The media and it's audience

• New Media

  Audience can directly influence media

  • during refugee crisis in 2015, photographs of a young Syrian child who drowned were posted
  • many people used these images to criticize European governments for their approach to the crisis
  • mainstream media messages about refugees become sympathetic > matched the attitudes of audience
• Media messages

  Media messages can build up overtime to create/reinforce cultural norms

  • images of women in media create stereotypes > place expectations on women
• Media messages, McLuhan

  Claimed media technology had a greater effect on society than media content, media we consume is important

  • technology had greater impact, e.g. transformed how people shopped
  • different forms of media require different levels of engagement, e.g. books need more concentration than movies
  • difficult to objectively measure long term media effects, mainly theoretical
• Effects of violent media

  Sociologists focused on young children when researching effects of violent media, more impressionable > may repeat behaviour they see
• Effects of violent media, Newson

  Argues you can become desensitised to violence if you see enough of it

  • e.g. Bandura
• Effects of violent media, example


  2012 gunman killed 12 people at the screening of the new Batman movie

  • media linked attack to film > claimed gunman was directly influenced by violent film
• GUMG, neo marxists

  Looked at effects of news and current affairs, analysed media content by looking at messages and valued

  • argue media strongly influenced the audience attitudes and beliefs
  • studied reactions to reports of violence during the Miner’s Strike (1984-85)
  • half of audience sample believed picket lines were mostly violent
  • police and people on picket lines said wasn’t as much violence as suggested
  • audience based beliefs on what they were told by the media
• Criticisms of violent media has negative effect

  • Cumberbatch = no clear evidence that violent media influences behaviour of children/audience, evaluated hypodermic theory
  • Young argued violent media may have a positive effect on attitudes to violent media > may result in sensitisation > raises awareness of violent acts > can learn to not commit crime (can back up neophiliac)
  • Fesbach and Sanger = violent media gives people the opportunity to let out all of their aggression in a positive way > e.g. shouting at violent games is a safe way to release anger = catharsis
• Criticisms of violent media has negative effects, Gauntlett

  Criticised Bandura's experiment > was carried out in an artificial environment, doesn't reflect how children behave in the real world

  • children regarded as powerless puppets of the media > children can recognise it's not acceptable to imitate fictional violence early
  • used imaginative methods > asked children to make videos about environment and observed results > ethnographic study, interpretivist
• Other criticisms of media effects models

  • Media effects studies can't always make it clear what they mean by violent > don't consider how audience will react to different types of violence > hypodermic doesn't consider age and maturity causing different reactions
  • Morrison = context is key > can affect how the audience views violent media, e.g. violence that is meant to be funny may have a different effect to seeing a real life war zone