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Stephen Hill
Objectives
To explore how three classic theories of audience might help answer the question:
Does the proliferation of web 2.0 user generated content and affordable creative technologies pose a threat to the integrity of the media professional? AIM: To explore the ways that academic media theory can help the media professional understand the interactive potential of the audience in a digital age.
LINK TO THEORY (MARXISM): Does the deregulation of the means of production' (Karl Marx, 1848) pose a threat to the integrity of the media professional?
Overview
Forms and Conventions Audience Institution Representation
Does the proliferation of web 2.0 and affordable creative technologies pose a threat to the integrity of the media professional? How academic media theory can help the professional understand the interactive potential of the audience in a digital age.
1. 2. 3.
Three Theories of Audience Roland Barthes Death of the Author (1967) Dick Hebdige Subculture (1979) Chris Anderson The Long Tail (2006) Five Institutional Models Music Video Production
(Foundation Degree Popular Music)
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Multi-media Journalism
(BA Hons Journalism and Communication)
Television Production
(BA Hons Media Production)
Computer Animation
(BA Hons Computer Animation)
Audience
Institution
Representation
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Roland Barthes Death of the Author (1967)
Dick Hebdige Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979)
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Chris Anderson The Long Tail (2006)
Audience
Institution
Representation
Contemporary Relevance: Web 2.0 user generated content is blurring distinction between producers and consumers.
Audience
Institution
Representation
Audience
Institution
Representation
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Audience
Institution
Representation
Foundation Degree - Popular Music
Music Video
Traditional view: Music videos are the ultimate example of the post-modern text.
Digital age: audience embracing cheap digital video editing software and YouTube
Barthes: The interpretation of the musical soundtrack by the video director exemplifies the authorial tension in Death of an Author. Hebdige: Sub-cultural codes that denote particular niche market have become central to the visual style of music videos aimed at defined communities of consumers. Anderson: Multi-platform branding has seen the emergence of some very specialised markets for music video: Smash Hits TV, Q TV, Kerrang! TV etc
Prospects for future: reinstated some of the key conventions of the genre.
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Audience
Institution
Representation
BA Hons Journalism and Communication
Multi-Media Journalism
Traditional view: press as the Fourth Estate (Peter Wright/David Kelly) Digital age: Traditional journalism competing with blogs, message boards, Amazon reviews, forums etc.
Barthes: questions the truth of objective reporting. Meaning of news inscribed by the audience. Hebdige: Lifestyle journalism cohered around sub-cultural niche markets: Angling Times to Living in France Anderson: Traditional journalism increasingly fragmented specialist television news channels etc.
Prospects for future: multi-platform branding of oldguard. High quality journalistic = niche market
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Audience
Institution
Representation
BA Hons Media Production
Television Production
Traditional view: Concept of broadcasting. Tension between paternalistic sensibility of BBC and populist awareness of independent channels Digital age: Narrow casting. Multi-channelling. Greater has been replaced by (pressing the red button) + audience interactivity narrowcasting. The schedule has been replaced convergence by TV on demand. Impact on professional: More television being made more cheaply, less freedom about its content. Reality television placing greater emphasis on audience participation. Prospects for future: YouTube, reality television reinforce old conventions. More sophisticated audience more receptive to hybridity.
Barthes: Interactivity means audiences are now the authors of their own viewing schedule. Hebdige: Narrowcasting to sub-cultural groups has replaced broadcasting. Anderson: Lower production costs and increased channel numbers means minority television production is now profitable.
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Audience
Institution
Representation
BA Hons Computer Animation
Computer Animation
Traditional view: animation discrete genre of film-making 19th Century (flip books and zoetropes). Digital age: Proliferation of anime. Domestic packages like GIF Movie Gear allowing audiences to produce their own animation for broadcast on YouTube Impact on professional: Convergence of animation with special effects in mainstream film is opening up new cinematic possibilities.
Prospects for future: Amateur productions e.g Anime pop music videos widening audiences for animation films.
Barthes: Animation supposes authorial creativity on the part of the audience in the form of the willing suspension of disbelief. Hebdige: Animation is a discrete sub-culture of the film industry with its own sub-genres. Anderson: Proliferation of New Media technologies has opened new niche markets for software and animation based film.
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Audience
Institution
Representation
Conclusion
To explore how three classic media theories of audience might help answer the question: Does the proliferation of web 2.0 and affordable creative technologies pose a threat to the integrity of the media professional?
Roland Barthes, Death of the Author, 1967. The shift is irrelevant. The audience has always been in procession of the means of production in the way in which they inscribe meaning into the reception of a text; creative media technologies are an extension of this.
Dick Hebdige, Subculture and the Meaning of Style, 1979. The output of the media professional is always open to appropriation by subcultural groups who will re-work its meaning. Moreover subversive readings are always dependent on the hegemony of the media professional and thereby reinforce it. Chris Anderson, The Long Tail, 2006 Much of the creativity is fairly illusory. Though products may be niche marketed most domestic technologies reinforce the conventions of the dominant means of production. Long tail opens up new opportunities.