Cultural theory

• Social and cultural context

  Affects how an audience responds to the media

  • cultural effects theory argues social context is important when looking at effects of media > different people interpret media in different ways
  • theory argues an audience interprets the media in context of the culture they belong to > effect of media is complex, not the same for everyone
• Cultural theory

  Culture = small, subcultural groups an individual belongs to and wider general structure of society

  • e.g. individuals response to England winning the world cup will depend on whether they support the team
• Cultural effects view of war

  At the time of the broadcast, there was an insecurity in American society due to financial crisis and war in Europe

  • radio programmes frequently interrupted, people expected bad news
  • pepple not surprised to hear bad news > more likey that some audience members would believe story
• Hall, cultural effects theory

  Media has dominant ideological messages encoded into it

  • people of different backgrounds can decode messages differently