Wednesday, 26 April 2017

Media Theorists

Media Theorists

Genre


John Fiske – genre as ‘convenience’ for producers and audiences – this means commercial success is underpinned by the conventions of genre in terms of what audiences expect.

Robert Stam – there are infinite genres. Basically Stam is advancing an argument that genre no longer exists and we do not have to analyse text in terms of genre.

Jane Feuer – genre is abstract and becoming harder to identify.

Henry Jenkins – genre breaks rules and commonly hybridizes.

John Hartley – genre is interpreted culturally e.g. Coronation Street or Eastenders could only be understood in terms of the conventions of UK soap operas, American television dramas tend to have a slightly different set of conventions to British television dramas.

Daniel Chandler – genre is too restricting and presents audiences and producers with a creative ‘straightjacket’.

David Buckingham – genre is a constant process of negotiation and change

Rick Altman – genre offers audiences a ‘set of pleasures’

Narrative


Levi-Strauss - texts are often understood by the ways things are placed in binary opposition to each other.

Todorov – Act Structure: Equilibrium, Disruption, Resolution, New Equilibrium.

Roland Barthes – 5 narrative codes: Cultural, Semantic, Symbolic, Hermeneutic, Proairetic

Propp – 8 character roles: only applies to mainstream texts where characters often pertain to stereotype. Sometimes, can apply to running news stories by analysing a Hero, Villain, False Hero, Princess (or prize), Her Father, Donor, Despatcher, Helper.

Representation and Identities and the Media


Taijfel and Turner – intergroup discrimination, useful for studying Identities and the Media and the idea of a collective group.

Angela McRobbie – post feminist icon theory suggesting female character are determined, strong, independent and in control but also utilize their sexuality e.g. Lara Croft, Lady Gaga…

Laura Mulvey – male gaze/female gaze. Although Mulvey herself has rejected the male gaze theory in recent years there are still strong arguments suggesting the female form is still objectified in a range of media. The female subverts the theory suggesting male performers/actors are objectified.

Tessa Perkins – stereotyping has elements of truth and are based on repeated representations, both in society and within the media. "Stereotypes are a good thing and have an element of truth to them".

Andy Medhurst – stereotyping is shorthand for identification. "Stereotypes are a media shorthand"

Richard Dyer - Stereotype legitimize inequality by marginalizing certain individuals and social groups. "Media institutions with power make stereotypes of those will less power"

Stuart Hall – oppositional, negotiated and dominant reading of representations.

Levi-Strauss - binary oppositions

David Buckingham – we have increasing fragmented identities and can no longer be said to be part of a collective identity.

David Gauntlett – “identity is complicated, everyone’s got one”. Pluralism but within a hegemonic framework.

Carol Clover – last girl theory: useful if analysing representation in horror films but mainly the sub genre of slasher horror.

Baudrillard – representations are hyper real, often copies of copies and have lost meaning as a result.

Judith Butler – queer theory. Gender is not the result of nature but is socially constructed through media and culture. Queer theory challenges the assumption that there is a binary divide between gay and heterosexual suggesting in mainstream media heterosexuality is represented as normal.

Zygmunt Bauman – identity as a reflection of society is problematic, there are too many variables.

Erving Goffman – studying the nature of social interaction e.g. notions of ‘performance’ reflecting a certain identity.

Anthony Giddens – self-reflexivity and developing own biographical narratives. Useful for looking at Facebook and studying how identity is represented in digital social media.

Pierre Bourdieu – social class is constructed by cultural taste (and in turn by education)

Audience


Jeremy Tunstall – audiences can be identified as Primary, Secondary or Tertiary but also the site or conditions of reception e.g. consuming media as a collective group of individually.

Blumler and Katz – Uses and Gratifications theory, useful for studying the range of different pleasures active audience gain from media texts i.e. Diversion (escapism), Personal Relationships (talking about or sharing media with others e.g. on social networks), Personal Identity (with media performers) and Surveillance (information on the world).

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – 5 levels of a pyramid. From Psychology can be mapped onto other media: Physical Needs, Safety Needs, Communal Needs, Esteem Needs, Self-Actualization.

Katz and Larzasfeld – Two Step Flow: opinion leaders take on a belief and ideology and develop or discuss its content.

Frankfurt School - Passive consumption/Hypodermic model. Old fashioned but still relevant – vulnerable audiences will always be passively affected by media texts.

David Gauntlett – Producer as Consumer (Prosumer): thanks to digital media, many consumers of media as also producers e.g. YouTube as cultural phenomenon.

Stanley Cohen/Martin Barker – Moral Panics in the media e.g. aggressive Daily Mail headlines often with the intention of marginalizing a social group. “Moral panics - a condition, episode, person or group of persons [who] become defined as a threat to societal values and interests. There are five stages of moral panic; concern, hostility, consensus, disproportionality and volatility (moral panic becomes volatile and public demand action to stop the moral panic)."

Stuart Hall – audience positioning and dominant/negotiated/oppositional readings. Audiences can be positioned into a shared dominant reading in a number of ways e.g. by technical composition and mise-en-scene.

Young & Rubicam - 7 Kinds of People. A theory by a marketing company specializing advertising and brand identity. Similar to gratifications. Acknowledged that different people would seek out media texts according to their needs and desires, in this case based on their personalities. THE EXPLORER, THE ASPIRER, THE SUCCEEDER, THE REFORMER, THE MAINSTREAM, THE STRUGGLER, THE RESIGNED

Institutional Theory Including New Technologies


David Gauntlett – opposes media censorship and the vulnerability stereotype – sees youth as active and literate compared to vulnerable and needing protection.

Henry Jenkins – video game effects research suggests instead of audiences being passive they are active and engaged in multiple communications.

David Gauntlett – the prosumer creates a world of independent media producers.

Andrew Keen – the prosumer creates a world of ‘amateurs’.

Daniel Chandler – online genre proliferation: new media has increasingly led to the questioning of the boundaries and conventions of genre as traditionally studied.

Michael Wesch – YouTube as cultural phenomenon: here the value of YouTube is being acknowledged with the availability and access to resources it provides being taken for granted despite it origination in recent history, 2006.

Charlie Brooker – blurred boundaries, representation of ‘the real’. Brooker is suggesting that many texts and their availability on a number of interactive platforms has made people question what is real as what is not.

Dan Gillmor – makes key points about the relationship between technology and ‘We Media’

Stuart Price – critical of global media and ownership

Noam Chomsky – Marxist readings on media ownership

Nick Lacey – on synergy, ownership and institution referencing the concepts of synergy and convergence as crucial to modern media.

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