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Mass Media Audience

Behavior

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Question:

What do we know mostabout

audiences from existing

communication theories and

resources?

Who chooses what?

What do audiences get out of it?

Psychology and sociology of the

viewing experience

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Does the audience actively choose how

to engage a web page?

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How do audiences actively choose from

among similar options?

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Before Mass Media:Co-presence between sender and receivers of

messages was necessary.

Face-to-Face

Conversation

Live Performances

http://www.beethoven-france.org/Beethoven/ImagesLudwig/JosephKarlStieler_1820Index.jpghttp://www.loc.gov/wiseguide/oct03/images/shakespeare-a.jpghttp://oregonstate.edu/dept/eli/images/conversation.gif

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Mass MediatedCommunication

1.Media: Message is encoded anddelivered through technology (medium)

2.Mass: One sender (mass) audience

3.Unidirectional: Messages flow one-

way

4.Standardized: Same messages for all

members of the audience

5.Spatial-Temporal Disassociation:

No co-presence at all.

Five Important Features

http://www.hijinxcomics.com/images/bullhorn.jpg

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Sociological Model:

Media Structure vs. Audience Agency

Media

Message

Collective

Response

A

ge

n

c

y

Hypodermic Model

Over-emphasizes

structure

Active Audience

Model

Over-emphasizes

agency

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Rapid Rise of Mass Media:Adoption of Media Technology by US Households

Media Technology Year medium

reached 1% of

US Households

Number of years

to reach 75% of

US Households

Newspaper 1833 More than 100years

Radio 1923 14 yrs (1937)

Television 1948 7 yrs (1955)

VCR

Cable/satellite

TV

1980

1970s

12 yrs (1992)

30 yrs (2000)

Internet 1992 12 yrs (2004)

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Audience-Sender

relationship models

Transmission model - audience as

target; to influence or control

Ritual or expressive model -

audience as participant; sharing

experience

Attention model - audience as

spectator; entertainment focus with no

meaning transfer

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Types of mass audiences

Illiterates - visuals only; 60% of general

audience; fiction and adventure comics

Pragmatists - 30% general audience;

social beings, interested in status, thingoriented, advertising targets; Readers

Digest, Time

Intellectuals - less than 10%; concerned

with issues and ideas; thinkers; Harpers,

Atlantic Monthly

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Active Audience

Different audiences can understand a

media message but can have different

responses to it. Some people believe

and accept the message, others reject itusing knowledge from their own

experience or can use processes of

logic or other rationales to criticize whatis being said.

Miller and Philo,

2001

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Encoding and Decoding

Stuart Hall suggests three hypotheticalinterpretative codes or positions for the reader

of a text :

--dominant (or 'hegemonic') reading

--negotiated reading

--oppositional ('counter

-hegemonic')

reading

Chandler, 2001