M 87M C M edia Audiences M afalda Stasi - PDF document

M 87M C M edia Audiences M afalda Stasi mafalda.stasi@coventry.ac.uk Today: M odule Introduction Content Overview Lecture

M odule introduction M odule Objectives Critically examine theories and conceptualisations of ‘the audience’ Position reception studies within media and cultural studies Understand how different media texts address audiences Understand how specific audiences engage with media texts

Syllabus Week Date Topic 1 24 Jan Introduction 2 31 Jan Subcultural audiences 3 7 Feb Adoring audiences 4 14 Feb Spectating audiences 5 21 Feb Screening 6 28 Feb Audiences and Gender 7 7 Mar Audiences and Sexuality 8 14 Mar Audiences and Ethnicity 9 21 Mar Intersectional Audiences Spring Break 10 18 Apr Recap 11 25 Apr Tutorials Logistics Weekly Thu 5-6.30 pm ET130 Attendance is mandatory M aterials, readings, assignments: • http:/ / mafaldastasi.com/ teaching/ postg raduate/ m87mc-media-audiences • M oodle http:/ / moodle.coventry.ac.uk M87MC – final hand-in AD055 – general info for postgrads

Assessment A 3.000 words academic essay – Due date 2 nd M ay – Pass mark is 40% Hand-in via M oodle AND paper copy LATE SUBM ISSION = M ARK OF ZERO AND RESIT NO SUBM ISSION = NO RESIT = NO DEGREE Serious and documented problem? You may request an extension before the due date Essay Topic Pick a media text of your choice, and analyse it in detail using one of the theories discussed in the module. Your essay should: – problematise the notion of ‘audience’ – examine specific and relevant media-audience inter- relationships – critically analyse literature, sources and media texts relevant to the topic – demonstrate a critically informed awareness of the historical development of ‘audience’ as a concept – demonstrate an informed understanding of the evolution of your chosen theories and models relating to ‘audience’ and critically evaluate these perspectives – demonstrate the ability to present your interpretations, findings and arguments in an manner appropriate to the context

In order to succeed Take ACTIVE charge of your learning by: Reading materials assigned Completing all assignments Being prepared to discuss your work Engaging in class activities Asking questions! Respect yourself and others by: Attending all classes Arriving on time or early Listening to other people’s contribution Working collaboratively Resources • Library – http:/ / ils.coventry.ac.uk/ • Google Scholar – http:/ / scholar.google.com • Moodle – http:/ / moodle.coventry.ac.uk • Centre for Academic Writing – http:/ / www.coventry.ac.uk/ caw/ • Harvard Reference System – http:/ / wwwm.coventry.ac.uk/ caw/ cuhrs/ Pages/ CU HarvardReferenceStyle.aspx

Academic Honesty Your work should always be yours. We do not want you to repeat what other people said on a given topic, or even worse, copy their words into your written work. We want to hear what you think—what your analysis can contribute to the sum total of knowledge. Pe naltie s for ac ade mic dishone sty range from a mark of ze ro to be ing e xc lude d from the Unive rsity Introductions Your name and nationality What modules have you taken or will take One interesting thing about yourself

Activity On the sheets provided, write down: – Your name – What do you know about audiences? – What would you like to know about audiences? When you’re done, hand your paper in Content Overview

Part 1: I watch therefore I FEEL Emotions and feelings • The audience-text relationship is intensely emotional • We all display various types of attachment and feelings for a text • This passionate relationship is not simply individual, but socially determined Part 1: I watch therefore I AM Identity • The way we watch a text helps us determine and understand who we are • Who we are influences how we read a text • A text may address or target a specific audience • A specific audience category may read texts in different ways

Activity: stand up for your case Where are you in the audience-text continuum? Stand up and arrange yourselves in a line according to what you think of the balance of power between audience and media All-powerful All-powerful media audience … Don’t sit back yet! Activity: forming groups You will be assigned a number. Keep it in mind! Now, look for all the people with the same number as you: they are your group

Lecture: Cultural Studies Reception Studies Audience Studies The Discipline of Cultural Studies Culture is the texts and practices of everyday life Culture is a terrain of ideological struggle over meaning and hegemony “ an arena of consent and resistance. It is partly where hegemony arises, and where it is secured.”

Raymond Williams Who decides what is culture? Traditional working class practices are a legitimate cultural expression “ Culture is Ordinary” (1958) [popular film] “ weekly serves the leisure of twenty-five million British adults, and which deals well or badly, but at least with great emotive power, with the values of man and society” (Williams, 1993: 186) Stuart Hall 1969 – 1976 Director of the CCCS (Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies) How do we interrogate and interact with the text? We negotiate social and cultural meaning situationally, in a cycle of “ encoding and decoding” Creation and interpretation of texts, or encoding and decoding are “ linked but distinctive moments - production, circulation, distribution/ consumption, reproduction” (Hall 1980: 128)

Angela M cRobbie Gendered audiences: who are we still ignoring? Whose texts and whose modes of interaction are devalued? We need to study the intersection of gender, culture and social change Are girls, in fact, for reasons which we could discover, really not active or present in youth sub-cultures? Or has something in the way this kind of research is done rendered them invisible? (M cRobbie and Garber 1975: 209) The roots of Cultural Studies “ The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas” Ideology: “ a body of ideas and practices which seek to defend the prevailing structures of power by actively promoting the values and interests of the dominant groups in society” (Storey 1999: 28)

Ideology and Domination For M arx, ideology is the intellectual arm of oppression Top-down, dualistic view of power relations the supremacy of a social group manifests itself in two ways, as ‘ domination ’ and as ‘ intellectual and moral leadership ’ (57) Hegemony: social and cultural leadership to maintain power through consensus, agreement and persuasion Hegemonic ideologies are pervasive, invisible, taken for granted Oppression is a cooperative achievement Antonio Gramsci

Hegemony “ Consent must be constantly won and rewon, for people's material social experience constantly reminds them of the disadvantages of subordination and thus poses a threat to the dominant class... Hegemony... posits a constant contradiction between ideology and the social experience of the subordinate that makes this interface into an inevitable site of ideological struggle” (Fiske 1992: 291). Reception Studies: Focus on Audiences ‘We must get away from the habit of thinking in terms of what the media do to people and substitute for it the idea of what people do with the media ’. (Halloran, 1970) ‘Audience’ is not an absolute concept, because it cannot exist outside a communication situation—audience is a construct derived from the context

The Audience is an Illusion “ There is no stable entity which we can isolate and identify as the media audience, no single object that is unproblematically ‘there’ for us to observe and analyse. The plural, audiences, is preferable—denoting several groups divided by their reception of different media and genres, or by social and cultural positioning—yet even this term presents conceptual difficulties.” (M oores 1993: 1) “ Audience is, most of all, a discursive construct produced by a particular analytic gaze” (Alaatusari 1999: 6) Having established that “audiences” don’t exist, we can now move on to study empirical instances of people watching stuff …M ORE NEXT WEEK!

Readings Hall, S. (1980) “Encoding/ decoding.” In Hall, S. et al., eds., Culture, Media, Language . London: Hutchinson. (128–38) M iller, T. (2001) “ What it Is and What it Isn’t: Introducing…Cultural Studies.” in A Companion to Cultural Studies. Oxford: Blackwell. (1-19) All readings available on my blog, unless otherwise stated For Next Week Refer to the assigned readings: – As a group, choose the three most important points the readings make, and come to class next week ready to discuss them. You will be asked to present these point formally. – Individually, make a list of points you found unclear, and post them as a comment to this entry.

QUESTIONS?