Tag Archives: Audience

Feb 3 2014

Media Debates

A media debate that has happened with Disney recently, is that they are in trouble as they featured the Disney princess from the film Brave looking more beautiful and thin on their website. The audience seem to see this as a bad message from children. This debate shows that the audience are showing a health concern that the young girls will see the princess as a role model, to be skinny and sexy looking as before she wasn’t really skinny like the other Disney princess’ such as Cinderella and Belle, she had more about her and had long, tight curled hair. In the film parents are saying that the Disney princess from Brace, Merida, was more about her personality and going on an adventure and being loved for who she was and not for her looks. Parents believe that this change in her appearance on this website shows that they are portraying her as another Disney princess which is more perfect, skinny and pretty.

Recently, the Iron Man 3 film has needed to be re-edited to make its way into being shown legally in cinemas in China. They include cutting out some scenes and adding in an extra 4 minutes featuring Chinese celebrities and placement for Chinese products.

A media debate that involves Grand Theft Auto is very popular as people see the game as telling young people that violence is ok or either telling them how to do the violence. During the first minutes of gameplay there is said to have been offensive name calling language and includes scenes in strip clubs where you are encourages to grope the women and not get caught by the bouncer. James Steyer, CEO and founder or common sense media said ‘All GTA games have always been incredibly violent, with coarse language, drug and alcohol abuse, unhealthy sexual representations and a lack of good role models, with extremely coarse language, drug and alcohol abuse, unhealthy sexual representations, and a lack of good role models’. Also with the topic of Grand Theft Auto, parents are saying that the game is advertised on TV during times where kids could be watching such as in the middle of the day or on sports events. Daily mail have described the game as ‘if the devil were to create a game this would be it.’ Also people talking on the review on the game from the magazine escapist, they explain that the game is sexist and doesn’t deserve the rating it got.

Nov 25 2013

Audience effects theories

An active consumption is when the audience discuss the media and become more engaged on how the message of the media comes across to them. It also is when the audience question the media. Passive consumption is when audience don’t question the media they just accept it.

The Hypodermic needle model is a theory that shows how the audience understand the media.
For example, we watch tv some just take it in and accept that what they’ve just watched has happened and will then just accept that’s happened and move on. Others could take in the media as for example, offensive and create debates about it.

Reception theory is what the audience does to the media, the research with this theory examines social, cultural, economic, gender sexuality as influence on the way media comes across to the audience. Certain audiences respond to the media in different way depending on their cultural background and what is going on around them.

Effects theories are taken up with the protection of the young to prevent them from violence in the media. Normally the problems with violence is social/psychological and nothing to do with the media. On the other hand audiences complain that violence in the films allows young persons to copy that and bring it into the real world.

Nov 22 2013

Addressing the Audience

Here is a students take on addressing the audience with a good analysis of a magazine spread.

Although he misses a trick – the first photo can also be used as an example of utilisation of the Male Gaze. However, a really good example of how cues, codes and conventions are used to “tell” the audience what they are seeing (whether it is accurate or not!)

Nov 13 2013

The main types of research within Media

Qualitative
Qualitative research is an in-depth understanding of psycho-graphic behaviours, this including attitudes and reactions to different media products, such as games, different type of film and television genres. Qualitative research has the content of this research being the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of decision making as well as people’s emotions, opinions and facial expressions to the type of media product.

When collecting data from qualitative research is more of a personal research compared to quantitative research which is surveys, graphs and number research.

Quantitative
Quantitative research is a mathematical or numerical type of research generally used in surveys.
An example of this is creating a survey on a type of media product and using numbers as the answers for the audience to rate the media product depending on the quality of the product, as well as their opinion of the product from example possible answers being: 5-brilliant, 4-good, 3-ok, 2-bad and 1-poor.

Primary
Primary research is information originally gathered by the first hand research. This can be done in various ways through emails, phone calls, interviews, or surveys. Primary data is more reliable than secondary data because primary has been collected first hand with hard evidence to support it.

Secondary
Secondary research is information researched and processed by someone else, E.g, desk based. An example of this is looking on a web page, publications or reports. With secondary data there is no need to start from the beginning when reaching as the secondary data has already been collected by other individuals or organisations.