A Reception Analysis of a Development-Oriented Television Programme by a Multi-Ethnic Society by Jamahah Ahmad M Sc (Librarianship), M A (Communications) Submitted to Dublin City University, Ireland in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctoi of Philosophy Supervisor Prof Farrel Corcoran School of Communications Dublin City University May 2000 DECLARATION I hereby certify that this material, which I now submit for assessment on the programme study leading to the Award of Doctor of Philosophy, is entirely my own work and has not been taken from the work of others save to the extent that such work has been cited and acknowledged withm the text of my thesis Signed Date °[ M o w * 0 0 0 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research could not be completed without a great deal of help from a great many individuals In particular, I would like to express my deep gratitude to the following people My research supervisor, Professor Farrel Corcoran, who had guided me through out my doctoral study I really value his comments, which were always direct, and this has enabled me to sharpen my thinking m great many areas Dr P Kirby, a member of the supervisory committee and my external examiner, Professor Ham ehnk A ll the participants in the focus groups from the states of Kelantan, Perak, Penang, Sarawak and Selangor Professor Datuk Dr Zamal Kling, Professor Jomo Sundram and Associate Professor Dr Muhammad Ikmal Said, all from the University of Malaya, Associate Professor Sanngat from Umversiti Sains Malaysia, Dato’ Mohamad Rahmat, Minister of Information (now retires), Dato’ Jaafar Kamm, Director General of Broadcasting (now retires), Ismail Mustaffa and Norma Ramli, all from RTM, Ministry of Information, Hisham Abdullah, producer of Majalah 3 from TV3, Dato’ Nazn Tan Sn Aziz, Deputy Minister in the Pnme Minister’s Department and former Chairman of MARA (now Minister of Entrepreneurship Development), Datuk Lee Kim Sai, former Minister of Health representing MCA, Dr T Manmuthu, former Deputy Minister of Agnculture (now a Senator), representing MIC, Abdul Halim Abdul Rahman, Deputy Chief Minister of Kelantan, representing PAS, Datuk Lee Lam Thye, a social activist and former leader of an opposition party DAP, and Dr Mohd Fadzillah Kamsah, consultant and former professor of communications M ARA, for providing me with the financial assistance to study for my doctorate at Dublin City University, republic of Ireland Finally, my beloved family-my dearest husband, Iskandar, my sons Ednn, Safiedin, Sofian, Salman, and my daughter Laila-for their patience for almost five years My appreciation also goes to Ita who helped the family with the domestic chores through out our stay m Ireland My special thanks also goes to Normah and later on Yati for helping me with the typing and collating the thesis ABSTRACT The mam objective of this study is to find out how a multi-racial society interprets development-onented television programmes To ensure that this research is socially meaningful, the interpretation of the development-onented television programmes was done within the framework of the social and cultural conditions of the Malaysian society where the study took place In order to understand this phenomenon better we have looked into the Reception Analysis Theory This theory seeks to integrate Social Science perspectives and Humanistic perspectives by adopting empirical approach to audience research The literature also suggested that Reception Analysis is a step closer to a better approach m studying media audiences because its methodology stresses that comparative empirical analysis must be earned out between the media discourses and the audience discourses In this study we also wanted to find out to what extent ethnic-income-based factors influence the members’ decoding or meaning-making behaviours as they watch a selected development-onented television programme Such a relationship is expected to bear a set of meanings that could be interpreted as discursive and social This is because these meanings are conceived as result of the members’ dialogues with the programme text In this respect, we have applied Parkin’s Theory of Meaning Systems that suggests meamngs could be categorized as dominant (shanng the dominant ideas), negotiated (partly shanng the dominant ideas) and oppositional (rejecting the dominant ideas) In each case, each meaning is ‘read’ in relation to the existing social conditions The study was conducted m three stages The first stage was an ‘exploratory study on the television programme’ where we interviewed the television professionals for issues that might be of relevant as input to our structured questionnaire for the focus group sessions The second stage was the ‘focus group interviews’ relating to the programme that was selected for them to watch The final stage was where we conducted ‘personal interviews’ with people from the government and other related organizations, including those from the various political parties The aim was to get their opinions on what they think about the programme and the rightful role of television m developing Malaysia From the findings it was found that the different ethnic groups make sense of the television programme content m complex and unexpected ways, thus resulting m the production of vaned meanings This concurred with the general notion of Reception Analysis that mass media audiences make sense of media contents m many different ways For instance, some of the different ethnic groups were seen to be modifying the ‘preferred meaning’ of the text, and relocating these meanings for alternative ends The study also supported the notion that the interpretative meanings of the development- onented programme were social and discursive The socially bounded factors, such as the groups’ organizational culture, working responsibility, educational sponsorships, and increased educational level among the less dominant groups were found to have contnbuted to the shaping of the respective groups’ decoding behaviours u Based on our findings, we are of the opinion that the Reception Analysis theory is a suitable theory in accounting for the different modes of decoding and interpreting media contents Meaning making is not as simple as it may seems because the process involves not only the psychological aspects of the decoders but the interplay of other factors, such as, their socio-cultural discourses, the power relation experiences, as well as constraints caused by language rules and codes in the text The Parkin’s theory was also used as our framework to define meanings made by the groups The theory was primarily used in assigning the groups’ decoding position by differentiating the positions into dominant, negotiated or oppositional Nevertheless, the findings of this study showed that the three decoding positions delimited the probability of having more meanings to the programme content by the different ethnic groups If not checked, it would naturally defeat the purpose of generating new insights from the study As such, our study concluded that the original three decoding positions suggested by Parkin were insufficient to account for the complexity m decoding media messages At the same time, our study is also about communication development We approached the subject of development from the communication viewpoint as opposed to the socio­ economics approach Our contention is that a subject like development could also be understood using communication models In this particular respect, Malaysia’s development strategies were being evaluated from the way respondents interpreted the development-oriented television programme called 4Miskin’ produced by TV3, a private television network m Malaysia The findings from our data revealed that the ethnic groups were very concerned about the fact that development policies and programmes are politically linked For instance, the Malays (indigenous people) strongly believed that the government must take them out of poverty by whatever means The Chinese (immigrant group) in our study were generally critical in their responses over the objectives of development in this country Although it has been made known that the existing development policy was formulated with the intention of creating a ‘balance’ m the socio-economic experience, the Chinese in particular, could not get away from the idea that the activities were encroaching into their business territory That had caused some forms of anxieties among the Chinese and is affecting the relationship between the Chinese and the Malays In conclusion, we believe that the theories selected for this study, 1 e , to explain the phenomenon of reception of development-onented television programme ‘Miskin’ m the Malaysia society, were well supported Because reception is associated with meaning- making at the receivers’ end, the issue hence, could not be alienated from the socio- psychological and cultural factors that continue to impinge on the conduct of these receivers Since our research framework has successfully examined this phenomenon, we would like to suggest that similar research duplicating our model to be carried out in other multi-ethnic societies in other parts of the world in \ TABLE OF CONTENTS Page A CKNOLEDGEMENTS i ABSTRACT u TABLE OF CONTENTS iv LIST OF TABLES ix L IS T O F FIG U RES x CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION AND OVER VIEW OF THE PRESENTSTUDY 1 0 Introduction 1 1 1 Rationale for the study 2 1 1 1 Why audience reception? 2 1 1 2 Why Malaysia7 4 1 1 3 Why Reception Analysis theory? 5 1 2 Objectives of the study 5 1 3