rely on repetition to minimise risk and cover failure. Repeated formats are easily recognisable to audiences and use copyright laws to protect products from reproduction and piracy.
Livingstone and Lunt-
Regulation:
  1. Consumers are individuals who seek private benefits from the media and require regulation to protect them from damage by the media. Citizens are social, seek public or social benefits from the media and require regulation to promote public interest.
  2. Regulation in the UK is under threat by increasingly globalised industries due to technological convergence.

(Audiences)

Bandura-
Media Effects:
  1. The media influence people directly.
  2. The media can influence directly or indirectly, through related platforms such as social media, so we can become influenced by the media without being exposed to them.
Gerbner-
Cultivation Theory:
  1. Exposure to particular media forms, genres or content over long periods of time can cultivate and shape our behaviour.
  2. Repetition of negative media messages and values are likely to create 'mean world syndrome' which leads to the mistrust and fear of others within our society.
Hall-
Reception Theory:
  1. There is an encoding/decoding model explaining the relationship between producer, media product and audience in creating meaning.
  2. Media producers encode products with a preferred meaning.
  3. Each audience member can decode meaning in one of three ways...
  • Dominant reading- accepts the preferred meaning and ideological assumptions encoded by the producer​
  • Negotiated reading- some of the decoded message is accepted but the audience disagrees with aspects of the encoded meaning so negotiates their reading to fit their experiences and values.
  • Oppositional reading- both the preferred meaning and any ideological assumptions encoded in the product are rejected.
Jenkins-
Fandom:
  1. New media have enabled participatory culture where audiences are active.
  2. Participatory audiences create online communities using new media forms to develop or influence how media is consumed.
Shirky-
End of Audience:
  1. Traditional media are shaped by centralised producers.
  2. Audiences were seen as a mass of people with predictable behaviours.
  3. Audiences behaviour is now variable; they are prosumers who can create and shape their own content.
  4. User-generated content creates emotional connections.
(Media Language)
Barthes-
Semiology:
  1. Denotations can signify connotations, associated meanings for the same sign.
  2. Denotations and connotations are organised into myths.
  3. Myths create an ideological meaning and help ideology feel natural, real and acceptable.
Todorov-
Narratology:
  1. Narratives can be seen to move from a state of equilibrium to disequilibrium, to resolution, to a new equilibrium.
  2. The narrative structure, the characters we see within it and the role they play help to reinforce ideological values.
Neale-
Genre Theory:
  1. Genres change or decline in popularity.
  2. There is a process through which generic codes and conventions and shared by producers and audiences through the repetition of conventions in media products.
  3. Genres aren't fixed but constantly evolving; they can become hybrids, playing with genre codes and conventions from other genres.
Levi-Strauss-
Structuralism:
  1. This is the study of hidden rules that shape a structure to communicate ideology or myths.
  2. We understand the world and our place within it based on binary oppositions. For example, night and day- we know its not night time if it is day time.
Baudrillard-
Postmodernism:
  1. Postmodern society is concerned with hyper-real simulations, play of signs and images.
  2. Social distinctions are no longer rigid; differences in class, gender, politics and culture become simulations.
(Representation)
Hall-
Representation:
  1. Through stereotyping and the communication of ideology, those in power try to fix the meaning of a representation to a preferred reading that suggests there can only be one true meaning.
  2. There are many meanings a representation can generate so preferred readings can be contested.
  3. Meaning is created by a representation, but it isn't just by what is present but also by what is absent and different.
  4. Stereotypes, and the way they are constructed, should be pulled apart and deconstruct to identify what they tell us about ideology.
Gauntlett-
Identity:
  1. The media have an important but complex relationship with identities.
  2. There are many diverse and contradictory messages that individuals can use to think through their identity and how to express themselves.
Van Zoonen-
Feminist Theory:
  1. Women's bodies are represented as objects.
  2. Ideas of femininity and masculinity are constructed in our performances of these roles.
  3. Gender is what we do rather than who we are and changes meaning depending on cultural and historical contexts.
Bell Hooks-
Feminist Theory:
  1. Intersectionality refers to the coming together of gender, race, class and sexuality to create a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, which dominates media representations.
  2. Women should develop an oppositional gaze that refuses to identify with characters that reinforce patriarchal ideology and politicises the gaze. This is particularly important for Black Women.
Butler-
Gender Performativity:
  1. Gender is created in response to our performance of gender roles.
  2. We learn how to perform gender roles through repetition and ritual so it becomes naturalised.
Gilroy-
Ethnicity and Post-Colonialism:
  1. The Black Atlantic is a transatlantic culture that is simultaneously African, American, Caribbean and British.
  2. Britain has failed to mourn its loss of empire, creating post-colonial melancholia, leading to a version of British colonial history that criminalises immigrants.
  3. Representations support a belief in the inherent superiority of white western civilisation.
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