Media Audiences Exam 2

What is Journalism business models?

The number of people/businesses that pay to advertise in newspapers plummeted, causing a financial crisis in journalism

• This occurred because people and businesses started to optimize digital ads sales on newspaper websites.

• This also caused them to go back to the circulation model that generated revenue through subscriptions )” paywalls”

What is Solutions journalism?

Stories that “use the rigor of investigative reporting to explore systemic, underlying reasons for social ills, and then critically examine efforts to address them.

• EX: Headway ( an initiative from The New York Times that explores world changes through the lens progress)

What is Engaged journalism?

• prioritizes the information needs and wants of the community members

it serves

• creates collaborative space for the audience in all aspects of the

journalistic process

•  is dedicated to building and preserving trusting relationships between

journalists and the public.

What is Audience engagement?

• People who already read/listen/engage with your work.

• People who use your products – your newsletter subscribers and social media followers

What is Community engagement?

• all of the people in your coverage area, even the ones who aren’t readers, donors, or newsletter subscribers.

• Your future audience members, if you serve the community well

What is Audience serving outlet?

 Very data driven in decision making, analyzing the performance of articles and newsletter, and over all incorporating that into your decision making 

What is Community serving outlet?

 Is more one-to-one, it’s physical;;y or digitally appearing where people are and listening to what they ink and incorporating that into your decision making. 

What is a Semiotics?

•   a systematic study of signs and their significance in society 

What is a sign?

• Word, images, objects, gestures (refer to things that are not, markers that contain vital information experience object, or idea that is being referred to)

What two elements make up a Semiotic? Example?

• The two element that make up a sign is the: Signifier and referent 

• EX: 

The statement “I love pasta” is a reference, while a picture of a man in a bed full of pasta noodles smiling is a signifier.

Is the connection between signifiers and referents always changing? examples?

• yes

• Examples: the word “Punk” or “queer” have changed in meanings and what they have now started to signify in society. 

What is The encoding & decoding of media according to Stuart Hall?

• Media is understood to be a collection of signs

- Audiences approached media texts with “a repertoire of cultural competencies and discursive experiences” that shape their understandings of messages, regardless of the meanings intended by the creator of the text

What is Encoding?

The event in which the media creator places an idea or event or experience into a media format that will be meaningful for audiences.

What is Decoding?

The event in which the audience receive and interpret the meanings of media

What are the types of influence of media encoding ?

Media routines, organization, extramedia, ideological

What is Media Routines:

Norms and practices in day to day operations of media productions, news-worthiness, deadlines, casting, scheduling, distribution choices, etc.

What is Ideological level?

- Government type/Social systems: political system (democracy/autocracy); economic system (capitalist/state-controlled); other kinds of ideologies

what is Extramedia level?

- Social institutions other than media: the state, lawmakers, businesses and advertisers, etc.

What is organizational level:

Factors within the media company: ownership /business model, structure, market competition, etc.

What is Message Asymmetry?

Mismatches between the producer’s intended meaning and the meaning received by the audience.

What is Polsemy:

The fact that media is capable of being interpreted in distinctly different ways by different viewers because they approach media with a plethora of experiences

and cultural knowledge of signs.

What are the three subject position in the encoding/decoding model?

dominant, negotiated, oppositional

What is Dominant position?

audiences accept the media message exactly in terms of the intended message by the producer

What is Negotiated position?

 audiences filter media content through the lens of their own individualized experiences and Worldview

What is Oppositional position?

audiences’ interpretations are contrary to the intended message by the media producer

What is a description The Nationwide study by David Morley?

 (1980) - How was Nationwide’s attempt to stake out a notion of national consensus and shared identity interpreted by the program’s audience?- What was the role of class position in shaping people’s interpretations of the program?

1. Nationwide was a popular news broadcast in the UK

2. Morley was interested in the role of class position in media interpretation

3. He found that interpretations vary by class position, but also there were a variety of oppositional readings within the working class

What was the focus group of the Nation wide study?

• small groups of people who watched an episode of the program together, then a follow-up open discussion

What did the Nationwide study adress?

• Shop stewards noted that the Nationwide program failed to address issues from the standpoint of working-class Brits

• Black further education students “showed little interest in

• the text and found it extremely hard to recognize anything

• of themselves in the Nationwide image,” and they generally

• refused to engage with the message at all.

What are Open texts?

without the interpretive intervention of the audience, media texts are meaningless.

• More “radical” than the encoding/decoding model, the audience interpretation does have to be  the same/connected with those of the producer's initial intention in any way.

What is Intertextuality?

The idea that the audience thinks of other media whenever they try to interpret a certain piece of media.

• EX: Hyperlinks in wikipedia articles 

• “That actor was also in this other show”

• “Quotes and mentions of other media 

What is Interpretive communities?

A specific group of viewers or readers that may start to construct similar meanings based on mutual shared interests or demographics similarities, social pressures, or past experiences 

• The Big bang theory of casual fans

• English learners in Chana 

• Scientists 

What is Macrosocial contexts?

- class, race, gender, etc - powerfully structure

media interpretations

What is Microsocial contexts?

 space, interpersonal relationships, time

What is Spatial/Physical contexts?

The physical setup of the space + The technology that delivers the media content

What is Physical location: in spatinal/physical contexts?

Coffee shop; no projectors/screens; close to others sitting, passing-by, or ordering

What is Interpersonal relationships as media reception contexts?

: Strangers; social norm to

be quiet and courteous

• Media reception spaces are partially defined by the people and relationships

that are found here.

What is David Morley’s Family TV Study?

1. Studied the intersections between family social interactions and TV viewing

2. He found a domestic gender division when it comes to men & women’s TV viewing

What were the results of the David Morley’s TV study?

• Men typically controlled the choice of the program;

- Men preferred “factual” programs e.g. news/documentaries,

while women consumed more fictional programs;

- Men tended to watch attentively while women used the

television as a social tool for conversations

What is “bedroom culture”?

 individualized media consumption that takes place in the domestic space of a bedroom (or otherwise in isolation), particularly among young people

• Tiktok brain rotting videos 

Time as context for media consumption – duration of media use & media’s role in daily schedule:

• Duration of mediause

• Media’s role in our daily schedule 

• We fit media exposure into our buddy structure of our day 

• We sometimes a;sp adjust our daily schedule to make time for media 

• EX: American Time use Survey (2024)

What are parts of Domestication four step practice (of a media technology)?

appropriation, objectification, incorporation, conversion

What is Domestication?

What is your favorite piece of media technology in your home 

What is Appropriation?

the family takes possession of communication technology itself 

What is Objectification?

the technology object is displayed or organized in the home, when it is incorporated within the spatial environment of the household.

What is Incorporation?

the ways the technology is used by those in the household 

What is Conversion?

the information that is carried via communication technology becomes part of everyday social interactions and builds societal capital outside of the home.

What is Media Events?

• first used in Daniel Dayan & Elihu Katz’s 1992 book

● D&K defined media events as “live, unscripted, but preplanned events

that command the attention of huge audiences and serve to bring

audiences together.”

● In practice, the term is also used to refer to historic breaking news

stories, or events that do not necessarily help integrate society

• Ex: Presidential Inauguration, Media pilgrimages

What is Media Pilgrimages?

 audience members travel to locations that have been used in television programs and movies as a means of more deeply experiencing those media texts.

• Netflix House Dallas

What is the origin of fan (“fanatic”)?

Fans are characterized, influenced, or prompted by excessive and mistaken enthusiasm, especially in religious matter

What were the early stereotypes of fans?

• Brainless Consumers 

• Fascinated with culturally worthless materials 

• Social misfits 

EX: stranger things fans, Riverdyle fans

What did the emergence of fan studies do?

1. Set out to debunk stereotypes of fans by letting fans speak for themselves

2. Challenged the idea of the “audience commodity” (the views are the ones being sold/their attention)

3. Found that fans develop self-identity & create group cohesion through fan activities

What is Subculture?

1.  usually refers to a group of fans whose ideas and practices diverge from mainstream culture

• Subculture: fans who are openly proud to claim their affiliation with pop culture content (specifically with what  the media considered to be “fluff or mindless distractions) challenging status quo through their activities. 

• EX: Latinx Punks 

• Swifities 

What is Fan activism (within & beyond media)?

Fans offer direct challenges to existing authority, such as pressing producers, media corporations and other of power in the media industries for change (or preventing changes from happening)

EX: the #free Britney  movement

What is Continuity?

1. An awareness of the character and plot development of a particular program

EX: the difference between BilliELish first album (dark and playful) to her new album ( soft and more mature) 

What is Canon?

 A group of texts that are considered significant or vulnerable due to their level of quality, or because they are a part of a larger corpus work from respected author and artist.

• EX: Star wars

What is Textual poaching?

• A text is a unit of meaning for interpretation and understanding 

) Within Media studies, a text could be a TV program, film, video game, website, book, song, podcast, newspaper article, tweet or app.

• Fans inhabit the intellectual space of a media text and make it their own

• Examples include the creation of fan fiction, fanzines, and fan videos

• Originally discussed by Michel de Certeau on reading a book