Audience theorists

• Henry Jenkins - fandom theory

  • Spectorial culture gives into participatory culture
  • FANDOM - a term describing communities built around a shared enjoyment of a popular culture, eg. books, shows
  • FAN CULTURE - where audience participates and involves in acting as consumers but also producers and creators of a form of media to make own textual meanings that circulate the media
  • TEXTUAL POACHING - idea that fans construct social and cultural identities through borrowing and inflecting mass culture images part of the participatory culture that has a social dimension
• How do you apply and link Henry Jenkins fandom theory to news?

  Theory draws attention to effective online news and it being a threat to traditional models.

  • online newspapers may increasingly rely on participatory media like Facebook, Instagram etc.
  • Jenkins argues that this links to citizen journalism
• What is citizen journalism according to Henry Jenkins?

  Members of a community outside the mainstream media play an active role in producing news and information.
• Albert Bandura - media effects theory

  • media can implant ideas in the mind of audiences directly
  • audiences acquire attitudes and emotional responses through modelling the people they observe
  • media representations of transgressive behaviour like violence or physical aggression can lead to audience imitating it
• What are the criticisms of Albert Banduras media effects theory?

  • acting violent to a doll is different to displaying this against a human in a real world setting
  • since data was collected immediately its difficult to know long term impacts