Media Studies Mass Media

hAbstr achievement This prove explores what the media, mass media and mass communication is. As well as a major focus on the sodium thiosulphate harry supposition in addition knget as the supernatural skunk possibleness on the reply analytic thinking, the supine sense of hearing and the encoding and decipher model with reference to relevant theorists and statements and interpreters from Africa and separate countries. In conclusion this essay states that the reception analysis and the sodium thiosulfate needle supposition both be authoritative and complex in understanding the media and the active and passive earreach.The sodium thiosulfate needle theory and the reception analysis is a complicated theory in the media world. These two theories explore how the media affects its earshots, both active and passive. This essay testament explore through relevant examples and ideas from theorists, the hypodermic needle theory and the reception analysis, what they argon and what role it molds in the media world and how the media affects the passive interview. The media is a versatile collection of industries and practices, each with their methods of communication, specific business interests, constraints and consultations (Briggs and Cobley, 2001 1).And mass media according to TheFreeDictionary is, A means of public communication reaching a oversized reference. The media is or so e rattlingwhere in societies today and flock view or take care to so much types of media e really single day. As a aftermath the media that is taken in affects its viewing audience and listeners subconsciously and are not advised of the impact that the media has on them. Mass communication thus, is the process of transforming a center created by a person in a group to large hearings or market through a transforming device which is the medium (J. Baran, world to Mass Communication).As Connell (1984 88) says that it is common that medias mental object is distort ed and misunderstood by society. Thus it personal effects the society subconsciously buy the management they act. The sense of hearing plays a vital role in the media world, because if the earshot did not constitute neither would the media. (Hanes) The media sends out cultivation to the reference and the audience is there to engender it. Audiences are not blank sheets of paper on which media nubs can be written members of an audience provide realize prior attitudes and beliefs which will realize how effective media put acrosss are. (Abercrombie 1996, 140). Hence, the heart and soul happend by the audience and how they interpret that message will depend on the background of the audience members, such as their values and beliefs, their attitudes and their circumstances. Furthermore, there are two types of audiences that are seen to take in media, the active audience and the passive audience. The active audience interacts with the media give to them, and they fork out the knowledge to challenge the messages that the media gives to them.The uses and gratifications model that was set-back expressed in the united states in the 1940s (Moores 1993) believed that audiences were active and that they had a choice as to the texts they received, and that they were satisfactory to choose the 1 that would satisfy their needs. The passive audience, as seen by the hypodermic needle theory righteous accept all the information effrontery to them. Passive audience an audience that does not interact with the media and it has no get word of the medias influence on them (Unkn give birth. www. aber. c. uk. ). The hypodermic needle theory assumes that the audience is passive in receiving and interpretation of media texts. (Hanes, 2000). The media is seen to directly affect the passive audience and that it will have the power to directly influence the audience, because the audiences just take in and accept what the media gives to them. Children are often seen as a passive audience because they do not fully understand what they are viewing, thus are affected subconsciously and often act out what they have seen on TV.Teenagers often try to copy their celebrity role models and lose mickle of what is real and what is fantasy (Manali Oak) The hypodermic needle theory which was explored by the capital of Kentucky School also known as the magic bullet theory is a famous theory that states that the media is a needle or magic gun and that it injects the message into the audiences idea and it causes changes in the audiences behavior towards the message. (Unknown. poundedmonk. wordpress. com ). The audience is passive and as a result the message is injected into their mind without their knowledge.Harold Lasswell was a well known theorist of the hypodermic needle theory stated that the new mass media could directly influence and s management public influence. Meaning that when the audience (which is passive) views something on the goggle box or hears something on the radio, it affects the audience directly and unconsciously, and could possibly change the way the audience views a certain(a) subject. For example, in 1930 Orson Wells created a fake news bulletin roughly an alien invasion in an American city called Grovers Mill.He broadcasted this message on a Radio Station program called The War of the Worlds, and it reached virtually twelve million American pile. Due to this broadcast the whole region was in chaos. (Taken from communicationtheory. org) Additionally the Hypodermic needle theorys supporters believed that because the audience is passive in that they receive and accept the messages given to them by the media texts that, they ordinate a great emphasis on the text itself and the power that it has on the audience.However because that information about the texts are so readily available and in truth easy to access, that the Hypodermic needle theory is generally disregarded by m both other theorists when they consider the audiences response to the media . (Idea taken from Phillip J Hanes) an example of this is when apartheid came into action in South Africa, the duster government controlled the media and showed the black good deal as weak and inferior to the white deal and that they are the overabundant race and should be in charge.Most of the white viewers believed and accepted this information and as a result treated the black people handle they are inferior to the white people, and thus some of the black people began to believe that they are inferior to the whites. (International Afro Mass Media) However the hypodermic needle theory was not based on empirical findings rather it employed assumptions about human nature. and that People were assumed to be controlled by their biologic instincts (Lowerg and Delfleur, 1995 . p. 400).As a result the Hypodermic effects model is considered to be an pitiful representation of the communication between media and the public, as it does n ot take into story the audience as persons with their own beliefs, opinions, ideas and attitudes. (Unknown www. aber. ac. uk). Hence the quote above shows the complications that were ruttish by other theorists when it came to the hypodermic needle theory of how information was just accepted by the passive audience. In addition the reception analysis plays a major role in the media.The reception analysis is the way in which the audience receives, accepts and interprets the message given to them in the media (www. museum. tv. com). The way that an audience will receive and interpret a message in the media commonly depends on their socio-economic position, gender, ethnicity and so forth. For example if four people from distinguishable people from antithetic societies, watch the corresponding programme, each of them will have a different view on what they have just watched, showing that the way they receive a message will be etermined by their own individuality. (Journal of Com munication, 1990, vol,40, no1, p. 73) The theory on audience reception has taken into account the individual members of the audience. It realises there is a preferred marrow in the text, only also places emphasis on the audience in the process of constructing a meat. (Hanes www. aber. ac. uk/media) meaning that the reception theory does not just look at the audience as whole, but as well as the individuals in an audience and how the medias messages affect the individuals.In South Africa, research has been done, that shows that they youth in South Africa is very influenced by the media received from North America. Teenagers watch reality shows and believe that in order to be popular and liked by their peers they have to look, act and be a certain way. Hence showing that the youth, depending on their demographic that they are in are heavily influenced and effected by the messages that they receive from the media. (M. Way Journalism and Mass Communication). Hals encoding and decodi ng model draws up on Abercrombies (1996) dominant allele text view and the dominant audience view. The dominant text view states that the text is more important because the audience is passive they will be influenced by the messages given by the media. Whereas the dominant audience view states that the audience is more important because it is up audience to analyze and interpret the text. (Hall 1980). The advantage of the encoding and decoding model is that it realises that the meaning made by the audience is affected by various other factors including socio/economic frameworks and past experiences, but also involving the context in which the media message is consumed. (Hanes www. aber. ac. uk/media).This statement means that if one person watches television while organism distracted by two children will receive a different from another person who is watching the same television programme but is concentrating on what they are watching. The reception analysis views on how the audi ence receives the message and how the audience interprets the messages received by the media. Thus we can see that because everyone has different ethnicity, gender, socio-economic backgrounds and political views, that they will view the messages that they receive completely differently to any other person, showing that there is individuality in audiences.For example, a Zulu char who is a domestic worker who lives in a black townsfolk who watches Carte Blanche will interpret the message differently to a white business man who lives in a mansion in Northcliff who watches the arrogate same thing. Due to different backgrounds and experiences,each person hashis or herown way for decoding messages, andpeople could even form different interpretations toward the same message (stereotypebyinternet. wordpress. om) Furthermore, because there are so many types of media being given to us as the consumers of the media, we become numb to many of the information given to us that we begin to just accept the information and messages. The messages that are in many of the television programs that are consumed that they begin to affect the viewers subconsciously, and the viewers will eventually act out and behave like the people on the programs that they watch and begin to think that everything that they view on the television is acceptable and that, that is how normal or even popular people should behave. The first effect of reality TV deals with teenagers. Already with self-esteem and acceptance issues, childish youth that frequently watch television shows that are advertise as being reality, most likely will have the delusion that their bearing should mirror the people they see on the shows. Like with magazines and tabloids that historically have caused harmful trends in teenagers, such as anorexia and bulimia, reality TV bring up facades that are readily accepted by our youth. (D.Watkins, 2008) In conclusion one can see that the media, mass media, mass communication pla y an important role and are important to the hypodermic needle theory, the reception analysis, and in the encoding and decoding model. This essay also shows how the audience, passive and active play an important role in the theories mentioned in this essay, and that media usage is a very complex activity. Bibliography Abercrombie, Nicholas (1996) Television and Society. Cambridge Polity vex Branston, G and Stafford, R. 1999). The Media Students Book. London Routledge (pp. 410-420). Cruz, J. & Justin Lewis (1994) Viewing, Reading, Listening Audiences and Cultural Reception. Boulder, CO Westview Gillespie, M. (2005). Media Audiences. Maidenhead Open University Press (pp. 26-50) Hanes, Philip J (April 2000) The Advantages and Limitations of a Focus on Audience in Media Studies. Retrieved April 29, 2012 from http//www. aber. ac. uk/media/Students/pph9701. hypertext markup language Hart, Andrew (1991) Understanding the Media A Practical Guide.London Routledge Koufie-Amartey, I, (2010) Hypodermic Needle Theory. Retrieved April 29, 2012 from http//amartey1. blogspot. com/2010/04/hypodermic-needle-theory. html Nightingale, Virginia (1996) analyse Audiences The Shock of the Real. London Routledge OSullivan, Tim, Brian Dutton Philip Rayner (1994) Studying the Media. London Edward Arnold Seiter, Ellen et al. (Eds. ) (1989) Remote Control. London Routledge Strelitz, L. (2002). Media consumption and identity formation the case of the homeland viewers.Media, Culture Society, 24(4), 459. Taylor, L and Willis, A. (1999). Media Studies. Texts, Institutions and Audiences. Oxford Blackwell (pp. 168-183). Watkins, D. (2008) The effects of reality TV. Retrieved April 30, 2012 from http//www. helium. com/items/933893-the-effects-of-reality-tv Way, M. Strelitz, Larry. Mixed Reception South African Youth and their start of Global Media. Retrieved April 26, 2012 from http//findarticles. com/p/articles/mi_7081/is_1_26/ai_n28420075