19 Audience/Reception Studies

Ms. Akhila Narayan

Introduction:

Audience reception is a prominent field of research within the broad spectrum of media and cultural studies. Every text presupposes an audience. It sometimes even constructs its own audience. According to Sonia Livingstone audience studies ‘focuses on the interpretative relation between audience and medium, where this relation is understood within a broad ethnographic context.’ It addresses such questions like—where does the meaning of a text reside? Is it within the text or is it somewhere in the relation between the text and the audience? Thus audience studies is fundamentally concerned with the process of interpretation and meaning making. It seeks to understand the social role of mass media and phenomenon of media consumption. Though it has always been there in communication research, it became part of cultural studies in the 1980s with works of David Morley and Stuart Hall.

Defining audience however is a daunting task as it is a miscellaneous concept. They come in different sizes and varied contexts. For instance, the mass of people enjoying a pop concert or a cricket match as opposed to an individual watching television at home—both constitute audience. Their roles also differ depending on the medium and context. Audiences in real time and those in recorded events are different as the former can affect the performances in real time while the latter is often engineered. Think about a theatre performance vis-à-vis a film. There are differences in the way a particular medium addresses it audience, the way the audience react to it and the way the audience themselves interact with each other. There are also variations in the way audience relate to a particular media. For instance one listens to a radio mostly while doing other things. Given this ever-shifting character of audience, no definition is entirely exhaustive. Nevertheless, in highly broad terms, audience may be defined as an assorted group of individuals or just one individual belonging to different gender, race, class, sexuality, ethnicity, age etc. who might use/consume/read/interpret cultural texts (like say, films, music, books, TV shows, ads etc.) in order to satisfy his/her own needs. Since media and cultural texts engage with the broad society, everybody in a society is therefore a potential audience. Audience studies propose different models that explain the nature of the relation between the text and its user.

There are two aspects to Audience Reception studies: Audience Theory and Audience Research. While audience theory refers to a set approaches that help us decode an audience, audience research looks for evidences to validate the assumptions of a particular approach with regard to the relation between media and audience. Thus every research into audience is backed by a certain theory on the sa me. The fact that it is difficult to define audience makes its study harder. Plus there are different motives that govern the study of audience which in turn determine the methodology used, i.e. the ways of looking, measuring and understanding audiences.

According to David Morley the history of research into media audience alternates between two major theoretical standpoints, termed as active and passive. The various approaches to audience fall under either of the two.

1. Passive Audience theory
2. Active Audience theory

Under the first, the audience is perceived as passive where the media (or its message) is seen to have a greater power over the audience. Such an approach assumes a linear process of transmissions of messages, from the media to the audience, where audience is seen as passively consuming what the media provides. The fundamental concern here is what media can do to people. The second perspective take an opposing stance as it perceives the audience as actively engaging with the media and examines what people do with media.

Passive audience theory or effect theory:

Passive audience theory or effect theory constitutes the early phase of audience research that focused on the effects of exposure to mass media. Under this, the media was perceived as ‘all powerful’ that was capable of controlling the way people think and act. The audience accordingly was considered as ‘passive’ recipients who uncritically absorb the media message and act upon them.

The theoretical models based on passive audience are best embodied in the tradition of Effect theories, popular in American and Britain in the 1950s. It is based on the premise that media has cultural effects and proposes to explain how media achieves it. There are two dominant approaches to explain the media effect, which has its origin in two antithetical political standpoints. The first is a right-wing perspective which argues that media, especially the popular one, can affect the audience adversely as it leads to the breakdown of traditional cultural values and can have a negative impact on the people’s psychology. So for instance watching the hero smoke or drink in a movie can result in the audience taking to similar habits. The second is a left-wing attitude, which insists that those in power largely control mass media and therefore the representations within such a media will serve to retain the political status quo.

Also, it believes that such media through ideological indoctrination turns the audience into inert beings, by instilling in them a false perception of reality. So for instance, Bollywood commercial cinema, espcially under the banner of Yash Raj, often projects a view of India that is rich and thriving thereby creating a false impression of the actual reality.

Historically, the ‘powerful effect’ paradigm was catapulted by the emergence of fascist regimes and its totalitarian policies, in the aftermath of the First World War that led to the widespread use of media for propaganda and social engineering thereby raising serious concerns about the magnitude of its effect on the public psyche. Alongside this, the thriving capitalism and industrialization led to serious concerns about mass production replacing authentic culture and art, thereby lowering the cultural standards. The fear was shared in the 1920s and 30s by the Frankfurt school members—Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer, who in their attempt to explain the rise of fascism and mass media, put forward the concept of culture industry, which portrayed the masses as quiescent subjects of industrialized cultural production. Mass culture was seen as an instrument in the hands of repressive State to turn active thinking individuals into passive consumers.

The second phase of effect studies, in the 1940s and 60s, was more formal and scientific and it revised some of the extremist conclusions of early phase. For one, it claimed that the effect of media on the audience was ‘limited’ or ‘minimal’ and that the idea of media brainwashing the public was nothing short of exaggeration. Thus during this phase the ‘powerful effect’ paradigm was replaced by ‘limited effect’ or ‘indirect effect’ paradigm that came up with a more nuanced model of influence, that downplayed the role of media and deemed it as one among the several factors that contributed to opinion formation.

However, the powerful effect paradigm was revived in the 1960s due to the increasing depiction of violence and sex in mass media generating situations of ‘moral panics’ and the role of media was reinstated in socializing the public mind. Though effect theory is critiqued as a narrow and conservative approach to audience analysis, it is still used as a model of analysis especially when it come to the study of the effects of depiction of violence and sex on children and young adults who are perceived as ‘vulnerable’ to it. Effect model is also criticized for being selective in its attacks on effects of media focusing only on the negatives.

Some of the prominent models based on effect theory are:

1. Hypodermic Model: Stems from the belief that mass media has an overwhelming effect on the individual or mass psyche and could bring about behavioral or attitudinal changes in the person. Also known by terms like ‘magic bullet’, ‘stimulus response’, etc. the hypodermic needle model explains the effect of media on the audience using the analogy of syringe and drug. According to this the media injects ‘message’ into the mind of the viewer like a syringe injects drug into the body, driving them to behave in certain ways. Advertisements, socio-political propaganda can be targeted at the viewer or listener like a ‘magic bullet’. The effect is immediate, direct and addictive. The injected audience here is seen as powerless and passive against the force of media.

The model was attributed to political scientist Harold Lasswell who studied the influence of propaganda on mass audience. His study focused on the manipulation of symbols with multiple associations to influence mass opinion during the First World War. His was one of the earliest scientific studies on mass persuasion. The theory is similar to Adorno and Horkheimer’s ‘pessimistic mass society thesis’ articulated through the pehnomenon of culture industry. Later advertising industry made use of psychological and stimulus response techniques, which added further impetus to the model. One of the key pitfalls of this hypothesis was that it perceived the relation between the media and audience as unidirectional; it did not account for the ways in which people might use media and manipulate it to suit the ir purposes. Moreover, the effect of media is not always as simple, direct and all-powerful as purported by the hypodermic model. It works in much more complex ways and other factors might come to play in the mediation process. Though the model has been strongly critiqued owing to its narrow conservative approach to the relation between media and audience, it is still used as a template when it comes to the study of the media effect in relation to children and youth.

2. Cultivation Analysis : Cultivation model, proposed by George Gerbner and Larry Gross in the late 1960s, was based on the assumption that television had considerable effect on the social psyche and that exposure to television on a regular basis can distort the viewer’s perception of reality. Cultivation analysis began with a focused research on the impact of the depiction of violence on television on the audience’s mind. They argued that primetime television, especially dramatic entertainments that are excessively violent, affect our ‘first order judgment’ by creating an exaggerated view of the degree of violence in society. Such views in turn cultivate insecurity, fear and mistrust in the public mind affecting their ‘second order judgments’ like how to manage society and consequently giving in to suppressive measures that serve to retain the hierarchy of social power.

In contrast to traditional effect models that focused on the attitudinal and behavioral changes in the individuals brought about by exposure to certain genres or messages in media, cultivation model examined television in its totality as a cogent system of messages that had a cumulative effect on the audience attitudes and perceptions. Thus while hypodermic model examined the way violent visuals resulted in aggressive behavior, cultivation analysis focused on representations and patterns of images that appear on television and get absorbed by the audience over a period of time.

Unlike early effect models that saw the impact of television as linear, unidirectional and mechanical, cultivation model perceived it as a continuous, dynamic process of interaction between the media message and the audience’s context.

Cultivation analysis introduced the concept of ‘mainstreaming’ in order to explain the manner in which media serve as a means to streamline a heterogeneous audience to think in similar fashion. According to this, media provides a restricted set of choices to a divergent audience of different likes and tastes. The programs on television are tailored in such a way that it eliminates barriers of class, age, sex, region etc so that everybody can watch it. Mainstreaming thus refers to the phenomenon whereby media streamlines the heterogeneous choices and perceptions into television mainstream resulting in the homogenization of viewer’s choice and likes.

Cultivation analysis is thus concerned with the overall ideological consequences of commercialized television industry that uphold the values of culture industry like consumption, materialism, individualism etc. and engineer social attitudes and perceptions which invariably works to sustain hegemonic forces.

3.Two-Step Flow Model: The two-step flow model, popular in in the 1950s, was designed by a group of American researchers namely Herta Herzog, Robert Merton, Paul Lazarsfield and later Elihu Katz, as an alternative to hypodermic needle model. Theirs was a quantitative approach, using empirical data in place of the qualitative philosophical analysis of the Frankfurt school.

They replaced the ‘all powerful’ media effect paradigm that saw media having a direct and unmediated effect on its audience with a more nuanced ‘limited effect model’ that perceived this unidirectional flow being curtailed by several factors and emphasized role of human agency in mediation. The two-step flow thesis stated that the influence of media on its audience was neither direct nor all-powerful but critically mediated by ‘gatekeepers’, ‘opinion leaders’ and ‘opinion followers’ within the audience community. So according to this, the messages or issues broadcast on radio and television pass through intermediaries like opinion leaders who pass on their interpretation as well as the content to the larger mass. Audiences are selective who absorb messages over a period and the reception of these views or messages are often screened or filtered through social groups and networks. They saw the role of media as that of reinforcement than direct influence and supplanted the mass persuasion theory with an enduring question in audience research as to ‘What do people do with media?’. They rescued effect studies from strictly focusing on psychological responses to a more contextualized approach to media effect, seeking links between media and social system and examining the intermediate factors that diffuse the message to audience. Merton’ Mass Persuasion and Katz Lazarsfield’s Personal Influence are two of the influential works under this.

Active audience theory:

The second major phase of audience studies was marked by a key shift in the role of audience from just being quiescent consumers to being actively engaged in media transaction. The fundamental question under this mode was, ‘What people do with media?’. The answer to which can range from information, personal identity, entertainment, social interaction and so on. Active audience theory thus nullified the basic assumptions of the initial phase where media was seen as reigning over the inactive, mindless audience. Moreover it recognized the massive variation in the audience thereby suggesting that there is no such thing as an audience but we have many audiences, made up of different categories of people, of different contexts in different times who can respond to media in wide variety of ways.

The model of active audience theory was launc hed in the 1960s with the ‘uses and gratification model’.

1. Uses and Gratification Model: The approach was associated with the works of Elihu Katz (US); Jay Blumler, James Halloran (Britain) and that of Leicester Centre for Mass Communication Research, in the 1960s. It argued that audience are not merely passive consumers of the media and its message but actively engage with it to satisfy their needs. They claimed that audience uses media to gratify their needs, which could range from – to form personal identity (lifestyle magazines), help gather information (news, weather forecast), or gratify the desire for entertainment (escape from reality, pleasure) or assist social interaction, keep us company (Radio, soap opera) etc. The uses and gratification discredited the effect theory, which conceived the media message as having a homogenized ‘effect’ on the mass audience suggesting that all would be affected by it in the same way. The present model allowed space for variability of interpretation, though it was criticized for being overtly individualistic.

2. Encoding/Decoding Model: This model of communication was generated by Stuart Hall in the 1970s at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Birmingham incorporating the insights from the preexisting models on communication. One of the widely influential theories in audience reception and cultural studies, it sought to bring about a compromise between the antithetical notions of ‘audience as a victim’ as opposed to ‘audience as a completely autonomous being’. One of the key tasks before Hall was to conceptualize the complexity of media transaction taking into account the production of media text, meanings encoded within the text and the readings of this discourse. It also served to demonstrate the workings of hegemony in popular culture.

It borrowed from ‘effect’ model the idea of mass communication as a structured activity; wherein institutionalized power structures control and manipulate the messages circulated via media. Thus it rejected the simplistic notion of media (through direct stimulus) making the audience behave in a certain way while at the same time highlighting the power of media to set agenda. From uses and gratification model it borrowed the thesis of active audience, who constantly manipulate signs and symbols, carried in the media, to suit their purposes and requirements. One o f the key concerns of encoding/decoding model was to demonstrate how our responses and interpretations to events in media are socially structured and culturally patterned; something that takes place not just at the individual/psychological level. Thus it moved away from the notion of audience as individual to that of being culturally and socially situated. The model was also informed by the studies of Umberto Eco on television and Roland Barthes theory of semiology.

Using insights from several of these theories, Stuart Hall put forward the basic premises of Encoding/Decoding Model which are:

• Every media texts have certain meanings encoded within them. However it’s the audience, who receive these texts that determine how the messages are to be interpreted.
• A text can encode the same event in different ways.
• Every message has potentially several ‘readings’.
• Messages suggest and ‘prefer’ certain readings; but they can never be restricted to a single reading. In other words every message text is ‘polysemic’ which means, capable of varied interpretations.
• Reception of messages can be problematic as an encoded message can be decoded in a different way.

Based on these premises Hall explains the complex manner in which messages in media texts, especially in television, gets encoded and decoded. According to Hall television is a complex sign, which has layers of potential meanings inscribed within. There is a preferred meaning that every text encodes, which if decoded differently can communicate a different message altogether. Thus a message, Hall says, is a structured polysemy. However it has to be noted that not all the meanings exist ‘equally’ in the message but are structured according to dominance. Having said that, the text does not allow ‘total closure’ of meanings.

Within the circuit of mass communication there is always a possibility of disjuncture between the encoding and decoding of messages as the process takes place under the influence of several other factors. Given this, the key concern of encoding/decoding model is to identify as to what extent a message gets decoded away from its ‘preferred’ or dominant meaning. Alongside this, it also analyses the extent to which such decoding reflect on or is inflected by the structural discourses that several sections of concerned audience inhabit. Thus Hall’s theory redefined the activity of audience in two ways—one, it saw the activity as interpretative rather than psychological and two, it was political rather than personal.

Hall formulates three possible kinds of reading:

• Dominant or Preferred Reading: Also known as hegemonic reading, here the reader shares text’s code (its meaning, system of values, attitudes, beliefs etc.) and accepts the ‘preferred’ reading of the text (not necessarily conscious though).
• Negotiated Reading: The reader to a considerable extent shares the text’s code and accepts the ‘preferred’ reading but manip ulates it to suit his/her requirements and interests.
• Oppositional Reading: Also known as counterhegemonic, the reader rejects the code and the ‘preferred reading,’ replacing it with an alternate frame of interpretation.

3. Screen Theory: Screen theory emerged in the 1970s from the work of a group of French and English film theorists namely Christian Metz, Laura Mulvey, Jean- Louis Baudry, Jean- Louis Comolli, and Stephen Heath. Their views on media, particularly film and spectatorship were published in a journal called Screen for a time in the late 1970s. It drew its theoretical basis from feminism, psychoanalysis of Lacan, Marxism and semiotics. ‘Screen theory was centrally concerned with the analysis the effects of cinema (and especially, the regressive effects of mainstream, commercial, Hollywood cinema) in “positioning” the spectator (or subject) of the film, through the way in which the text (by means of camera placement, editing and other formal characteristics) “fixed” the spectator into a particular kind of “subject- position”, which it was argued, “guaranteed” the transmission of a certa in kind of “bourgeois ideology” of naturalism, realism and verisimilitude.’ (David Morley). One of the major contributions of screen theory was that it reinstated the primacy of text in media analysis. Till then most of the theories merely focused on the overall patterns of control and ownership as it was assumed that if the ownership was capitalistic then there was no need to analyze the texts as such as the text would invariably be defined within the narrow limits set by the system. Thus screen theory advocated close analysis of textual form as they believed that since it was the text that positioned the spectators the close analysis of the text would enable us to deduce its ‘effects’ on the audience/spectators, as they would invariably take the subject position constructed for them by the text, in this case the film.

4. Audience Ethnography: The ethnographic turn in reception studies in the 1980s, took place under the assumption that reception and appropriation of media texts was a context based social practice in which the meanings of the text are not always the messages sent out with a fixed meaning; they are determined on the basis of social experience of everyday life. It sought specific, personal and contextualized responses of individual and groups to certain media texts. The move in this direction was initiated by David Morely through his seminal the Nationwide Audience (1980)

One of the criticisms against most reception models discussed previously was that they mostly focused on the structural characteristics of media messages, based on which they tried to explain how audience read, interpret and absorb these messages. In other words to most of them text was the only source of meaning, thereby ignoring how real people actually interacted with the media.

Scholars like David Morley found this sort of research that was solely textual, unacceptable and sought to rectify it by empirically investigating how audiences read and interpret messages. In order to do this Morley adopted Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model to investigate how sets of viewers belonging to different social and educational backgrounds (what Morley describes as ‘interpretative communities’) engaged with the British Nationwide public affairs television program. In this study of text-reader encounter, Morley was not so much concerned with process of negotiation of meaning between the text and its reader, but instead using Hall’s model, examined the phenomenon of encoding and decoding of messages within a media text by contextualizing the process. In other words audience ethnography tried to unravel the interaction between the media and its audience in the natural context where the action occurred. They tried to understand how viewers create meaning within specific social contexts and how the audience derive pleasure and make sense of their daily interaction with their favorite media, television events and characters. The purpose of audience ethnographic research is to ‘help us to make things out’ in the context where they take place. Thus according to Morley to understand the use of media and its engagement with the audience, the researcher should get to the primary site where this interaction takes place.

Case Study

A reading of the election campaign of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) using Stuart Hall’s Encoding/ Decoding Model.

Stuart Hall in his theory of mass communication process posits that audience participate and contribute to the cultural and political discourses by actively engaging with the messages that circulate in the media. This engagement happens by way of accepting, negotiating or rejecting the meanings advocated by the media. He further states that this activity takes places at a cultural rather than individual level whereby the respondent’s cultural and ideological position is revealed.

This can be demonstrated through an analysis, using Halls’ communication model, of the political campaign of the Aam Aadmi Party during the Delhi Assembly Election 2013 by tracing the general patterns of public response to the campaign and political discourse.

In the aftermath of a diffused Indian Against Corruption movement which failed to get the Lokpal Bill passed, Arvind Kejriwal took the reigns into his hands and launched the political outfit, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Aam Aadmi Party or AAP, entered the Indian political scene in flash mode and shook the bipolar political set up in late 2012. They sought to redefine and revamp the Indian political system with their unconventional pro-people ideas that had echoes from a bygone era. But the reactions to this new experiement in Indian politics was quite varied. Applying Stuart’s Hall’s model of Encoding/Decoding and the subsequent three types of reading to this instance will reveal the complexity involved in ‘the production of media text and its ‘meaningful’ discourse and in the reading of the disourse.

1. Dominant or Preferred Reading: The campaign posters (fig 2) empahtically, tell you that here is a political outfit that stands for the common man. The very name ‘Aam Aadmi’ (common man) and the party symbol ‘broom’ signifies this. A ‘preferred’ reading of the poster would be that the elected representatives of the AAP are not the cliched ‘Netas’ (leaders) the Indian public is used to – who are corrupt, power hungry and resides far away from the common man, in bunglows. The leader of the AAP will be a common man who lives and works amidst the commoners. It also echoes the slogan of true democracy- government of the people, by the people, for the people. The leader Arvind Kejriwal is a true mascot as he is a common man who has left his cushy job (he was working in the revenue department of Income Tax before he began his activist life) to serve the nation. He is sweat drenched without the paraphernalia that accompanies a typical Indian neta. Unless common man like arvind Kejriwal come to politics we cannot clean it of its dirt. Kejriwal is the true politician who cosiders politics not as a means to power but a means to serve the nation. AAP is not a political party, but a revolution of the common man to wipe out the corrupt system and replace it with people friendly and efficient system. If our nation has to have any hope for a better future we should vote for AAP.

2. Negotiated Reading: A negotiating reader would say AAP and the efforts of Aravind Kejriwal are commendable. They are the much needed change and bring much hope to the jaded Indian politics. There fight against corruption will surely alert corrupt leaders to be more wary. They have shown that politics is not just meant for family dynasties but even for the common man. But having said that, Kejriwal is only a novice in the Indian politics and to remain in politics you need to master its art. Kejriwal and his battalion has a long way to go. The spirit of his team is praiseworthy but I (reader) would vote for someone (in fact surveys suggested that people wanted Kejriwal as the Chief Minister of Delhi and Modi as the Prime Minister)who has sufficient experience in governance. After all what we need urgently is a stable government. But we definitely support his crusade.

3. Oppositonal Reading: Aravind Keriwal’s politics is nothing but an outcome of a collective frsutration of the seething Indian populace. However his party is not the right answer to the nation’s problems. Kejriwal through his rhetoric against corruption has managed to raise high hopes in mainstream but their vision is too idealistic and utopian, and never practically attainable. An ‘aam admi’ can never become a a good politician as he/she lacks in sufficient skills for the job. Moreover Kejriwal’s charisma is built on a mass support system, which is only a temporary phenomenon; whether the nation truly wants a leader like him, only time will tell. Kejriwal is highly inconsistent and unreliable as he departed from Anna Hazare and left India Against Corruption movement in lurch, drawing the media glare onto him by launching a new party. This despite his earlier promise, that he would never venture into politics. Their electoral promises are unrealistic and some of their slogans calling for revolution, border on anarchism. Kejriwal and AAP is nothing but a fleeting magic, and his party is not the answer to our prayers as it lacks a long term vision (it confines merely to the issue of corrruption) or a proper ideology, plus is close to zilch when comes to experience in governance. Definitely voting for Kejriwal and AAP is a risky proposition.

Audio/Visual Quadrant:

Fig 1

Fig 2

References:

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• http://www.museum.tv/eotv/eotv.htm