ICS
Week 10:
The media/audience relationship: who is in control?
Rectification week 9
Media as early window: media allow children to see the (adult) world before they have the skill to successfully deal with this.
Adultification: When children’s value as consumers trumps their value as people (threatening their development)
Commercialism & ‘kinderculture’: the corporate takeover and construction of childhood
What do media do to people?
Specific media, specific news, specific needs >>> Not whole society
Wilbur Schramm Fraction of selection model > expectation of reward = effort required
(audience-centred theories)
Needs of the user -> media use -> effect on user
1940s’: needs of radio audience
Why house wifes listen to so much radio news?
1970s’: revival of the U&G approach: Needs of television audiences
3 reasons for revival:
1. Survey methodology
2. Active use of media as mediator in effects
3. Critisism on negative effects research: positive effects ignored
1980s’: Alan Rubin’s typology of needs for television viewing
1. Passing time (waiting for a bus)
2. Companionship (quality time wathcing sports with others)
3. Escape (bad day = good movie = forget reality)
4. Enjoyment (create a better mood)
5. Social interaction (to not have FOMO)
6. Relaxation (forget stress, instead of taking a bath)
7. Excitement (dopamin dose)
8. Information (learn something new)
Other social needs (from social context)
1. Need to reduce stress
2. Need to seek information to solve problems
3. Need to substitute or supplement a lack of opportunities (staying in touch with friends from hometown)
4. Need to affirm and reinforce of social values (confirm their beliefs, values by engaging with like-minded content)
5. Need to be familiar of certain media (have u seen last epsiode?)
3 characteristics of present day revival of the U&G approach:
Interactivity (google maps example, figure out what
Demassification (a lot of infomration, which leads to being picky, but you can always find something for yourself)
Asynchroneity (whenever we want to use we do)
What is “active” user?
4 meanings of being active:
People are authorotar and use it for their own benefits – utility
Media use because of prior motivations – intentionality
We select what we what, what we like and media reflects on that – selectively
Imperviousness of influence: People avoid certain type of influence
5 basic assumptions of the uses-and-gratifications model (Katz et al.)
Uses and Gratifications Theory:
1. The audience is active, and its media use is goal-oriented
2. The initiative in linking need gratification to a specific media choice
rests with the audience member
3. The media compete with other sources of need satisfaction
4. People are aware enough of their own media use, interests, and motives
to be able to provide researchers with an accurate picture of that use
5. There are different needs and gratifications, for different types of media
use, with different types of consequences
Strengths:
• Focuses attention on individuals
• Respects intellect and ability of media consumers
• Focus on experience of media content
• Role of social context
Weaknesses:
• Media gratifications are often not associated with effects
• Difficult to measure key concepts
• Too micro-level
Entertainment theory
“pshychology of entertainment”
Sees entretainment processes are different from other media processes
Mood Management Theory is a psychological theory that suggests people actively select media content based on its ability to regulate or improve their mood.
Voluntary select entertainment, because of hedonic and eudaimonic motivation.
Hedonic Motivation
Definition: Hedonic motivation is driven by the pursuit of pleasure, enjoyment, and immediate gratification. People engage in activities or consume media that bring them joy, excitement, or relaxation, focusing on satisfying short-term, sensory, or emotional desires.
Examples: Watching a comedy show for laughter, playing video games for excitement, or scrolling through social media for entertainment and distraction. People seek hedonic experiences to feel good and escape from daily stresses.
Eudaimonic Motivation
Definition: Eudaimonic motivation, by contrast, is driven by a desire for personal growth, meaningfulness, and self-actualization. It involves seeking experiences that may be challenging or thought-provoking but ultimately contribute to a sense of fulfillment and purpose.
Examples: Watching a documentary to learn about global issues, reading a novel that explores deep emotional or moral themes, or engaging with media that inspires reflection and personal growth. People seek eudaimonic experiences to feel enriched and connect with deeper values and insights.
Key Differences and Overlap
While hedonic motivation focuses on immediate pleasure and enjoyment, eudaimonic motivation centers on long-term fulfillment and meaning.
However, many media experiences can provide both, such as a film that is entertaining (hedonic) but also leaves viewers with thought-provoking messages (eudaimonic).
These motivations play an important role in media research, as they help explain why people choose different types of content and how those choices impact their well-being and personal development.
Pshychological processes resulting from entertainment can be:
Concoius/Uncouncious & intendent/unintendent
Mood management theory
- Create postive state of mind
- Cope with problems
4 types of media content attributes that play a role ( Knobloch-Westerrwick):
1. excitatory potential: gets us exciteted/calms us down (the feeling beforehand)
2. absorption potential: thoghts away from negative mood
3. semantic affinity: content is similar with what you are going through
4. hedonic valence: induce positive thoughts
Other motivations for entertainment use:
- watching media that aligns with your thoughts (self-consistency)
- getting insipred with social comparison (self-improvement), watching gym videos = getting in shape as well
- feeling better by downward social comparison (self-enhancement)
Temporarily expanding the boundaries of the self perspective (Slater et al.)
Expand boundries (the media world is limitless) so that the identification with characters would transport people to to another story (feeling like a superman)
Reception studies
Polysemic messages - different ways to interpretate the messages.
(People might see different meanings in the same content because of their own life experiences, values, and beliefs).
Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model
Encoding – putting certain ideas and meanings so people would get across them.
For example: a commercial might be designed to make viewers think a product is cool or high-quality.
Decoding – when the audience interprets or reads the message in their own way, this can be influenced by their background, beliefs or experiences…
Hall identified three main ways audiences might decode messages:
Preffered reading (understands the message exactly as it was intended and agrees with it)
Negotiated reading (alternative messages, partially agreed)
Oppositional reading (opposite message, fully disagree what the sender intened to send)
Strenghts:
- focuses on individuals
- seeks to undertand the messages in between
- respects intellect of media consumers
Weaknesses:
- doesn’t address effects
- too micro-level
- no causal explanations
- analysis of data is subjective