Henry Jenkins

Musicians have always made money from merchandise, such as selling the band’s latest album cover on a T-shirt or their logo printed on a tote bag. Diehard fans might visit their local tattoo parlour to get lyrics etched into their arms. YouTube and Twitch influencers also add income to their streams by selling merch which will resonate with their subscribers. And there are plenty of armchair football fans who purchase their team’s kit to show their support for the club.

Jenkins believed this sort of engagement with the media made you a fan.

According to the Uses and Gratifications theory, we want to engage with media texts because they can help us develop our personal identity. David Gauntlett, and his concept of constructed identity describes how media representations shape the way we behave. Fans are wearing these t-shirts, tops, hoodies, beanies, baseball caps because they want their clothes to reflect their personality. They also want to demonstrate they belong to a subculture.

“The reader’s activity is no longer seen simply as the task of recovering the author’s meanings but also as reworking borrowed materials to fit them into the context of lived experience.” -Henry Jenkins

Stuart Hall’s reception theory argued audiences decoded television programmes according to their own framework of knowledge. We also consume media texts with different levels of intensity. Jeremy Tunstall, for example, identified three ways we engage with media texts. A primary mode of consumption is when we are immersed in the programme. By contrast, ambient television playing in the background is a tertiary mode of consumption. Put simply, Jenkins said fans will “watch their favourite show with rapt attention”.

 Jeremy Tunstall’s audience engagement theory

His audience engagement theory identified three modes of consumption.

Primary

The audience pays close attention to the text. For example, you might be engrossed by the definitions of audience on this page or, in the cinema, you tend to concentrate on the big screen and become immersed in the film’s narrative.

Secondary

In this mode, the media text is in the background while you are concentrating on something else. For example, are you listening to music while reading this guide to audience? You are still consuming the music text, just not with the same intensity you might have at a concert.

There is also the concept of “ambient television”, such as a programme playing on Netflix while you are more interested in your social media feeds and the notifications flashing on your phone. This article on the rise of ambient television from The New Yorker offers great analysis of the codes and conventions of this new style of television.

Tertiary

Although the media text is present, we are not really aware of its message. For example, when you walk down the street, you probably glance at billboards and advertising hoardings but do not pay them much attention. This is the tertiary mode of consumption.