Media Studies - Taylor Swift - Definitions + Theories

Audience positioning

the technique used to persuade the audiences to interpret a media product in a particular way

Stan (Stalker + Fan)

An excessively avid fan and supporter of a public figure or media product

Technological convergence

The evolution of combining of old technologies to form new online interactive technologies

Commodification

Turning everything into something that can be bought or sold

Textual poaching

Fans taking pieces from the original media and creating something new (e.g. fanfiction, fan movie posters, fan trailers, fan edits)

Henry Jenkins and ‘Fandom’

Fans have to be devoted followers of the media text, actively engage with the product and construct their own meanings and interpretstions beyond the original message

Being a Fan (Jenkins’ View)

-Mode of reception (intense engagement)

-Viewer activism (protest and praise)

-Interpretive community (theory and criticism)

-Cultural production (textual poaching)

-Social community (subculture)

Prosumer (Producer and Consumer)

We are no longer consuming the media, we are producing media based off that media

User Generated Content (UGC)

Any content created and distributed on a particular platform by a user of that platform

‘End of Audience’ and Clay Skirky

-audience behaviour has changed from the passive consumption of media texts to a more interactive experience

-new digital technologies and social media has made connecting and collaborating incredibly easy

-places mass communication tools in the hands of people

-the difference between producer and consumer has become harder to define

-symbiotic relationship

Livingstone + Lunt

The internet makes regulation much harder due to the expansion of social media users being so large and online anonymity

C+S

The internet is increasingly commercialised, becoming a place of commerce rather than creativity

Mean World Syndrome

Viewers of electronic media exposed to mainly bad events or things happening in the world as more likely to see the world negatively

Hypodermic Needle Theory - Passive Audience Theory

The model suggests the public are easily brainwashed by the media.

This means we do not critically assess the media we consime