In adopting a rhetorical/audience analysis approach to studying media texts, students examine the ways in which media texts seek to gain their audience’s identification with a certain message or belief. They engage in audience analysis activities in which they define the intended or target audience: “Who is this text being written for?”, the signs, markers, images, language, social practices imply that audience, and the underlying value assumptions. For example, in the advertising Module 6, you will consider how ads attempt to construct audiences such as the “Pepsi Generation,” by portraying people engaged in enjoyable activities as they are consuming Pepsi. Such ads are not only attempting to persuade audiences to purchase Pepsi, but they are also creating an audience with which viewers may or may not identify, audiences who may imagine themselves as also engaged in the same enjoyable activities through consuming Pepsi.

In communications studies, the traditional model of communication is that of a sender and a receiver who decodes messages sent by the sender. However, the process is actually a lot more complex than this model suggests. Audiences assume a lot more active role in constructing meaning than simply serving as a passive decoder. Audiences construct meanings based on their purposes for viewing, beliefs, attitudes, stances, or needs. The contexts in which they are responding also shape the ways in which they respond — audiences will respond quite differently to a film with a vocal group of college student viewers in a campus theater than in a sedate suburban shopping mall theater.

There are three different paradigms for thinking about audience response to the media (Abercrombie & Longhurst, 2001): behavioral, incorporation/resistance, and spectacle/performance.

Behavioral

A behavioral approaches is primarily interested in audience uses or gratification of the media, for example, research on the effects of television viewers’ addiction to viewing long hours of television on their beliefs and attitudes. As we noted in Module 2, the “controller/interventionists” often assume a behavioral perspective in expressing their concern with the “negative effects” of viewing the media on viewer’s behavior or attitudes. For example, there has been considerable research on television viewing and violence.

One study conducted by Jeffrey Johnson of Columbia University and published in Science Magazine found that “teenagers who, at mean age 14, watched more than three hours a day of television were much more likely than those who watched less than one hour a day of television to commit subsequent acts of aggression against other people”

Uses and Gratification media research in England

ERIC Digest: Television Violence and Behavior: A Research Summary

American Psychological Association: Violence on Television - What do Children Learn? What Can Parents Do?

The Center for the Study of Effects of Television site includes a lot of this research on media effects.

Research on the effects of television viewing is certainly important, particularly given the adverse effects of viewing on young children. For example, a study of 1,300 children found that 1-year-olds and 3-year-olds who watched just one hour of TV daily had 10 percent more risk of attention problems by age 7 than children who watched none at all. The higher the viewing, the more the risk of ADHD. One-year-olds who watched three to four hours of TV had a 30 to 40 percent heightened risk of attention problems compared with children with no TV viewing. These high levels of viewing by children are not unusual—children under 6 watch an average of 2 hours a day; 2/3rds of children are in home in which the TV is on at least half the time.

Christakis, C., Zimmerman, D., DiGiuseppe, D., McCarty, C. (2004). Early television exposure and subsequent attentional problems in children. Pediatrics, 113(4).

Given research on the adverse effects of TV viewing on children, the American Academy of Pediatrics makes the following recommendations regarding children’s TV viewing:

1. Limit children's total media time (with entertainment media) to no more than 1 to 2 hours of quality programming per day.

2. Remove television sets from children's bedrooms.

3. Discourage television viewing for children younger than 2 years, and encourage more interactive activities that will promote proper braindevelopment, such as talking, playing, singing, and reading together.

4. Monitor the shows children and adolescents are viewing. Most programs should be informational, educational, and nonviolent.

5. View television programs along with children, and discuss the content. Two recent surveys involving a total of nearly 1500 parents found that less than half of parents reported always watching television with their children.

6. Use controversial programming as a stepping-off point to initiate discussions about family values, violence, sex and sexuality, and drugs.

7. Use the videocassette recorder wisely to show or record high-quality, educational programming for children.

8. Support efforts to establish comprehensive media-education programs in schools.

9. Encourage alternative entertainment for children, including reading, athletics, hobbies, and creative play.

However, much of this research, especially with older audiences, assumes a cause and effect relationship between viewing certain content and behaving according to the behavior portrayed. For example, it is assumed that viewing acts of violence in a television program or film will lead a viewer to engage in violence or condone violence. While research shows that this may be the case with younger children, assuming that an image of violence causes one to act in violent ways glosses over individual differences in viewers’ beliefs and attitudes, which are more likely to be shaped by their families, peer group, schools, or religious orientations. It is also the case that viewers adopt different stances towards different texts. They may adopt a critical stance that challenges the notion of violence as a means of coping with problems. They may also adopt a stance in which they recognize the disparity between fiction and reality—noting that the texts they are viewing is “not real”—that it is a fictional account of reality.

And, assuming that viewing television violence will necessarily lead all adolescents to engage in violent acts may lead to attempts to restrict television viewing, restrictions, as a study by Amy Nathanson of Ohio State University found, can only lead adolescents to view programs at friends’ homes. She found that parents who discuss issues related to television with their older children – rather than just restrict viewing – are more likely to influence what their children watch.

In his essay, “Ten Things Wrong with the ‘Effects Model,’” David Gauntlett argues that research on media effects often perceives adolescents as inadequate “victims,” reflects a conservative philosophy, applies biases definitions of media texts as “anti-social,” is based on artificial, lab-based studies with questionable methodology, employs selective definitions of “violence,” adopts a superior attitude towards a mass audience, does not attempt to understanding variations in the meanings of media texts, and is not grounded in theory.

For a discussion of the problems with research on media effects:
Barrett. R. T. J. (1997). Making Our Own Meanings: A Critical Review Of Media Effects Research In Relation To The Causation Of Aggression And Social Skills Difficulties In Children And Anorexia Nervosa In Young Women. Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, 4(3).

However, it is still important to examine the ways in which media texts may serve to shape behavior and attitudes. Media can represent in the world in ways that shape behavior and attitudes, for example, regarding perceptions of the environment, political values, desired body weight, etc.

Incorporation/resistance

A second perspective on audience (Abercrombie & Longhurst, 2001) focuses more on how audiences incorporate or resists stances or positioning by media texts. In contrast to the behavioral approach, it posits that audience beliefs and attitudes play an important role in shaping the meaning of texts. It also focuses on how audiences accept or reject the ways in which they are positioned to adopt these beliefs and attitudes. A discussion of how audiences are positioned.

For example, television or magazine ads for casino gambling invite viewers and readers to accept the belief that gambling is as an enjoyable activity. Elizabeth Ellsworth (1997) describes how texts employ “modes of address” to position readers or viewers to adopt certain desired responses consistent with certain value stances. For example, a text may position a viewer to adopt a sexist or racist stance which a reader or viewer may accept or reject. A reader or viewer may reject the casino gambling ads as not portraying the reality of gambling as leading to financial ruin or gambling addiction.

Identification

A key concept in studying positioning is the idea of “identification.” Media texts are seeking to gain an audience’s identification with a certain set of beliefs, cause, group, product, organization, or cause. They hope that an audience will connect with or subscribe to the beliefs or ideology being portrayed.

Media texts create identification through equations between images and language. For example, the Pepsi ad equates a group of young, attractive people enjoying themselves with drinking Pepsi. The equation here is between the image of the people and the product. Or, a Subaru L. L. Bean Outback ad portraying the car driving through a forest equates the car with the image of L. L. Bean as “nature” along with the archetypal world of the forest, serving to equate the car with active engagement with nature or the natural world. Audiences who respond positively to the image of “being young/attractive” or “nature,” are then linked to the product — by gaining your identification with these images, the ad also asks you to identify with use of the product. In the Secret ad, audiences are being positioned in ways that foster equations between their own anxieties about being successful or avoiding embarrassment and use of a deodorant.

Stances/positioning

Media texts are also positioning audiences to adopt certain stances or subject positions associated with beliefs, attitudes, or ideological orientations, what we will describe as “discourses” (see Critical Discourse Analysis below). The classic example in film in the “male-gaze” stance, in which males are positioned to adopt a voyeuristic stances towards images of females based on traditional discourses of masculinity (the notion of the “male-gaze” has been interrogated by critics who argue that the process is complicated by how women may also “gaze” at male and/or female images.) Discourses are ways of knowing or thinking that media texts hope to promote in audiences certain beliefs, attitudes, or ideological orientations. In a discourse of traditional masculinity, females are perceived as subordinate sex objects of male desire.

Audiences are also physically positioned to adopt certain perspectives or stances through the use of camera work. For example, much of current television news as well as law enforcement and security has employed surveillance cameras. Television news employ helicopter shots of traffic and crime scenes to provide dramatic visual representations-in some cases as they are occurring. Police and security employ an extensive system of surveillance cameras in towns, buildings, and airports. And, television programs exploit the use of home videos to provide entertaining, “candid camera” portraits of people doing embarrassing, foolish things. These surveillance representations invite viewers to view a place or space from the privileged stance of an outsider who can witness an activity without being implicated by any participation in that activity. The live-CNN coverage of O.J. Simpson riding in his White Ford Bronco on the LA Freeway is an example of the use of surveillance camera work that invites a voyeuristic perspective.

As we noted in Module 2, Stuart Hall contrasts the audience stances of simply accepting a text’s invited stance to challenging, interrogating, or opposing the invited stances. One of your goals in media education is to help students learn to challenge, interrogate, and oppose how they are being positioned by a media text.

In working with students, you may have them define what they perceive to be ways in which they are positioned to adopt certain beliefs and attitudes. To do that, begin with an ad with which they can infer a relatively obvious intended message or idea, for example, with a Pepsi ad, that drinking Pepsi leads to popularity with others. Ask them: How are you being positioned by this ad? Have them then note what aspects of the ad — the images or signs (see Semiotic Theory below) that imply this intended message or idea. Have them then note whether they accept or reject this intended message or idea.

Audiences accept or resist/reject these invited stances given their own larger beliefs and attitudes as shaped by their own socialization in families, schools, peer groups, or community/religious organizations. They may recognize that they are being invited to adopt stances or beliefs that run counter to their own beliefs. They may also recognize that they are being manipulated, particularly in the case of propaganda, to accept beliefs and attitudes counter to their own beliefs and attitudes.

While much of this module argues the need to focus on audience response and construction of meaning, it is also important to examine some of the limitations of focusing on audiences in terms of understanding how media texts mean:
Philip Hanes, The Advantages and Limitations of a Focus on Audience in Media Studies.

Spectacle/performance

A third perspective focuses more on the larger contemporary cultural context in which audiences no longer simply are shaped by or resist ideological stances, but are now active consumers or producers in a “mediascape” or media spectacles and events mediated by the media (Abercrombie & Longhurst, 2001). Audiences assume active roles as participants in Internet chat rooms, computer games, interactive television, sports/music events, entertainment retail/shopping, and theme parks. In focusing on audiences as active participants in a media-saturated culture, students begin to consider how their own identities are constituted through their uses of the media. They also focus on how media technologies serve to mediate events in the culture — how their experiences in events are shaped by different media.

Abercrombie and Longhurst posit that there are three different types of audiences, simple audiences, mass audiences, and diffused audience. The differences between these audiences reflect historical changes from audiences responding to direct, public performances to responding to media texts.

Simple audiences

Simple audiences experience a direct communication between performer and audience in a specific public space, for example, in a theater, concert hall, or rock concert. These performance events involve a lot of public ceremony, in which, for example, at the end of the play, the actors are applauded. There is a high level of distance between the audience and the event — audiences have little or influence on the performance. But, they are highly attentive to what it happening in the event or on the stage.

Mass audience

With the advent of mass communications associated with the printing press, radio, and television, the communication event became mediated by these different forms. Radio mediates the connection between a live concert and a mass audience. As a result, the performance event can now be global. But in contrast to the role assumed by the simple audience, the mass audience responds in more of a private context — viewing television in one’s home. And, the distance between performer and audience is very high — there is little or no public interaction with the performance. Moreover, while the simple audience attended directly to the performance, the mass audience’s attention may vary — a television viewer could be engaged in other tasks while she is viewing a program.

Diffused audience

For Abercrombie and Longhurst, the diffused audience reflects the more contemporary uses of a range of different types of media as part of everyday life. For example, adolescents now devote 4 1/2 hours a day to participation with computers (computer games, e-mail, buddy chat, web surfing), television, CDs, DVDs, or radio). These media uses are often a backdrop to doing other tasks, for example, listening to the radio or CDs while one works.

In contrast to simple or mass audiences, the diffused audience actively engage in media performances as a way of constructing their identities. For example, in assuming the role of anactive professional sports team fan, audiences may display their identity as a fan through logos, photos, clothes, etc., attending events/pre-game cook-outs, playing fantasy sports games, and sharing information about the team in everyday discussion. Their identity as a fan is also reflected in their attachment to the team and knowledge about the team. Or, audiences may become an active member of a rock band’s fan club through participating as a member of a listserve or web-based exchange (Harrington & Bielby, 1995; Harris & Alexander, 1998; Nightingale, 1996).

A discussion of audiences’ uses of the media

Low-income adolescents’ media uses, Media, Culture and Meaning Research Project, University of Colorado's Center for Mass Media

In the “mediascape,” the media serves as a resource for the imagination. Audiences are using the media to construct modes of escape or day dreams, as well as alternative identities through their identification with media stars or vicarious/actual participation in media events. They gain a sense of status with peers through their knowledge of intertextual inks between film, magazine, TV interviews, advertisements, and stars.

Audiences in the “mediascape” define themselves as members of symbolic, imagined communities — as participants in conservative talk-show communities, evangelical communities, “buyer”/consumer communities, sports-fan communities, or television program fan communities (something that is the focus of Module 8: Media Ethnography), for example, members of soap opera fan clubs, television program fan clubs, or online book clubs.

In contrast to mass audiences, diffuse audiences are global — they are not restricted in space and time. They may participate in a computer game with players from all over the world. In contrast to formal theater-going, such participation requires little or no ceremony and low or variable attention.

In their participation in the “mediascape,” Abercrombie and Longhurst also note that adolescent audiences may experience high levels of narcissism — a self-absorption associated with participation and consuming to fulfill their own desires as opposed to considering the perspectives and needs of others. The world becomes as “object of spectacle” in which experiences are treated as part of seeing and being seen. Audiences adopt a “possessive gaze” that focuses on surface images and brands associated with “coolness” or status.

This focus on the self-absorbed “project of the self” leads adolescents to perceive everything “in terms of the already existing self” — how does what I am viewing/reading serve my current needs as a media consumer, as opposed to how may I change my beliefs and attitudes regarding larger issues in the world. For example, in responding to teen magazines, adolescents react to portrayals of celebrities as ideal models of the self, portrayals that focus on appearance, personal relationships, “star” success, and fame, as opposed to social or cultural beliefs or political commitments. These portrayals reflect largely white, middle-class, Western, consumerist values. Thus, media texts primarily flatter and appease the self, rather than challenge self through presenting alternative cultural perspectives or alternative values that serve to challenge audience’s cultural identities.

Another feature of the “mediascape” is the focus on media spectacle, particularly as constructed by cable news network coverage of events such as the Gulf War, O.J. Simpson trial, Monica Lewinsky scandal, etc., as well as sports championships — the Super Bowl, World Series, World Cup soccer, NCAA Final Four championships, NBA championships, Stanley Cup championship, etc. These media events are dramatized and sensationalized through non-stop visual portrayals, interviews with participants and “experts,” non-stop/continuous updating of “the latest” information, and uses of graphics/backdrops to heighten the drama. See Douglas Kellner’s chapter on moving from media culture to media spectacle.

In the “mediascape,” there is an increasing blurring or breakdown of the distinction between fiction and real, as evident in “reality” television shows or duo-documentary. The reality-TV show constructs its own version of television reality that begins to substitute for audience’s perceptions of what constitutes lived-world experiences. Audiences view “real people” as audience participants themselves performing in ways that model ways of behaving the in “mediascape.” Program participants, for example, are shown consuming products or selecting peers in terms of practices associated with “celebrity” status.

Because blogs about reality TV shows are an important part of the audience experience of those shows, it is often useful to study audience reactions as articulated on those blogs:
reality blurred/the reality tv weblog
Fans of Reality TV
The Big Blog Show
Digital Squeeze
Lit Dot Org

Reality TV links

Reality TV links
Reality TV Planet
Reality TV World
SirLinksalot.net: Reality Television Show Links

For further reading on reality TV:

Andrejevic, M. (2003). Reality TV: The work of being watched. New York: Rowman & Littlefield

Brenton, S., & Cohen, R. (2003). Shooting people: Adventures in reality TV. London: Verso Books.

Calvert, C. (2000). Voyeur nation: Media, privacy, and peering in modern culture. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Friedman, J. (Ed.) (2002). Reality squared: Televisual discourse on the real. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Holmes, S., & Jermyn, D. (Eds.). (2004). Understanding reality television. New York: Routledge.

Smith, M., & Wood, A. (Eds.). (2003). Survivor lessons: Essays on communication and reality television. New York: MacFarland & Co.

A rhetorical analysis focuses on how these audiences are constructed as active consumers of experiences, events, objects, or services as commodities through the creation of needs related to status/identity. A key concept is the notion of “identification”—the idea that media texts position audiences in ways that gain their identification with certain beliefs or values, for example, ways of being cool. As noted in Module 5 (Advertising), by viewing people in ads engaged in certain practices, audiences identify with those practices and then equate those practices with the concept of “success,” “status,” “being cool,” “popularity,” or “with-it-ness.” For example, as illustrated in the documentary, “Merchants of Cool,” advertisers create images that portray consumption of certain products with being cool—celebrity sports stars ridiculing their own participation in Sprite ads—conveying a sense of “coolness” with which audiences want to identify. Audiences then equate drinking Sprite with “being cool.”

To view the 53 minute PBS Frontline program, “Merchants of Cool”:
Click here

A discussion on the development of a consumer culture

A discussion on the roles of mass communication

In a world of consumption, experiences, objects, artifacts, people, and ideas are perceived and constructed as things to be consumed—they become commodities. For example, places, sites, cities, landmarks, or “foreign lands,” are perceived as sites for tourism in which tourists assign meanings to these places, sites, cities, landmarks, or “foreign lands,” are consumed as “escapes,” “exciting,” “different,” “hip,” “out of the ordinary,” “exotic,” “romantic,” etc.

Another feature of consumption is the homogenization or standardization of consumer experiences so that these experiences are predictable, safe, and familiar.

Click here for a discussion of the "McDonaldalization" of the world.

Click here for a discussion of the "politics of consumption."

Niche audiences

Much of the mass media is geared for specific niche audiences who prefer particular types of entertainment or information (Seiter, 1999). Rather than everyone reading the same magazine—as they did in the past with LIFE or The Saturday Evening Post, readers now read their own specialty magazines. And, rather that all watching only the same three networks—NBC, ABC, and CBS, cable televisions viewers now can select from hundreds of different channels tailored to their own interests in news, sports, drama, hobbies, music, or entertainment. These selections may also be geared to differences in gender, class, race, or age, as is the case in which MTV music videos are geared to white, middle-class, male, early adolescents who adopt a voyeuristic stance in response to “gangstra” music videos. All of this specialization towards specialty, niche audiences results in a fragmentation of audience identification with or allegiance to shared communities.

Visual Rhetoric: lots of links on the University of Iowa Communications Department site

Application

What types of audiences is the Secret ad directed toward? What are the intended beliefs and actions? What specific images and social practices are used to position audiences to adopt these beliefs and actions?

Ang, I. (1995) Living room wars: Rethinking media audiences for a postmodern world. New York: Routledge.

Bird, E. (2003). The audience in everyday life: Living in a media world. New York: Routledge.

Brooker, W., & Jermyn, D. (Eds.). (2002). The audience studies reader. New York: Routledge.

Coleman, R. (Ed.). (2002). Say it loud!: African-American audiences, media, and identity. New York: Routledge.

Dickinson, R., Harindranath, R., & Linne, O., eds. (1998). Approaches to audiences: A reader. London: Arnold.

Hay, J., Grossberg, L., & Wartella, E., eds. (1996). The audience and its landscape. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Hills, M. (2002). Fan cultures. New York: Routledge.

MacKay, H., ed. (1997). Consumption and everyday life. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Seiter, E. (1999). Television and new media audiences. New York: Oxford University Press.

Swan, K., Meskill, C., & DeMaio. (1998). Social learning from broadcast television. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Taylor, G. (2001). Artists in the audience: Cults, camp, and American film criticism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Stacey, J. (1993). Star gazing: Hollywood cinema and female
spectatorship. New York: Routledge.

Wenner, L. (1998). MediaSport. New York: Routledge.

Hay, J., Grossberg, L., & Wartella, E., eds. (1996). The audience and its landscape. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

MacKay, H., ed. (1997). Consumption and everyday life. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Seiter, E. (1999). Television and new media audiences. New York: Oxford University Press.

Swan, K., Meskill, C., & DeMaio. (1998). Social learning from broadcast television. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Module 4: Word document

Applying Critical Perspectives to an Ad

Rhetorical/Audience Analysis

Semiotic Theory

Poststructuralist/ Deconstructivist Theory: Interrogating Language Codes/Categories

Critical Discourse Analysis

Psychoanalytic Theories

Feminist Criticism

Postmodern Theory

Postcolonial Theory

References