media culture, audience and reception

Name               :       Thakar Aneri R.

Roll No.           :       01

Semester        :       02

M.A. Part         :       1

Paper No.        :       8 cultural studies

Topic Name    :       media culture, audience and reception

•   Media Culture, Audience, reception and culture studies.

Ans.    Definition of Media Culture:-

                        In Cultural studies Media culture refers to the current western capitalist society that employed and developed from the 20^th country under the influence of mass media. Media culture is associated with consumerism and in this sense called alternatively “consumer culture the media and culture studies program emphasizes the study of media in their historical economic social and political context we examine the culture forms created and disseminated by media industries and the ways in which they resonate in everyday life on the individual national and global level.

Purpose or goal of M.A. student to study media and culture studies:-

                        In M.A. Media and culture studies aim at boning skills of media production and research within a frame work that enables the development of a critical perspective on media culture and society in contemporary society, media and culture are crucial sites where identities are produced and popular ways of seeing are consumed. Cultural studies enable us to meaningfully engage and interact with these new modes of a being and doing. By making us conscious of the many complex ways in which power impinges on our lives and constructs our cultures it has the potential of empowering us to critically read the media and the other cultural reas the media and the other cultural institutions and texts to understand how they shape our identities and to think about how we could possibly shape them.

                        The M.A. student studies Media and cultural studies for works to words the creation of a lively group of media “thinking doers” and “doing thinkers” who could then choose to branch out into a diverse range of work or educational situations. The students will equipped to works in the areas of media and television production, Independent media practice media education and advocacy and research.

Media culture and cultural studies:-

                        Cultural studies are interested in the ways in which communication and community are linked. Communication is about language discourse and representation and we have seen that representation is central to the production consumption and mediation of cultural products advertising marketing and critique are all features associated with media. Media are technologies of communication and therefore technologies of communication and therefore of meaning production and meaning dissemination is there in media. In mass media the source is central and usually single, and the audiences are the total number of human beings for away from the source. Thus mass media like films affect and influence a large number of people and are therefore integral to culture.

            Mass media constitute a public space. They generate debates, influence opinion and create markets. And they may be or maybe not controlled by the state or power position of society.

Effect of TV Serials and Films on cultural:

            Media cultural reproduces existing social values, oppressions and inequalities. When TV serials or films shown us the glorified “perfect family” they gloess over the gender inequalities that represent the patriarchal family structure. When films dealing with the issues like corruption of the political system and the common man’s quest for justice and how they fight for their justice and wrights.

            Today on television serial Guajarati, Marathi, and Rajasthan cultural is famous and TV serials show the good and bad aspects of the cultural. And also inspire or make aware the audience for improvement in the circumstances of society and culture. There are two representations in the media and they are like

1. Suggestive        2.        Provocative

                                                              

1. Suggestive:

In these suggestive ideologies that the audience. If not alert you imbibes them means you put your thought in front of them then they started believing in you and thought that are right and true the started accepting your idea. Media culture does not need to declare its position or ideology openly. It only needs to suggest showing a film start using particular brands of clothing is not necessarily a marketing strategy of the product. But it can be suggestion also tat start wear certain kinds of clothes.

2. Provocative:

Media culture is provocative because it sometimes asks us to rethink what we know, or reinforce what we believe in. in this provocative ideology media shows that what we know about the particular thing or situations and actual in which we have to believe and also we get something new for example: portrayal of Pakistan as a terrorist state’ in Hindi films reinforces the political and social image of Pakistan by raising our anger levels at the injustices of Pakistan’s army.

            A cultural study media culture is studied through an analysis of popular media culture likes films, TV serials advertisement rather than avowedly political programmers.

Audience and cultural studies:

            Reception and cultural studies as we have noted that cultural studies explores the processes through which a cultural produces meaning, where the meaning is the effect of communication and representations and negotiated through power relations. Communication and representation are two way process. The message is sent from an addresser to an addressee through a medium so it is not enough to speak of the ways in which advertisement media, propaganda and other cultural forms represent women, men family or the notion we need to examine how these representations are received and consumed cultural studies is interested in the ways in which audiences receive the message, how they respond to it and the effects the message generates.

“Audience includes readers, listeners, viewers consumers who consume different kinds of image and representations”.

“Reception is the use of mediated cultural texts by the audience. That is reception is the way in which we react to internalize representations.”

This reception is not a passive process we modify images to suit our requirements and cultural political beliefs. Our process interpretation which is central to the act of reception is based also on our cultural context. For e.g. Indian people do not need an explanation of Mahatma Gandhi because we are Indians and sharing a common cultural code. We interpret the symbols because we know them in advance.

Studying audiences’ means looking at how demographic audiences are targeted and measured and how media are circulated and distributed throughout. It means looking at different ways in which individual use, interpret and respond to media.

Studying media audiences means looking at:

Targeting     :

            How are media aimed at particular audiences?

Address :

            How do the media speak to audiences?

Circulation   :

            How do media reach audiences?

Uses      :

            How do audiences use media in their daily lives? What are their habits and patterns of use?

Making sense         :

            How do audiences interpret media? What meaning do they make?

Pleasure           :

            What pleasures do audiences gain from media?

Social differences     :

            What is the role of gender, social class age and ethnic background in audience behavior?

These all things are included in audience study.

When people (the audience) use and identify with particular symbols and artifacts. They express their cultural identities. As an e.g. when we respond readily to the tricolor or the Gandhi symbol we identify ourselves as Indians. It distinguishes us from other cultural identities. And our cultural codes like dress, eating habits and life styles give us a identities of as member of particular cultural group.

Reception Theory:

Reception theory emphasizes the reader’s reception of a literary text or media. This approach to textual analysis focuses on the scope for negotiation and opposition on the scope for negotiation and opposition on the part of the audience. This means that a “text” be it a book, movie, or other creative work is not simply passively accepted by the audience. But that the reader / viewer interpret.

The meanings of the text based on their individual cultural background and life experience. In essence, the meaning of a text is not inherent within the text itself, but is created within the relationship between the text and the reader. A basic acceptance of the meaning of a specific text tends to occur when a group of readers have a shared cultural background and interpret the text in similar ways. It is likely that the less shared heritage a reader has with the artist the less he /she will be able to recognize the artist’s tended meaning, and it follows that if two reader have vastly different cultural and personal experiments their reading of a text will vary greatly.

Reception theory is a version of reader response literary theory it was most influential during the 1970s and early 19805 in Germany and use. A form of reception theory has also been applied to the study of historiography.

The theory of student hall considered that how texts were encoded with meaning by producers and then decoded by audiences.

Encoded and Decoded

-       When a producer constructs a text it is encoded with a meaning or message that the producer wishes to convey to the audience.

-       In some instances audiences will correctly decoded the message or meaning and understand what the producer was trying to say.

-       In some instance the audiences will either reject or fail to correctly understand the message.

Student hall’s types of audience.

Student halls give us three types of audiences.

1. Dominant audience :

             Where the audience the message as the producer wants them to do broadly agrees 

             with it.E.g. watching a political speech and agreeing with it.

    2. Negotiated:

Where the audience accepts, rejects or refines elements of the text in light of.

E.g. neither agreeing or disagreeing with the political speech or being disinterested.

         

         3. Oppositional:

      Total rejection of the political speech and active opposition.

Conclusion:

            I would like to conclude my point adding that producer encodes the meaning and audience decodes meaning and message by their own ways. Thought and values.