Issues/Debates/Theories
Representation and Stereotyping
This is the method in which the media constructs ideas of people, places and events through the use of images, words or sound all this is Broadcasted through media texts to an audience. Representations basically provide the framework of how and audience may view gender, ethnic or social groups. They are ideological as they are usually based on values or beliefs. No representation is ever real just a version of the real.
Representation is key to many media debates and is usually described as being either positive or negative which depends on the view of the group being represented. Achieving positive representations (versions of themselves with they agree with and approve of) has a goal of minority groups who have criticised the perceived negativity of media stereotypes, e.g. gays, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, disability groups and women.
A Stereotype is a commonly held belief about specific social groups or types of individuals, which may involve the way they behave, speak etc. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings. Stereotypes are standardized and simplified conceptions of groups based on some former assumptions.
Media Effects Theory
This theory tends to see the audience as passive and measures hoe exposure to particular aspects of media content can influence the behaviour of the reader or viewer. In this theory the audience is negatively influenced by the media which may result in effects regarded as problematic in terms of threating social stability. This theory helps to explain moral panic responses to media content, particularly in relation to representations of sex, violence and defiant behaviour and its supposed effects on the youth otherwise known as the hypodermic needle theory.
Audience theory
If you scream during a scary movie you are undoubtedly reacting to the text, but how deep do these feelings run, and are they damaging? What exactly is it that attracts people to watch or read media texts? Individual behaviour needs to be linked to mass movements in order to achieve a significant audience size.
Media providers want big audiences to buy their products. A big audience needs to be targeted and constructed in order to pay for the development, manufacture and distribution of a media product. Media institutions have sophisticated ways of enticing their audiences to ‘come in and buy’, because ultimately those institutions need that audience to spend its money. http://www.northallertoncoll.org.uk/media/audience.htm
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