Key terms to use in mock

• Cultural industries – Types of media in which a cultural/creative company produces, distributes and exhibits a product
• Production– Making or producing a product
• Distribution– Advertising or marketing the product
• Exhibition / Consumption-Showing the product/releasing it
• Mergers– Combining two or more things into one
• Monopolies– When a company owns all the three
• Commodification – turning something into an item that can be bought and sold
• Regulation– A rule/restriction made by government/authority
• Deregulation– When the government restrictions are loosened
• Conglomerates– When a business owns a massive group of companies
• Vertical Integration– When a company does all 3 production, distribution and consumption
• Horizontal Integration– When a company only produces or distributes

1. ‘Hypodermic Needle’ Theory

After the end of WWII, social science researchers began to investigate the way in which communication – and particularly, political communication – was used to disseminate propaganda. As such, from the end of the 1940’s and into the 1950’s, there was not only an expansion of new media forms, for example, the number of TV licences shot up from 763,000 in 1951 to 3.2 million in 1954 (How the Coronation kick-started the love of television), but, there was also an expansion of research into the effects of television. Many of which are now found on the specifications of media studies courses.

Hypodermic model (passive consumption)

Early theoretical work on the relationship (or effects) of media consumption are often traced back to Harold Lasswell, who developed the theoretical tool of ‘content analysis’ and in 1927 wrote Propaganda Technique in the World War which highlighted the brew of ‘subtle poison, which industrious men injected into the veins of a staggering people until the smashing powers . . . knocked them into submission’ (link).

As Martin Moore notes, Lasswell: believed each government had ‘manipulated the mass media in order to justify its actions’ in World War 1 (2019:122). 

To illustrate his hypothesis, in 1948 he developed a linear model of communication

Two Step Flow of Communication (active consumption)

At the same time Paul Lazarfeld recognised that a simple, linear model may not be sufficiently complex to understanding the relationship between message sent > message received. As such, in 1948 he developed the Two Step Flow model of communication.

As Martin Moore suggests, ‘people’s political views are not, as contemporaries thought, much changed by what they read or heard in the media. Voters were far more influenced by their friends, their families and their colleagues’ (2019:124).

What is significant here is that this theory suggests that the audience are ACTIVE NOT PASSIVE, in that audience consumption is based on consideration of what others think not a PASSIVE process of unthinking

3. Uses and Gratifications (active selection)

The distinction is this approach is rather than categorising the audience as passive consumers of messages, either directly from source, or from opinion leaders, this theory recognises the decision making process of the audience themselves. As Elihu Katz explains the Uses and Gratifications theory diverges from other media effect theories that question: what does media do to people?, to focus on: what do people do with media?

Research into this area began with Denis McQuail and Jay Blumler, who in 1969, looked to study the 1964 UK Election. In the early 1970’s they were joined by Elihu Katz, Joseph Brown, Michael Gurevitch and Hadassah Haas. 

In essence, they put forward research to show that individual audience members are more active than had previously been thought and were actually key to the processes of selection, interpretation and feedback. In essence, individuals sought particular pleasures, uses and gratifications from individual media texts, which can be categorised as:

1. information / education
2. empathy and identity
3. social interaction
4. entertainment
5. escapism

Or categorised as: diversion, personal relationships, personal identity and surveillance.

It is suggested that much of this research was informed by Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs (1954), which argues that people actively looked to satisfy their needs based on a hierarchy of social and psychological desires. Maslow’s thinking was centred around Humanistic psychology According the web page ‘Humanist Psychology’ (link here) the basic principle behind humanistic psychology is simple and can be reduced to identify the most significant aspect of human existence, which is to attain personal growth and understanding, as ‘only through constant self-improvement and self-understanding can an individual ever be truly happy‘.

Hesmondhalgh, Cultural industries, media institutions.

Hesmondhalgh,

Media Audiences

Information from the board about audience for you to reflect upon:

1. Look at the advertising campaigns (trailers, websites at home and abroad) for your chosen CSP TV series and think about how media producers target, attract and potentially construct audiences across local, national and global scales.
2. This means that different audiences interpretations reflect social, cultural and historical circumstances – which provide an insight into audience similarities and differences across local, national and global audiences.
3. The production, distribution and exhibition of many television 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.

Key thinkers to research for Mock

Key Thinkers

1. David Hesmondhalgh

2. Curran and Seaton.

3. Livingstone & Lunt