Audience Reception Studies: Audience Theory and Audience Research

UGC MHRD ePG Pathshala Subject: English Principal Investigator: Prof. Tutun Mukherjee, University of Hyderabad Paper 16: Cultural Studies Paper Coordinator: Prof. Pramod K. Nayar, University of Hyderabad Module No 18: Audience/Reception Studies Content writer: Ms. Akhila Narayan, Union Christian College, Aluva Content Reviewer: Prof. Tutun Mukherjee, University of Hyderabad Language Editor: Prof. Pramod K. Nayar, University of Hyderabad Module 18: Audience/Reception Studies 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 same. 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 their purposes. Moreover, the effect of media is not always as simple, direct and all-powerful as purported by the hypodermic model.

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