Week 6 - What do people do with Media?

This week’s focus was audiences, and what the public do with the media they’re provided. Within our lecture we considered the ideas and work of Dutoit and Bersani “the camera’s point of view on the world it films necessarily includes assumptions about the spectators of that world” (Dutoit and Bersani 2004) which explores that the portrayal and depictions on television are heavily influenced by the actions and behaviours of its audience, the ‘theorists’ whom create the content strive to create products for the audience, however these are all interpreted and comprehended differently dependent on the audiences environment, background, age, race and so much more.

Gillespie’s ‘Television, Ethnicity and Cultural Change’ explores the way young people interact with ‘soap operas’ particularly ‘Neighbours’ and how they are able to relate these programmes to their lives directly. Gillespie explored ‘Southall’ a small suburb in London which showed in her ethnographic research similarities between the Punjabi youths and the Neighbours programme.

Within the study Gillespie mentions the connection young people create between “real talk” and “soap talk” (Gillespie, 2003: 316) with the example of ‘Neighbours.’ The audience are identifying with certain characters potentially seeing themselves in “that characters shoes” (Gillespie, 2003: 320 (Livingstone, 1990: 22)) which shows how powerful and potentially dangerous television is, audience members maybe younger may see these characters as role models or attempt to imitate them.

Gillespie goes on to elaborate on the effect these soaps have on the younger generation, furthering his point on “soap gossip” with the impact tabloid press make which “adds further dimensions by playing double existence of the characters” (Gillespie, 2003: 316) with the actors inside and outside it. This leads to a greater investment on an emotional level in the programme as it becomes more real to the audiences as actors and actresses such as Jason Donovan and Kylie Minogue are in fact pop stars.

My found audience study was Androich ‘Truth on TV?’ which looks at the attention audience pay to the truth in TV. The article proved that 68% of the subjects weren’t bothered too much about the truth, but rather took interest in the entertainment. (Androich, 2006) This links with the Encoding and Decoding theoretical model made renowned by Stuart Hall, looking at the relationship between producer, text and audience which was covered in the lecture. The audience cares more for this sense of escapism, into something deeper than life, that their friends and family can all relate and converse about, the audience is almost atomised broken into different sections with different backgrounds yet all share the same commonality, this is how how soap operas are so powerful.

References:

Gillespie, Marie (2003) “Television, Ethnicity and Cultural Change” IN Will Brooker and Deborah Jermyn (eds.) The Audience Studies Reader. London: Routledge.

Androich. A (2006) Truth on TV?