144-161 Summary
There’s little doubt that media text affects audiences; however how it happens and what that effect is, does create doubt. On one-hand you have emotions and on the other you have social science. The emotional side being driven by “moral panics” and the scientific side driven remains inconclusive.
The main theories of audience research have been the 'effects debate', the 'uses and gratifications' model, the' encoding/decoding model, and ethnography.
Let’s begin with the concept of 'uses and gratifications' model. Frankfurt's school theory had originally used this model whilst examining the effects of popular culture. Creating this “High Culture versus Low Culture.” Ironically it was called off during World War two due to “popular culture” deeing the United States as a facist country because of it. This caused the “hyperdomic” theory and “moral panics.”
Now let’s explain what “moral panics” are. Moral panics are mediums and are both popular and 'everywhere '. As we shall see, as each new medium during the latter part of the 19th century and 20th century became popular, it was characterized as a threat.
Then, we have “vulnerable people.” They’re people who are easily influenced by the media. When it comes to this ideological position, a child’s innocence most often comes into play, censorship too, and finally stereotypes as well.
161-171 Summary
There are many parts that come into play while producing a television show, movie, etc. Some of those elements are exhaustion, scarcity, dreariness, manipulation, fragmentation, energy, abundance, intensity, transparency, and community. Those factors can be broken up into two separate categories, reality and utopia.
The ones in the reality section are: exhaustion, scarcity, dreariness, manipulation, and fragmentation. Those in the utopia section are: energy, abundance, intensity, transparency, and community. These sections act as parallels to each other. There’s the good and the bad. The happy and the sad. These categories can be applied to anything in the media and even the world.
Next we have genres. And with each genre comes a gratification. An example of that being, sitcoms and comedies. You watch them so you can be amused.
173 & Onwards Summary
Let’s now try to encode and decode what everything means… Stuart Hall in the 1970s, at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Birmingham University, offered what can be considered ʼhalfway house' between the 'audience as victim' and ʼaudience as completely autonomous being' approaches. stresses that 'meaning structure 2' may not be the same as 'meaning structure 1'; audiences must understand the codes used in 'meaning structure 1' in order to access the intended meaning.
After Media theorists began to realize the media audiences were real humans and not complex statistics or models, the ethnographic approach was created. Sociologists had much earlier realized that to understand human behavior the social scientist had to observe groups as closely as possible. This meant actually joining the groups and observing their behavior at first hand; what was termed ´participant observation '. It was also recognized that this approach was problematic as it was likely to sacrifice any objectivity - difficult enough to achieve anyway - the sociologist may have been able to claim. Questionnaires are a weak weapon in research as they might not be deemed appropriate.
Overall however, the ethnographic looked beyond text to understand their audiences.