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Audience Theory, CSP research

CSP 14 and 4: TV

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Deutschland 83 and Capital

Capital:

Media Language:

– A complex mainstream television product in which the codes and conventions of crime drama are intertwined with aspects of social realism

Media representation:

– Capital provides a wide range of representational areas to explore; the family, place, nation, class, ethnicity, race and issues.

– Explore the Steve Neale’s representation theory

– It is within the hybrid genre – drama, social realism and
crime genres

– Representation of place – London and by implication, the nation

– Analysis of how the representations convey values, attitudes and beliefs about the world

Media Industries:

– Capital is a BBC programme

– It fulfils the demand of public service broadcasting

– It has a purpose to ‘inform, educate and entertain’ and could be seen as part of the need to represent different groups, nations and regions.

– Capital is a Kudos production for the BBC, an independent company which also produces
successful programmes for other broadcasters.

– Kudos specialises in TV series which can be sold or remade for the US market, making it
typical of contemporary media institutions which operate globally rather than nationally

Media Audiences:

– The production, distribution and circulation of Capital shows how audiences can be reached, both on a national and global scale, through different media technologies and platforms, moving from the national to transnational through broadcast and digital technologies

– Follows Gerbner’s cultivation theory

– Follows Hall’s reception theory

– The way in which different audience interpretations reflect social, cultural and historical circumstances is evident in the analysis of Capital which is explicitly linked to contemporary issues.

– The advertising campaigns (trailers, websites at home and abroad) for the series demonstrate how media producers target, attract and potentially construct audiences

Deutschland 83:

Narrative:

– How does the use of the narrative conventions of the spy thriller and crime drama – use of enigmas, binary oppositions, restricted and omniscient narration etc. – position the
audience?

– The narrative of Deutschland 83 has been controversial – particularly in Germany -through its use of binary oppositions to contrast East and West Germany

– The role of the hero and effect of audience alignment with Martin Rauch, a Stasi Officer

– The narrative of Deutschland 83 can be defined as postmodern in its self-reflexive style

– Narratology including Todorov

Genre:

– Conventions of the TV series and the way in which this form is used to appeal to
audiences

– Definition of the series as belonging to the spy thriller genre

– Conventions of the period drama and reasons for its popularity

– Analysing the use of specific genres to discuss wider issues in society

– Genre theory including Neale

Media Representations:

– Representation of national and regional identity (East and West Germany (Europe))

– Representation of gender: male hero and spy, the female ‘love interest’ etc., the way
characters signify wider issues in society.

– Analysis of how the representations convey values, attitudes and beliefs about the world –
both contemporary and past.

– Theories of representation including Hall

– Feminist theories including bell hooks and Van Zoonen (role of women)

Media Industries:

– It is a co-production of AMC Networks’ SundanceTV and RTL Television (German and
American), positioning it to exploit the national and global market.

– Bought by C4 in Britain as part of their ‘Walter presents…’

– Cultural industries including Hesmondhalgh

Media Audiences:

– The production, distribution and circulation of Deutschland 83 shows how audiences can be reached, both on a national and global scale, through different media technologies and platforms, moving from the national to transnational through broadcast and digital technologies.

– The way in which different audience interpretations reflect social, cultural and historical circumstances is evident in the analysis of the series which are explicitly linked to contemporary issues.

– The reception of the series in Germany, Europe and the US

– The advertising campaigns (trailers, websites at home and abroad) for the series demonstrate how media producers target, attract and potentially construct audiences.

– Cultivation theory including Gerbner

– Reception theory including Hall

Research

– Commercial media = organisation that makes or distributes products for economic gain. Media is usually made for entertainment purposes

– BBC creates a total revenue of £115 million = https://www.bbc.co.uk/annualreport/2014/executive/finances/commercial.html

– Kudos creates £5m in commercial interest rates = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudos_(production_company)

– Horizontal Integration = BBC has horizontal integration with BBC News, BBC radio 1

– Endemol Shine Productions UK bought out and now own Kudos the production company

– Vertical integration = BBC has vertical integration with CBBC, BBC 1, BBC 2, BBC 3 and BBC news

– Media concentration/convergence = describes the reduction in the number of media organisations that produce products

– Media concentration/convergence = Kudos is owned by Endemol Shine Group UK, who are under the News Corp, who are then under Murdoch and his empire.

CSP research

NEWSPAPER TO TV CSP

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Bullet points identified from Curran and Seaton:

– The numerous radical press pamphlets and small scale newspapers of the Victorian Era, Curran argues, were engines for social and political change.

– Curran and Seaton suggest that a second and equally turbulent wave of ownership consolidation took place in the latter half of the 20th century

– Money wins, while both audience size and audience share determine content

– Peak time schedules are dominated by the lighter entertainment formats, whereas less popular minority interest products are sidelined to secondary channels or late night slots

– There was much to celebrate at the outset of the internet’s invention in terms of its potential to challenge the top down nature of traditional media.

– Radio 4 is only 1 of a few UK based radio stations that are dominated by spoken work broadcasting

– Commercial media has not been able to dominate UK television and radio markets completely

– Media formats that are successful are replicated to deliver to mass audiences. For example, the Great British Bake Off has morphed into the Great British Sewing Bee

– Curran and Seaton argue that the Uk government policy is responsible in part, for the widespread domination of the media landscape by huge conglomerates.

Audience Theory

HENRY JENKINS

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Dr. Henry Jenkins (14390001911).jpg
Henry Jenkins

Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture

– An article written by Jenkins in 1992

– In the article, he explored the stereotypes held of the Star Wars fans

– The stereotype saw these Star Wars fans as desexualised social misfits who cultivate worthless knowledge, are emotionally immature and find it difficult to distinguish real life from a TV show.

Fans and Fandoms

– Fans are usually stereotyped as being unmentally balanced within media and in fiction, they are presented as being psychopathic.

– Within the media, fans are represented as an “other” because of their “cultural preferences and interpretative practices…must be held at a distance so that the fannish taste does not pollute sanctioned culture”

– In reference to Bourdieu, Jenkins identified that fan culture is seen as distasteful because it values pop cultural artifacts over more traditional signifiers within the culture capital

– Many beliefs about fan culture is that they are symptomatic around our anxiety of the issues that “violate dominant cultural hierarchies”

– Fan cultures challenges cultural hierarchies because they possess cultural capital and they come from middle class educated backgrounds

– Dr Who is an example of a Tv programme that has an active fan community that goes back many decades.

Participatory Cultures

– In the book, Participatory Culture in a Networked Era (2016), Jenkins worked with Boyd and Ito to explore the key ideas that are active within participatory culture.

– Jenkins saw participatory culture as one:

1. With relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement.

2. With strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations with others

3. With some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices

4. Where members believe that their contributions matter

5. Where members feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they have created). Not every member must contribute, but all must believe they are free to contribute when ready and that what they contribute will be appropriately valued

– In 1993, Jenkins first used the term participatory culture and defined it as “describing the dynamics between fan, producer and text and their relationships with other fans“

Quotations to refer to:

– Fans possess not simply borrowed remnants snatched from mass culture, but their own culture built from the semiotic raw materials the media provides

– Can meaningful participation take place when the nature of contributions is controlled by big media and technology businesses? = (Participatory Culture in a Networked Era, 2016)

– Is participation exploration where clicks generate not only access to content, but generate money for advertisers? = = (Participatory Culture in a Networked Era, 2016)

Video Links to refer to…

Audience Theory, Institution

MEDIA STUDIES TEXTBOOK

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Theorists located within the Textbook:

– bell hooks = p54-55

– Clay Shirky = p95-98

– David Gauntlett = p81-84

– Edward Said = p63-64

– Henry Jenkins = p91-93

– Jean Baudrillard = p27-31

– Judith Butler = p51-52 and p55-56

– Liesbet Van Zoonen = p51-54 and p63-64

– Paul Gilroy = p61-64

– Claude Levi-Strauss = p13-14

– Dan Gilmour = p95

– Stuart Hall = p32-33

– John Fiske = p 88-90

– Stanley Cohen = p74-76

– Noam Chomsky = p23

– Richard Dyer = p43-46

– Bill Nicholas = p39-40

– Tzvetan Todorov = p8-10

– Graeme Turner = p38-39

– Pierre Bourdieu = p84-85 and p90-91

– Roland Barthes = p9-10 and p13-14

– Christine Gledhill = p41

– Lawrence Cahoone = p25

Uncategorized

A2 NEA: STATEMENT OF INTENT

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According to the Internet, children are 27% of the entire population and fall in the DE Social group. My magazine will serve as a source of escapism and will be cheap, so anyone of any social class can afford it. Before planning my front cover, I created multiple magazine covers of different styles, to see which one was the most effective at persuading the consumers to buy it and was suitable for my target audience. I aim for my magazine to be engaging and to be radical, in order to influence more females to get into gaming since that is stereo-typically a males activity.

Before planning my magazine contents and adverts, I looked at examples of famous gaming magazines and noticed that game characters are predominantly male. The main aim of my magazine is to promote more females into the gaming industry, in which Gramsci’s cultural hegemony is being contradicted as I am trying to influence gender equality as gaming is stereo-typically a boy’s activity. I have thought very carefully about the sizing of my magazine, and I have decided on an A4 size of magazine because it will be able to fit into the consumer’s bag.  

For my adverts, I intend to help people stay connected, especially during the current Corona virus pandemic. Therefore, I intend on creating an advert based around a game that has online features because Maslow’s hierarchy of need identifies that people have a need of belonging, so through creating friends from online gaming, this need can be satisfied. My other adverts will be on a new gaming console because, like the online game, satisfies the need of belonging. My final advert is a game store because for many teenagers, it is a necessity and using Katz and Blumler’s Uses and Gratifications theory, the need of escapism can be satisfied as well as the need of relationships, which can be achieved through going online on gaming devices. My adverts will include females in order to empower them and they are presented as powerful, which contradicts Jean Kilbourne’s speech “The Dangerous Ways Ads See Women”, where she explores how women are wrongly represented in the media.

I have created Marian (the central image of my front cover) to appear radical to create the interpretation that women can be like men, in the fact that they can take on the adventure and action as well. I’ve also designed Marian to have masculine features to remove her sexuality and make her like male characters, as usually female game characters have exaggerated features. This contradicts Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze, where women are seen as a sex symbol. I have put Marian in a masculine pose, to challenge the dominant ideology and emphasise how women should be equal to men. Marian is also wearing clothes strategically covering her bottom, challenging the concept of voyeurism. I’ve also included no makeup on Marian to challenge the dominant ideology and emphasise how women and men should be represented truthfully, as not all females are the same as what is represented by the dominant ideology.    

The cultivation theory says that by creating more media challenging the dominant ideology, you will be able to change people’s theories. Within my magazine, I am aiming to cultivate cultivating the idea of equality for both males and females. This is shown by the common occurrence of females doing more male orientated activities, such as Marian (a female) being a female rally car driver, challenging the dominant ideology that only men can participate in car racing.