Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Below is a list of influential media theorists which you should be familiar with and be able to quote in your
essays for all three exam papers. It is neither an exhaustive nor a prescriptive list. Please feel free to quote
your own pet theorists. The important thing to remember is that whatever view or position you hold when
discussing theories of the media is to be able to support what you say from theorists and specific examples,
so in all cases you should ensure that detailed examples are learned or quoted. You have enough examples
from classwork but again your own examples are just as valid.
Most of these references are taken from Stuart Price’s book Media Studies, Longman, 1993, with the occa-
sional reference to Studying the Media (O’Sullivan, Dutton & Rayner, Arnold, 1994), a copy of which is in
the Library or available at a good Broome-cupboard near you.
Communication
Gurevitch and Roberts Mass communication is ‘mediated’ through a specific set of technologies which
stand between the senders and receivers. ‘Mediation’ is the process of the
representation of events through the media.
(Price, p.8-9)
1. The command mode which considers that there are differences in power
and authority between senders and receivers, that the senders are in a domi-
nant position, so that no feedback was allowed or only that which was
acceptable by the sender.
3. The associational mode states that shared beliefs attach a particular group
or public to a specific media source (not particularly relevant to the mass
media).
Narrative
Todorov He proposed the idea that a narrative has 5 distinct transformations through
which the story proceeds. These are :
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Apply this to any fictional or non-fictional form. Perhaps too general and can never reveal the true detail of
narrative. (Price, p. 248)
Branigan Thought that people tend to remember stories in terms of “categories of infor-
mation” and that narrative is an “activity that organises data into a special
pattern which represents and explains experience”:-
3. initiating event
5. complicating actions
6. outcome
Propp Russian critic of fairy tales in 1928, he identified 32 categories of action and
over 30 character-types who have a specific function within the narrative to
cause events:
3. the donor who provides some kind of magic talisman that helps the hero
5. the heroine/princess who acts as a reward for the hero and is the object of
the villain’s schemes
6. the dispatcher who sends the hero on his/her way by providing a message
7. the false hero who disrupts the hero’s hope of reward by pressing false
claims
8. the princess/heroine’s father who acts to reward the hero for his efforts.
1. Preparation
2. Complication
3. Transference
4. Struggle
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5. Return
6. Recognition
These are all elements that can occur at different points in the tale. (Price, p.245 ff.)
Genre
“Repetition is a key element in the way audiences understand and relate to narra-
tives.” (Studying the Media (O’Sullivan, Dutton & Rayner, Arnold, 1994)
Ideology
Ideology refers to systems of belief.
McLennan In The Power of Ideology, he set out 3 conditions which must be fulfilled if ideas and
beliefs are to be regarded as ideological:
3. the ideas must connect in some way to the use of power in society
(Price, p.57)
Coates He describes 4 traditions of thought as a way of understand-
ing society, but also add feminist and ecological approaches as well.
2. Marxism — Karl Marx believed that individuals only truly existed in social
relationships and that only through mutual co-operation would society ben-
efit. Thus the class system of the bourgeois who owned property and the
means of production hindered the proletariat who merely worked for them.
When the proletariat combined then the bourgeois would perish and society
would move forward.
3. Social Reformism — derived from the thinkings of John Stuart Mill who
believed in moral development, reform and education with the greatest
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number of people participating in society through these activities.
“The role of the mass media [in a Liberal society] is to provide accurate and
reliable information, upon which rational economic decisions can be made; the
media must respect the rights of the individual; the media are made up of groups
of energetic entrepreneurs; the media should not be run by the state, although
sensible regulation is necessary.”
(Price, p.14)
“The mass media [in a Marxist view of capitalist society] exist to maintain the
capitalist state in power.”
(Price, p.15)
“The role of the mass media [in a Social-Reformist society] is to play a construc-
tive part in a mature democracy.”
(Price, p.15)
“The role of the mass media [in a Conservative society] is to act as a force for
social cohesion.”
(Price, p.15)
McQuail He describes a number of alternative models of society, often
growing out of Marxist thought:
1. Mass society theory, where the institutions with power (the establishment)
support each other; the population is offered entertainment by the media as
a diversion from their subordinate or lower position.
2. Classic Marxist theory states that the capitalist class dominates and ex-
ploits the working class, whilst the mass media, being owned by the capital-
ists, circulate ideas that will keep them in power.
4. The theories of the Frankfurt school and Marcuse suggest that the work-
ing class has been diverted by the mass production of goods, ideas and
culture, and that marginal groups in society can resist and change even
though they do not have the same control over the working class.
5. Theories of hegemony come from the belief that the dominant ideas of the
ruling classes reproduce themselves in the minds of the subordinate. Ruling
ideas would become the ideas of the whole of society and capitalism is able
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to survive.
(Price, p.16)
Representation
Representation is “the way in which ideas, objects, people, groups and life-forms are depicted by the mass
media…[and] is the method used by the mass media to create meanings.”
(Price, p.33)
Indeed, she argues that stereotypes would not work if they were so simple and erroneous.
(O’Sullivan, Dutton & Rayner, p.127)
1. Essentialist argue that women are a distinct group of people “in terms of an
essence that precedes culture and is ultimately biological in origin.” Women
therefore possess essential humaneness to combat men’s competitiveness.
2. The anti-essential view is one that does not look for the essential femininity
but tries to understand the process by which the female is ‘constructed’ by
a male-dominated society.
The political categories are:
2. Marxist feminism which links the specific oppression of women within the
larger structure of capitalism
3. Radical feminism which sees women as different from men and pursues
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completely separate communities for women with their specific needs and
desires
(Price, p.309)
Meehan She conducted a big survey of prime-time US drama series in the 1970s and
came up with ten types of representation of women and called for new repre-
sentations:
“it’s time to tell the stories of female heroes - heading families, heading corpora-
tions, conquering fears, and coping with change.”
(Price, p.311)
Institution
“This is the system which organises representations into recognisable forms.”
Alvarado He and his co-authors suggest 7 categories which cover the list of institu-
tional determinants:
1. finance
2. production practices
3. technological elements
4. legislative frameworks
5. circulation
6. audience construction
7. audience’s use
(Price, p.35)
Audience
Much research and theorising into what an audience is has been carried out.
Burton He defines 3 ways in which an audience can be seen to be specific
Hartley lists 7 types of elements that go to create the social position of an individual (category 3 above):
1. self
2. gender
3. age group
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4. family
5. class
6. nation
7. ethnicity
Fiske adds to this list:
1. education
2. religion
3. political allegiance
4. region
1. empirical method involves counting the number of people who use a cer-
tain product, usually done after a product has been consumed (for product
read media text). An audience breakdown can be done detailing groups and
sub-groups of people who consume products. (c.f. Daily Express audience
profiling.)
2. the view of the audience as a mass of individuals with a brief and inconsist-
ent composition with no conscious group identity i.e. the mass audience for
cinema, for TV etc.
3. the idea of an audience which is a distinct social group in its own right
which may be served by a particular or specialised medium, but which does
not depend on the media for its existence, i.e. the audience for a local pub-
lication
Behaviour of audiences
There are various ways of studying audiences:
1. effects tradition dwells on the effect that forms or contents of the media
have, specifically watching TV in general, for example, has an effect, so the
effect of violence on TV would be valid research topic
[uses and gratifications: Blumler and Katz (1974) listed 4 broad needs fulfilled by watching TV:
3. Personal identity — the ability to compare one’s life with the characters
and situations within programmes, and hence explore personal problems
and perspectives
Media Effects Studying the effect of media texts on an audience may produce the following
behaviour, according to Price:
2. Social control is the way the media reproduces the social order by reinforc-
ing the status quo, as most institutions force out dissent
3. Agenda setting is a more indirect process where the media selects events
or issues which merit attention and is a means of doing 1 and 2 above.
4. Moral panics are effects which are supposed to emerge when the media
consistently represents a subgroup as dangerous or deviant and the general
population attribute all kinds of social ill on them (Road Rage, Trolley Rage,
stalkers, killer dogs etc.)
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where violence and coercion are also present. One of these direct effects is the hypodermic needle effect
whereby “media content is supposedly ‘injected’ into the consciousness of an audience”(Price, p.340) This is
largely a dead theory and only used by moral campaigners to suggest the evil affects of the media on the
public. No account is taken of the filtering agents at work within social groups or within individuals.
The inoculation theory suggests that continued exposure to specific TV messages (like violence, for exam-
ple) would lead to an audience becoming desensitised so that real violence in this case is dismissed as being
too ordinary and unimportant.
The psychodynamic model after DeFleur included the persuasive effect of the message being dependent
upon the psychology of the individual.
When looking at the effects of the media upon audience problems occur when:
2. there is confusion between short- (an election) and long-term (the ideologi-
cal change on gender, for example) effects
“We must get away from the habit of thinking in terms of what the media do to
people and substitute for it the idea of what people can do with the media.”
(quoted by O’Sullivan, Dutton & Rayner, p.155)
(Price. p.119)
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(quoted by Price. p.119)
Morley thought that audiences decoded texts according to the following factors:
1. The position people occupied in the structures of age, sex, race and class
4. the context in which the decoding takes place and the possible difference in
the details of the decoding which may be affected by situation( at school,
home, with friends, etc.)
He believed that groups should be used not individuals as social context was considered important. Class
features prominently and followed Fiske and Hartley’s list (see above) but also add Rosen’s (1972) list of
history, traditions, job experience, residential patterns, and level of organisation.
Parkin is criticised by Morley for only offering 3 positions for an audience to take:
2. Negotiated where the ideological content is altered to fit with the audi-
ence’s own viewpoint
Hall also produced a model which looks remarkably like the one above and is quoted in Studying the Media
(O’Sullivan, Dutton & Rayner, Arnold, 1994) (p.164) with the difference that the dominant position is known
as the dominant hegemonic position.
Brunt and Jordin argue that there is no direct connection between social position and the way people decode
texts, because people do not fit into social groups. They argue that all decodings are ‘negotiated’.
(Price, p.121)
Audiences are created for a specific text (or media product). Institutions will use social class, age etc. to
construct their audience but will also use lifestyle research or psychographic profiling to achieve segmen-
tation or a further sub-division of their audience. Audiences are then defined as Achievers or Strivers accord-
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ing to their psychological profile. The McCann Erikson ‘Woman Study’ of 1985 fits this profiling.
Hartley suggest that institutions must talk to an audience, to enter into a relationship with them, for the
audience must continue to buy their products. Institutions will have to change their segmenting of the audi-
ence as fashion changes so the ‘new man’ may have some basis in social reality but appears more often in the
media than in real life.
Maslow In Motivation and Personality, Maslow set out his theory of a hierarchy of
human needs, where people have fundamental needs and only when these are
satisfied can they move on to the next level in his pyramid structure:
2. Safety needs: the desire for safety from danger and deprivation
3. Social needs: these are linked to the desire people have for love, accept-
ance into social groups friendship etc. to preserve a sense of social identity
Advertising
Leiss, Kline and Jhally There are 4 basic formats for advertising:
4. The lifestyle format: where the setting is important because it tells us how
to interpret the human element and the product. It is a combination of 2 and
3.
(Price, p.131)
Ways of studying advertisements:
1. Semiology looks at the meaning created by all the internal elements in the
advert and the external factors like its context and place in the social distri-
bution
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Price suggests that if one uses content, form and context one can approach advertisement study.
(Price, p.148)
News Values
These are “the ideas or assumptions which form the ideological background to the work of the journalist and
the news editor … which drive individual journalists to collect certain types of material.”
(Price, p.196)
1. conflict
3. the unusual
4. scandal
5. individualism
Dutton gives 12 of the ‘most significant’ news values from the work of Galtung and Ruge (1973):
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occur in the developed world; the threshold system would apply for devel-
oping countries’ events to be reported
10. Reference to elite persons — the famous and the powerful are more
newsworthy than ordinary people
12. Negativity — bad news is good for the press and TV news; the thresh-
old is much lower for bad news than for good news
(Price, p.197)
Realism
O’Sullivan, Dutton & Rayner list 4 criteria for a text to be accepted as realistic:
4. the technical and symbolic codes of realism must be acceptable (these change
over time and what was acceptable in 1920s silent films would not be real-
istic now).
Price splits realism into form and content, so that form is the “arrangement of parts, the structure of a text”
(Price, p.266) and content is “the collected elements which are contained within the form”( Price p.266). So
for a text to be realist in form, let us take a film as an example, then the representations might be arranged in
a way that resembles our experience of real life; time might be represented sequentially. Fiske suggests that
“realism is often understood as a narrative arrangement” ( Price p.266). For a text to be realist in content then
it is the subject matter which is realist rather than in the order it is presented.
( Price p.266)
Corner suggests that audiences bring different expectations to different forms, so that an audience will expect
different levels of realism in the news on TV than they would for a TV drama. One might ask (says Price) that
an audience might ask of the TV news bulletin, “Is this truthful?” but of a drama on TV, “Is this plausible?”
( Price p.266)
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Film Form
Eisenstein Since Eisenstein was a Marxist in Soviet Russia, much of his film-making comes
from that political and ideological position. Montage was central to his theory.
( Price p.271)
The simplest form of montage is “the development of narrative through shots which are related to one
another” (Price, p.271) but Eisenstein used deliberately contrasting shots which collided to produce a third
meaning. This derived from the experiments by Kuleshov of the placing together shots of an expressionless
man’s face and alternately a bowl of soup and then a coffin and so on which the audience interpreted as a
different mood on the man’s face. By 1938 he had moved towards a more ‘modern’ meaning and he was able
to define montage as:
“two pieces of film of any kind, placed together … [which] inevitably combine
into a new concept, a new quality, arising out of that juxtaposition”
TV Form
Williams lists 9 forms of TV programme:
1. News
3. Education
4. Drama
5. Films
6. Variety
7. Sport
8. Advertising
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