Key Definitions
Capitalism
An economic system in which the production and distribution of goods and services in society is organised via a free market for the purpose of maximsing profits.
Hegemony
The total cultural, economic and political dominance achieved bt the ruling elite in a society.
Feudal System
Is a decenterlized sociopolitical structure in which a weak monarchy attempts to control the lands of the realm through reciprocal agreements with reigonal leaders.
Marxisism
Ideology derived from the writings of the sociologist Karl Marx which sees soicety as dominated by capitlist structures which maintain the hegemony of the ruling class and lead to the exploitation of workers.
Pluarism
The view that were a society is comprised of a wide range of social and ethnic groups with different values, political and ideological beliefs, representations by the media will naturally reflect this diversity.
High Concept Films.
A film which a big budget and state of the art special effects, usally associated with the US productions.
Friday 16 October 2009
Wednesday 28 January 2009
Audience as Mass
The key ideas in which media audiences should remember are:
1) The media are often experienced by people alone
2) Wherever they are in the world, the audience for a media text are all receiving exactly the same thing.
Many theorists have explained that about mass audience theory in which when people listen to their CD`s or sit in the cinema, they become a part of the mass audience.
By looking at the early history of the media, it is fairly easy to see where the idea of a mass
Audience came from. Within less than a hundred years photography, film, radio and television were all invented. Each one of them allowed works of art or pieces of entertainment that
might once have been restricted to the number of people who could fit into an art gallery or a theatre to be transmitted in exactly the same form to enormous numbers of people in different parts of the world. It can be very easy, living in this media saturated world to forget how strange this might once have seemed.
Theorists’ explanation on Mass Audience
Sociologist Herbert Blumer described it in 1950:
First, its membership may come from all walks of life, and from all distinguishable social strata; it may include people of different class position, of different vocation, of different cultural attainment, and of different wealth. .....
Secondly, the mass is an anonymous group, or more exactly is composed of anonymous individuals
Third, there exists little interaction or change of experience between members of the mass. They are usually physically separated from one another, and, being anonymous, do not have the opportunity to mill as do members of the crowd.
Fourth, the mass is very loosely organised and is not able to act with the unity of
a crowd.
Defying Audiences, The Mass Market.
Media producers and institutions like to think of audiences in groups, and this a true statement of advertisers who have targeted groups of consumers in the past.
The producers of media texts and the advertisers who used them were if anything even more interested in these audiences who they could contact through the new media. To investigate exactly how large their share of the mass market was, television companies and advertisers pioneered new techniques of market research which involved quantitative surveys where they attempted to count how many people they reached.
The most obvious example of this is the system of television ratings which still has enormous effect on the workings of TV stations. You may be able to think of a show that you enjoyed which was taken off because it did not achieve high enough ratings. If so you may agree with the thinking of Todd Gitlin:
The key ideas in which media audiences should remember are:
1) The media are often experienced by people alone
2) Wherever they are in the world, the audience for a media text are all receiving exactly the same thing.
Many theorists have explained that about mass audience theory in which when people listen to their CD`s or sit in the cinema, they become a part of the mass audience.
By looking at the early history of the media, it is fairly easy to see where the idea of a mass
Audience came from. Within less than a hundred years photography, film, radio and television were all invented. Each one of them allowed works of art or pieces of entertainment that
might once have been restricted to the number of people who could fit into an art gallery or a theatre to be transmitted in exactly the same form to enormous numbers of people in different parts of the world. It can be very easy, living in this media saturated world to forget how strange this might once have seemed.
Theorists’ explanation on Mass Audience
Sociologist Herbert Blumer described it in 1950:
First, its membership may come from all walks of life, and from all distinguishable social strata; it may include people of different class position, of different vocation, of different cultural attainment, and of different wealth. .....
Secondly, the mass is an anonymous group, or more exactly is composed of anonymous individuals
Third, there exists little interaction or change of experience between members of the mass. They are usually physically separated from one another, and, being anonymous, do not have the opportunity to mill as do members of the crowd.
Fourth, the mass is very loosely organised and is not able to act with the unity of
a crowd.
Defying Audiences, The Mass Market.
Media producers and institutions like to think of audiences in groups, and this a true statement of advertisers who have targeted groups of consumers in the past.
The producers of media texts and the advertisers who used them were if anything even more interested in these audiences who they could contact through the new media. To investigate exactly how large their share of the mass market was, television companies and advertisers pioneered new techniques of market research which involved quantitative surveys where they attempted to count how many people they reached.
The most obvious example of this is the system of television ratings which still has enormous effect on the workings of TV stations. You may be able to think of a show that you enjoyed which was taken off because it did not achieve high enough ratings. If so you may agree with the thinking of Todd Gitlin:
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