Argument – Audiences have evolved with the introduction of new media communication methods

Media Audiences:

Clay Shirky -End of Audience – Radio as a declining medium in the age of active audience communication and interaction.

Opposite of Lasswell’s Hypodermic needle theory – passive audiences.

War of the Worlds: Lasswell model of communication: Little interaction from and between viewers, showing how the fake news story could effect many people because they did not have many ways of communication with other audiences, and they had limited means of communicating with the media provider. Meanwhile Life Hacks, as a modern program, often includes more audience involvement from phone calls and social media interaction with the audience on the radio program.

Media Industries:

Hesmondhalgh – risky business – Appealing to the audience’s need for the interaction with other people and the medium itself allows the business to survive, since Clay Shirky argues that audiences that are denied this ability generally shift towards media companies that offer these two-way communication features. With the introduction of the internet, old media companies have moved online to avoid losing profits by remaining to produce products in a declining medium (Example – Daily Mail, which adopted use of the internet early on to keep it’s business thriving and to keep it successful as the most popular newspaper in the UK.)

Livingstone and Lunt: Public service media aims to inform, educate entertain (BBC – Life Hacks), following a citizen- based approach to media production. On the other hand, Private media corporations such as CBS, who broadcasted War of the Worlds, work on a consumer- based approach to media production where media plurality and consumer-led policing content is expected. According to Livingstone and Lunt, content monitoring plays a secondary role in consumer-based regulatory model, with audiences having to “rely much more on their own judgements of quality, truthfulness and enjoyment” – relates to the War of the Worlds because of it’s challenging of audiences believing almost blindly in news from media conglomerates.

Intro – Outline the intent/aim of the question, introduce Life Hacks and War of the Worlds

Paragraph 1: Media Audiences – Clay Shirky’s end of audience – life hacks AND Lasswell’s Hypodermic needle theory – How audiences have evolved as illustrated by these two radio programs.

Paragraph 2: Media Industries – Hesmondhalgh – Risky business – Appealing to the audience’s need for the interaction with other people and the medium itself allows the business to survive, since Clay Shirky argues that audiences that are denied this ability generally shift towards media companies that offer these two-way communication features. With the introduction of the internet, old media companies have moved online to avoid losing profits by remaining to produce products in a declining medium (Example – Daily Mail, which adopted use of the internet early on to keep it’s business thriving and to keep it successful as the most popular newspaper in the UK.)

Paragraph 3: Livingstone and Lunt – Public service media aims to inform, educate entertain (BBC – Life Hacks), following a citizen- based approach to media production. On the other hand, Private media corporations such as CBS, who broadcasted War of the Worlds, work on a consumer- based approach to media production where media plurality and consumer-led policing content is expected. According to Livingstone and Lunt, content monitoring plays a secondary role in consumer-based regulatory model, with audiences having to “rely much more on their own judgements of quality, truthfulness and enjoyment” – relates to the War of the Worlds because of it’s challenging of audiences believing almost blindly in news from media conglomerates. Life Hacks is provided by the BBC, a public Service Broadcaster that intends to inform, educate and entertain,

Conclusion: judgement – Media Audiences have evolved with the introduction of new media communication methods and media industries have been forced to evolve to accomodate the new audience communication methods available.

Institutions only – no textual analysis

B Good Picture Company – Independent media production company led by Joe Stephenson

Micro budget film – £110,000 independently funded. Opposed to larger media corporations that produce films for much larger amounts of money (e.g. hidden figures, small budget, $25 million) – More potential for revenue gain, but also less reach because the low budget makes it less mainstream – risky product (Hesmondhalgh). Experimental/ non-mainstream film and therefore very risky for media companies to invest in, thus independent funding was generally necessary.

Distribution: The film went on to be selected by the curators of MUBI, and acquired by Film4. Its journey continued in September 2017 with its Blu-ray & DVD release in the UK courtesy of Network Releasing. The film was released in the US exclusively on iTunes early 2018. It is also available on Available in the US & UK on Amazon Prime.

Chicken makes use of traditional marketing and distribution methods like trailers, posters, and film festivals in conjunction makes use of modern distribution methods – social media (Twitter, Facebook, Youtube) to market the film – mostly targeting younger audiences with these methods because of the nature of them being modern and online – although this is changing.

Regulation of the industry – Livingstone and Lunt – BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) – Independent production

Controversial topic – can be used to market film by sparking conversations/ benefit from any controversy which may bring the product more attention.

The Killing is a Danish TV series released in 2007 that was adapted to an English version in 2011.

The primary audience for this product is people who are interested in crime dramas, as this is the genre of the series.

The secondary audience would be people who wish to learn about the TV culture of foreign countries like Denmark since this series is produced in and set in Denmark.

No Offence is a production by AbbotVision, An independent company founded by the writer Paul Abbot who also wrote Shameless.

No Offence was a critical and commercial success in both the UK and France, similarly to The Killing No offence became popular in a different country to it’s country of origin.

1. Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) – No offence was originally aired by the public service broadcast Company Channel 4- Media made less to make money and focusing more on artistic intent.
2. “High quality minority interest programming is provided [by PSBs]”
3. “Diverse Ownership creates diverse products”

Commercial Media: Channel 4(NF)

Public Service Broadcaster (PSB): Channel 4(NF), DR(TK)

Horizontal integration:

Vertical Integration: Channel 4 Television Corporation is the owner of Channel 4. C4TC owns other companies in the Television industry such as Film4. The parent company is the department for digital, culture, media and Sport, a department of the UK government.

Hesmondhalgh: How media Companies minimise risk and maximise profit

HESMONDHALGH	CASE STUDIES
Internationalisation	No offence became popular in France and was broadcast on the French national broadcast channel, France2. The Killing was broadcast in the UK were it became popular in a different country to it’s country of origin.
Remakes	The Killing received an English language remake of the original series
Serialisation	No Offence used the same cast as Shameless, A series produced by the same company who produced No Offence, Abbotvision.

Livingstone and Lunt:

Consumer-based Regulation System – Based around the desires of audiences who consume the media.

Citizen-based Regulation System – Directs media producers to “contribute to the enrichment of cultural and social life and the potential for self-development of individuals, groups and communities”.

The implications of the 2003 communications act on media regulation: Created Ofcom, a government regulatory organisation As a result, independent televsion production companies were freed up to produce content that was more commercially viable (Consumer based rather than Citizen based). “Little accountability was forthcoming regarding actions to further citizen interests”.

The drawback of a self-regulated system is that without outside regulation there is no way for standards and laws to be enforced within media companies.

CATEGORY	FAMILIARITIES: from your chosen CSP’s	DIFFERENCES: from your chosen CSP’s	THEORY
CHARACTERS		Both in The Killing and No Offence detective characters are female, some middle aged instead of the traditional young male, independent character	PROPP, presents the idea of STOCK CHARACTERS, inc ‘hero’, ‘false hero’, etc.
NARRATIVE			CHATMAN / FREYTAG /TODOROV
THEMES	murder story in the killing – In no Offence, the police team is dedicated to enforcing law and justice in a “criminal-ridden” area.		LEVI-STRAUSS the use of key themes to structure stories and characters around familiar themes: family, community, law and order, justice. Often set up as binary oppostions: right/wrong urban/rural, young/old, good/bad
REPRESENTATION			PIERCE / BARTHES / SAUSSURE: SEMIOTICS radical and reactionary representations of police, family, law and order, through a range of signs (visual, graphic, audio, narrative, thematic etc)
TECHNICAL CODES / LANGUAGE OF MOVING IMAGE (music, setting, props, lighting, use of camera, editing etc)

My Magazine is aimed towards young adults and teenagers age 14-20 who are interested in games and gaming culture. This audience will be therefore mostly middle class because they will be able to afford games and the hardware needed to play them. I will focus my magazine around reviewing games and providing stories related to the gaming industry and gaming culture, informing readers of games to buy or avoid and telling readers about new developments in gaming. 

My game adverts will feature different products related to gaming: I will include an advert for an upcoming game, an advert for an upcoming console, and an advert for a gaming mouse. The adverts will be aimed towards the target audience of the magazine, but they will not necessarily follow the house style of the magazine because adverts are produced by other companies and the magazine will feature those designs. My game advert will include images of people to simulate the graphics of the game that is being advertised. This will be linked to postmodernism as I will aim to produce the adverts to conform to commercial media standard by creating a hyperreality and glorifying consumption of excess. The game also appeals traditionally to masculine audiences since it is a violent fighting game. Because of this, the advert is reactionary and conforms to the overrepresentation of games that are violent and appeal to males and the male fantasy. For my gaming console advert, I plan to again apply postmodernism in a typical way to praise consumption of the product being advertised and to attract customers. For my gaming mouse advert the language will be imperative to apply postmodern theory as well as the idea of hailing individuals in society developed by Althusser. 

My magazine’s front page will feature an image of a friend who will act as a character in the game being featured prominently on the front page. Since this character that will be featured is a white male the cover is reactionary, without featuring a female character the cover appeals to the mainly male audience of video game media and conforms to the general representation of white men in video games. The cover also will feature insights into what articles and stories are featured inside the magazine which will attract customers and communicate what is inside the magazine to them. My Magazine’s contents page will also provide information on what is in the magazine, but the primary purpose is informational while the features on the front cover is to advertise the magazine to potential customers. The contents page will list every article in the magazine. These will not be created apart from the double page feature but will be on the contents page to create verisimilitude and to make the magazine look like an actual magazine. The list will feature an image for each article to again increase verisimilitude. 

Curran and Seaton present the view that a free press relies on a free market where individual newspapers can compete through their political stances and points of view.  

Analyse the ways that The i and the Daily Mail attempt to establish a distinctive identity within this free market.  To what extent has this been successful? Refer to the specific edition of your case study – for both papers – as well as, on-line versions of these publications. 

Curran and Seaton’s summary of the theory of Liberal Free Press posits that “the freedom to publish in the free market ensures that the press reflects a wide range of opinions in society” In essence, the Liberal argument rests on the case that the free market is representative of the public’s needs and desires, and that the press therefore acts as “the people’s watchdog, scrutinising the actions of the government and holding the country’s rulers to account”. As the theory claims, Newspapers in a free market are aligned with the public interest because they must keep the loyalty of their readers to stay successful, and those newspapers that do not “respond to the concerns of their readers”, as Curran and Seaton phrase it, cannot be successful in a competitive space where alternative news outlets do respond to the concerns of their readers. In the theory of Liberal Free Press, the free market is touted as the institution that protects the freedom of the public and prevents the press from being untruthful or unrepresentative of the public interest, by holding the press accountable to the public. 

The Daily Mail is a traditionally right-wing newspaper owned by Jonathan Harmsworth, 4^th Viscount Rothermere, a descendent of the newspapers’ original founders, Harold and Alfred Harmsworth who introduced the newspaper in 1896. The I, on the other hand, was founded in 2010 as a sister paper the Independent, a newspaper in which the views expressed tend to align with liberalism. However, the I was bought by the Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) on 29 November 2019, for £49.6 million. DMGT is the conglomerate that owns the Daily Mail, and through purchasing the I the Daily Mail and General Trust has performed horizontal integration to extend their reach and income. Both newspapers are a part of capitalist media, meaning that the primary objective of the corporation that owns them is to make money, and not necessarily to produce newspapers that are balanced or informative sources of information. The Daily Mail circulates 1,158,192 copies, currently the most successful UK newspaper in terms of circulation. The daily mail’s main target audience is the lower middle class (C1). The Daily Mail is a middle-market newspaper, meaning that it is aimed towards readers who prefer entertainment as well as informational articles. The daily mail also has a majority female readership, with female readers consisting of 52-55% of the total daily mail readership. The I, as stated by the editor Oliver Duff, is a compact newspaper designed for people who do not have much time to read a newspaper, usually due to most of their time being taken up at work. As of October 2019, the Daily circulation of the I was 221,083. The main target audience is mostly middle-class people since the newspaper focuses on combining brevity with depth, allowing commuters to read it while they have time to get to work. Both newspapers have established their distinctive identities in the free market by appealing towards different interests of the public, and the Daily Mail, with the largest circulation of any UK newspapers has been very successful in creating profit. It can also be argued that since the daily mail sells so many copies and has such a large readership that it has been successful in representing the views of the public and has proven the liberal theory of the free press by being representative of the public interest. The I, while less successful financially, has also been successful in gaining a dedicated audience, showing how the newspaper has been representative of the interest of their target audience. 

Curran and Seaton write that, in an election: “The press’s autonomy enables it to fearlessly scrutinize government, brief the electorate, stage a national debate and relay public opinion to authority.” However, an article published by The Daily Mail on 4^th November 2020 pertaining to the US election indicates a problem with the idea of Liberal Free Press. Entitled “What Joe needs to stagger home”, the article includes subtle references to how the predicted president elect at the time, Joe Biden of the Democratic Party, is unfit for the position due to his age, indicated by the use of the phrase “stagger home”. The problem is that the article’s writer may have been influenced to imply this because of the pattern of ownership in the Daily Mail. Jonathan Harmsworth, the owner of DMGT and the Daily Mail newspaper, is a descendent of the newspapers’ original owners and is extremely rich, with his net worth being around 1.19 billion US dollars as of August 2017. Left-wing ideas are likely unfavourable for Harmsworth because of his wealth, and as a result he is likely to oppose the left-wing ideas of the distribution of wealth and welfare. Because he owns a newspaper and is powerful, this seems to go against the Liberal idea that newspapers are autonomous from the government and powerful individuals and instead suggests that the ideas expressed in newspapers owned by powerful capitalists are influenced by the views of those who own the newspapers, and therefore use them to spread their ideas. The I, on the other hand, appears to be very successful in establishing itself as the ideal liberal free newspaper that is balanced and informative. In the I’s 4^th November issue, the front page and the articles inside are far more neutral, as opposed to the Daily Mail’s subtle right-wing bias. Articles entitled: “No winners in this battle” and “Tense wait on three states that decide the next president” suggest that, despite the fact that DMGT own the I, they have remained the neutral and informative newspaper they claim to be.  

However, some theorists whose work relates to audience theory suggest that the free market may not be an entirely truthful or accurate model of the state of the press and newspapers which challenges the theory of liberal free press. Paul Lazarfeld introduced the idea that media communication is a two-step flow model in which thought leaders act as the filters of ideas shown in the media to the public masses and thus, they add another layer of interpretation, making their information subject to bias, interpretation, amplification, support and change. Therefore, based on the theory of Lazarfeld, the press is not selling copies to everyone who agrees with them because of their own convictions they have had the freedom to choose themselves, but rather the ideas of readers are influenced by the other readers around them, who can act as thought leaders and influence others with their interpretations. This can influence other people to certain political views and since the newspapers publish opinions on politics people can stick to reading certain newspapers not because of how the newspapers act in the public interest, but rather because they agree to the views most expressed by the newspapers. This links to the theory of surveillance capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff, in which harvested data of people is used online to target them with advertisements that influence their views and thus what media they consume, and what political views they align with. Noam Chomsky’s theory of five filters of mass media also links to these ideas as he introduces the idea that major news corporations act as gatekeepers of information that they “filter” to push the ideas they want to influence people with. This can be seen in the Daily Mail, as the ownership and organisation of the Daily Mail as a capitalist news organisation that also owns the I enforces the ideas of capitalism as it benefits them the most. 

Overall, The Daily Mail and The I have both been successful in establishing their own identities in the free market despite the capitalist ownership and influences from the powerful owners of the newspapers. This is because both newspapers, although the Daily Mail is more right-wing and the I is more left-wing, display some articles that have differing viewpoints from the norm, indicating that the idea of Liberal Free Press is not groundless since it is backed up by the examples of the Daily Mail and the I. 

	The I	The Daily Mail
When they were first introduced?	26th October 2010	4th May 1896
Are they part of a bigger organisational structure?	Originally set up as a sister paper to the Liberal newspaper the independent. Eventually the paper and its website were bought by the Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) on 29 November 2019, for £49.6 million.	Started by Viscount Rothermere and Viscount Northcliffe (Harold and Alfred Harmsworth respectively) and the newspaper ownership has been handed down over generations to Jonathan Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere today. Published by the Daily Mail and General Trust Media company.
Are they known for a particular political perspective?	The Viewpoints that the I expresses usually align with Centrist or liberal (left wing) political views.	The Daily mail is traditionally a right-wing newspaper.
What kind of journalism do they produce? What is their USP? What stories do they specialise in?	News and information are focused on in the I newspaper with broadsheet style articles.	The Daily mail is a middle-market newspaper so entertainment and news are both focused on.
What kind of people run the paper? Produce the stories?	The Daily Mail and General Trust, the Company that owns the Daily Mail newspaper, bought the I newspaper in 2019. The editor is Oliver Duff, a 38 year-old British Journalist educated at Cambridge. With the youngest editor of a UK national newspaper, Duff is likely to bring less conservative views to the newspaper based on how younger people generally think.	Jonathan Harmsworth, the great-grandson of one of the founders, owns the Daily mail, but the editor is Geordie Greig, a 59 year-old British Journalist educated at Eton and Oxford. With an older editor and a powerful owner supervising the newspaper, the views are more likely to be conservative as that ideology provides the upper classes the preservation of their social and economic positions.
Do they have a similar readership reach?	As of October 2019, the Daily circulation of the I was 221,083. The main target audience is mostly middle class people since the newspaper focuses on brevity with depth.	The Daily Mail circulates 1,158,192 copies, currently the most successful UK newspaper in terms of circulation. The daily mail’s main target audience is the lower middle class (C1).
Do they have a similar readership profile / target audience?	The I’s target audience is mostly middle class people.	The main target audience of the Daily Mail is lower middle class people, mainly with conservative views.
How are they currently doing? Increasing or decreasing sales and revenue?	The circulation dropped from 233,869 by February 2019 to 221,083 by October 2019.	The Daily Mail surpassed the sun as the UK’s best-selling newspaper in June 2020.
How are they looking to embrace new media technologies?	The I has it’s own website where articles are published digitally, but the I mainly focuses on the production of physical newspapers.	The Daily mail was one of the first newspapers to pioneer the use of radio in the 1920s and 1930s. The Daily mail also made use of the internet to market itself early on compared to other newspapers.
Do they have a similar layout and design?	The I is presented in a compact format. It is mainly targeted to well-educated readers since it presents broadsheet-quality articles in a tabloid-like compact layout.	The Daily Mail is a tabloid middle-market newspaper, meaning it covers a mix of news and entertainment.

Judith Butler Describes Gender as “an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts”. In other words it is something learnt through repeated performance. 

How useful is this idea in understanding how gender is represented in Music Videos? Refer in detail to your chosen style models. 

Refer in detail to your chosen music video style models, Men’s Health and Oh.. [20 marks] 

Judith Butler’s definition of gender is of an identity that is not assigned at birth, as has been the common idea of gender for centuries, but rather an identity that is instituted upon us and we define for ourselves through a stylized repetition of acts, often influenced by popular media and ideas about how people of certain genders should act. The way someone defines their gender is often influenced by the media and interests they are presented by their parents or carers, for example females are often introduced to different clothes, interests, toys, etc. that are traditionally assigned as for their gender compared to what males are usually introduced to at young ages by their parents or carers. Additionally, the media of a society can influence how someone defines their gender in a similar way to how they are introduced to different interests by their parents or carers depending on their gender. In this sense gender is described as “performative” by Judith Butler because when someone “acts” their gender that produces a series of effects that “consolidate an impression of being a man or woman” as Butler describes. Butler also describes gender as being fluid, changeable and “a set of categories to be played out and performed by individual subjects in individual moments in time and space”, meaning that a person’s gender changes based on different social settings or different people they are around, since gender is behaviour that is presented to others according to Butler. 

“Oh” (previously Oh Comely) is an independent magazine published by the small company Iceberg press. In contrast to magazines from large corporations like Men’s Health, Oh presents an alternative institutional structure, because as a  small company owned by a small group of 3 women and as a result is different to larger companies like Fox or Conde Nast – they are often owned by powerful people (usually men) with employees under them instead of the workers owning most of their own production, which is the company structure of Oh. This links to the representation of women in mass media – often presented to appeal to the male gaze, like the female presenters of Fox news who, in contrast to the men, are expected to represent and express themselves in a certain way to attract straight male audiences. Oh, on the other hand, represents a form of hegemonic struggle by presenting women in many ways. Also the lack of men in Oh presents an impression that these women are independent. This shows hegemonic struggle and links to bell hook’s theory by presenting different views of women and encouraging renegotiation of the hegemonic ideas. Althusser mentions how ISAs control how people think in society, and this is evident in how large media companies produce media that reinforces traditional gender roles through the representation of men and women. In magazines like Men’s health, produced by the conglomerate Hearst, men are represented in a way that reinforces the traditional gender roles of society, because the conglomerates act as gatekeepers of information to the public and major internal state apparatuses. However, small companies like Iceberg press are not subject to these pressures like the employees of Hearst and Men’s Health and therefore can focus on publishing the magazine Oh to push ideas that do not conform to hegemonic ideas about gender. Bell hook also introduces the idea of intersectionality, the theory that feminism is not homogenous or universal and that feminism links to other factors like age, sexuality, class, education religion, etc. This intersectionality highlights the link between postcolonial and industrial analysis and critical thinking and feminist critical thinking. While Oh, as a magazine owned by a small company can combat these hegemonic ideas and present different views about gender, race and class. For example, issues and pages of the magazine, such as page 53 of the CSP, focuses on women of different races and cultural identities. While Oh and it’s alternative institutional structure allows the creators to combat postcolonial societal ideas, the institutional capitalist structure of conglomerates like Hearst discourage creativity and encourage the conformity to hegemonic ideas since these guarantee profit and that the managers keep their positions. 

This idea is useful in understanding how gender is represented in Music videos because the theory describes gender to be an identity performed by people via a visual medium like a music video. Lisbet Van Zoonen suggests that popular culture is a site of struggle, where identities are continually being reconstructed, and since popular music videos are part of this culture that makes them useful for using ideas about gender to understand music videos as a part of the wider popular culture. The music video for Mr.Probz’s “Waves” can be understood through Butler’s gender theory by analysing the representation of gender of the characters in the video. The main character presents himself as male, and he finds himself alone, but other characters are introduced through memories the main character has, including another main character, a woman who is implied to be the girlfriend of the main character. The music video’s narrative is told from a male perspective and since only the male’s side of the story, the video may reflect how the man sees his girlfriend, who he hallucinates when alone, through the gender that is presented to him. In other words, the events shown in the music video are slanted because of how they are only shown from the man’s perspective which could affect how the female main character is portrayed compared to what could have happened, since in the video they are shown to have relationship problems and the protagonist is clearly heavily affected by this. In terms of Judith Butler’s theory, the representations of the characters genders are generally conventional as how the genders of female and male are usually represented. In this music video, the main character is mainly shown as vulnerable and he is presented as a victim of his circumstances and vices, evidenced by how he is shown washing up on a desert island and how he heavily drinks alcohol to deal with his problems. Meanwhile, the other main character, represented as a female is shown in a relationship with the male main character and she is represented as female through the repetition of acts traditionally thought of as female, for example, she wears dresses and has long hair, which are part of the acts that present her as female. This reinforces how gender is represented as being constituted as the repetition of stylised acts – the male protagonist is presented as a male and the other character is represented as female because this piece of media has recorded the typical performances of gender in the specific historical context of the time this video was produced. 

Overall, Judith Butler’s idea that gender is an identity instituted through a stylised repetition of acts is useful for analysing the representation of gender in music videos and other media forms, such as magazines like Men’s Health and Oh, because it helps to understand the representation of gender and identity in media. Also, the intersectional ideas linked to Judith Butler’s theory aid in the understanding of media industries and how they work to control and reinforce hegemonic ideas about gender and race in society. 

“Oh” (previously Oh Comely) is an independent magazine published by the small company Iceberg press. In contrast to magazines from large corporations like Men’s Health, Oh presents an alternative institutional structure

Oh was created and is owned by a small group of 3 women and as a result is different to larger companies like fox or Conde Nast – they are often owned by powerful people (usually men) with employees under them instead of the workers owning most of their own production, which is the company structure of Oh. This links to the REPRESENTATION of women in mass media – often presented to appeal to the male gaze, like the female presenters of Fox news who, in contrast to the men, are expected to represent and express themselves in a certain way to attract straight male audiences. Oh, on the other hand, represents a form of hegemonic struggle by presenting women in many different ways. Also the lack of men in Oh presents an impression that these women are independent. This shows hegemonic struggle and links to bell hook’s theory by presenting different views of women and encouraging renegotiation of the hegemonic ideas.