• The Walt Disney Company is, of course, a multimillion dollar empire that includes theme parks, a television network, book publishing companies, retail stores, web portals, television production companies, and motion picture companies—in addition to a corporate icon named Mickey known to children worldwide.
• Disney has consistently prided itself on being a company dedicated to children and families.
• The provocative component of Disney has also prompted greater scrutiny of Disney films by researchers, who are concerned the content geared toward children is anything but “wholesome”. Scholars criticized Disney films regarding such social issues as violence, ethnicity, gender stereotypes, and even death. A lawsuit was actually filed in Arkansas over “subliminal” sexual content in three Disney films.
• Disney films are again the focus of analysis in this study of two specific public health problems: tobacco and alcohol use.
• The gross income of a Disney movie does not include the revenue collected from video sales and video rentals, two avenues that not only add dollars to Disney’s coffers, but also extend the reach of the films into children’s lives. In fact, Giroux went so far as to exert, “these films inspire at least as much cultural authority and legitimacy for teaching specific roles, values and ideals than more traditional sites of learning such as public schools, religious institutions and the family”

Review of the Literature

• Since before the era of Prohibition, alcohol has been a mainstay in American cinema, while the pairing of actors and tobacco continues to be a staple of character development, with some contemporary Hollywood’s brightest stars lighting up the silver screen.
• Many studies concerning media effects focus on adolescent usage of media. Klein et al. (1993) reported media portrayals of risky or unhealthy behaviours may promote or reinforce the appropriateness of such behaviors through influences on individual values.

Media and Tobacco Use

• Sargent et al.’s (2001) cross-sectional study of the effect of seeing tobacco use in films on trying smoking among adolescents found a strong, direct, independent association between higher exposure to tobacco use in films and smoking in adolescents.

Media and Alcohol Use

• A study by Dale (1988) reported in films released between 1929 and 1931, 66% showed drinking, with 75% of those films treating alcohol consumption as humorous. Interestingly, more heroes than villance were shown drinking.
• The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (2001) reported people who begin drinking before age 15 are four times more likely to develop alcoholism than those who begin at age 21.
• In Kulick and Rosenberg’s (2001) study, people who vewed positive portrayals of drinking, such as laughing, singing, dancing, and companionship, were more positive about drinking alcohol.
• In Bahk’s (1997) study of the impact of presence versus absence of negative consequences in dramatic portrayals of drining, he found the absence of negative consequences in dramatic alcohol portrayals may be seen as promoting more favourable attitudes regarding consumption. His findings indicate it could make a real difference whether people will view drinking as negative if the negative consequences of alcohol drinking are presented.

Alcohol and Tobacco in Film

• Studies of the incidence of both alcohol and tobacco usage in film are relatively recent.
• In Everett, Schnuth, and Tribble’s (1998) study of tobacco and alcohol use in top-grossing American films from 1985 to 1995, they found at least one pro-tobacco event in 98% of the films studied, and 62% of the films had no antitobacco events. Similary, they found that 96% of the films contained at least one pro-alcohol event and 63% had no anti-alcohol events. Everett et al. (1998) found it disturbing that pro-tobacco and pro-alcohol events were common in PG and PG-13 rated films. They explained such frequency of substance use in film without any antiuse messages promotes the belief that the use of both tobacco and alcohol is common, acceptable, bears little risk, and is expected and embraced.

Method

• Before conducting the content analysis of Disney films targeted to children, operational definitions were composed, a coding sheet was developed, coders were trained, and intercoder reliability was tested.

Results

• There were 381 incidents of both alcohol and tobacco exposure throughout the films; 106 incidents of tobacco exposure and 275 incidents of alcohol exposure within the 24 films. These incidents ranged from a brief glimpse of a keg of beer in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to Cruella De Vil chain-smoking cigarettes throughout 101 Dalmatians. Of the 24 films analyzed, only three (12.5%) contained no alcohol or tobacco: The Jungle Book (released in 1967), The Fox and the Hound (1981), and Mulan (1998). A total of 18 films (75%) contained at least one tobacco exposure and 18 (75%) contained at least one alcohol exposure.

Alcohol and Tobacco Products

• The most frequently pictured type of tobacco product was the pipe, which was shown 52 times (49%), followed by the cigar (43%), and the cigarette (8%). The most frequently pictured type of alcohol was beer (49%) followed by wine (29%), champagne (17%), and spirits (3%)
• It is interesting to note that Pinocchio showed the most cigar usage (30% of all cigar use), followed by Oliver and Company (24% of all cigar use)
• Interestingly, three products were shown fairly regularly throughout all 24 films: cigars, pipes, and wine.

Discussion

• A review of this study’s results shows the use of tobacco decreased in Disney films over time, while the use of alcohol increased. There is no way to determine the rationale for these trends, but it is interesting to note tobacco use decreased following the 1964 Surgeon General’s report showing a casual link between smoking and lung cancer, along with other detrimental health effects (Parascandola, 1997). This same decade saw those characters drinking beer and wine by the gallons.
• Today’s Disney seems to be sending a direct message to young viewers that smoking is not an action to engage in but drinking is a viable option.
• The only hopeful sign of Disney’s extensive portrayal of tobacco and alcohol use is that these substances are used overwhelmingly by supporting characters rather than the heroes and heroines the children are most likely to model.
• Given these characters are almost never rejected for using tobacco or alcohol products, children are repeatedly getting the message that use of these substances is acceptable.

Smoking and Drinking in Disney Cartoons is a post from: The Glaring Facts

• Historically, audiences had to be present. i.e. in a speech
• The printing press and radio allowed for messages to be consumed by many people without their physical presence
• During a play, audiences have an interactive relationship with performers. You can see their responses, i.e. their laughter or disgust.
• You have the option of auditing something, i.e. attending a performance.
• The size of the audience is generally controlled by the setting. E.g. you can only have as many people in a lecture room.
• How does the audience experience a text? We’re experiencing a lecture by typing notes on our laptops, writing by hand, or just listening.
• The relationship between the producer and the audience is imaginary. You don’t know what the audience is doing so it becomes necessary to know what they are doing.
• We concede the media as a way of connecting people who otherwise weren’t involved/paying attention to each other.
• It’s difficult to control what audiences do with the message and it’s even more difficult to control what message a mass audience receives.
• VCRs allowed consumers to watch what they wanted when they wanted via recording.
• Niche audiences (narrowcasting) are important. i.e. specialty channels for sports. Soap opera audiences are different than a nightly news audience—even if it’s the same viewer.
• 1960s-70s: media effects tradition—an idea that people are active and do things with media. The media doesn’t simply do things to people.
• Uses and gratifications: the idea that people use the media to gratify certain needs. They want to satisfy certain conditions. It isn’t the media that is powerful; but rather audiences are using the media for their own goals/needs. Thus, producers give people what they want. à Consumer sovereignty: the consumer is king. Consumers control the consumption. We make particular choices on our own à Looks at effects largely through a quantitative fashion. How many people watch it?
• Reception based research discusses not only audience power, but how audiences get pleasure from certain media. Why is it that people tune in to certain things. à Uses and gratifications suggests people pick and choose from what is available. Reception based research discusses how people formulate and construct meaning.

History of Audience Studies is a post from: The Glaring Facts

• Dominant ideology & decoding
• Polysemic responses to texts
• Hegemony as an open, fluid series of negotiations
• Texts & contexts

Culture

• Not simply the products made by particular artists
• [how the audience is located within specific cultural situations]
• [not just the culture of the media, but the culture of the audiences as well—and how the 2 come together]
• [it's not a debate between low and high culture; folk art/dance is presumed to come out of people's interests and history—whereas mass culture is produced for people but not by people]

Rather, culture (according to cultural studies) is…

• A process of negotiation between producer and consumer. All culture is a process of negotiation. It is a struggle over meaning
• [Discourse if formed by both producer and consumer, but each one is trying to gain more control of the process]
  • [culture is simply about the meaning of social experience]
  • [culture is more than class, more than race… all of these things are involved in constructing our social identity]
  • [cultural studies do more than just consume—they try to make sense of the things they are consuming—we're finding our own identity based upon the meanings and texts that are delivered to us]

Making sense of our social experience (& ourselves)

• “battling with meanings delivered to us by other classes, other groups, and struggling to make them our own”
  • [audiences are more than just consumers; they're trying to be producers as well]
  • [audiences take what is given to them and reassert meaning]

Therefore, ideology is not a static set of ideas

• Audiences are dynamic!
• [ideology is never just a set of ideas that are imposed upon the subordinate classes; rather, ideology is dynamic and audiences reproduce meanings

Culture is always ideological, but it is never imposed on us

• Through our decisions, we make decisions for how to express ourselves.
• [the way we see ourselves are relative to the things we consume. The texts we consume have meanings we want to reproduce]
• [e.g. people dressing up and going to a star trek convention are reproducing on their own—not through force]

Ideological state apparatus

• Ideology surrounds us! Ideological messages and meanings of the dominant class are produced and reproduced all around us—i.e. in the institutions we visit on a daily basis. E.g. church, school
  • [we are taught certain ways to live and behave at a certain age—they are reinforced through the agents of socialization: friends, family, work, school, etc. It's not just the media that tells us acceptable forms of behaviour, but through multiple institutions.]
    • [we get our ideologies from all these institutions and that is why they are called Ideological state apparatus's': because they reproduce ideologies]

Remember 2 weeks ago…

• Subject vs. object
  • We are not just subjected to ideology—we’re not products of our nature, we’re products of our nature
  • We’re not just products, we’re subjects of ideology—we’re always negotiating our place within these institutions. e.g. you can resist dominant ideologies
  • We subject ourselves to it…we willingly subject ourselves to all of these meanings because it’s easier not to question everything in our daily lives.
    • So by being subject to these ideological state apparatus’s, we form ourselves as subjects and make sense of the world around us

Interpellation

• The aforementioned is a process of interpellation. We’re being introduced to meanings. Likewise, the producer creates something that you would find appealing and want to be a part of
• Interpellation is when we construct a social position for someone. It’s a particular kind of activity that constructs social positions for us
  • E.g. when you’re waving our hand on the sidewalk, that action means you’re calling for a cab
  • Media construct social positions for people. They create opportunities for people to try and get you to recognize yourself as a certain type of audience.

We need to know about HEGEMONY—in order to understand dominant hegemonic readings

• Hegemony is a process of winning power by consent, not by force
• [We consent to certain types of order/rule]
• [we consent to consuming coca-cola. Culture is a process of negotiation and producers are struggling to get you to consume their point of view.
• [Dominant readings occur when we get pleasure of seeing ourselves as that type of person. We look at how a media product fashions our identity. We don't get paid to promote a product; rather we prefer to see ourselves in a certain way. We feel good to express ourselves in that way]

Dominant-preferred meanings

• Are encoded at an unconscious level. We think it’s normal for men to be shooting guns in action films. These types of things are taken for granted and encoded at a unconscious level. They are also decoded at an unconscious level

So, for dominant & negotiated readings…

• Audiences ideologically cooperate with the source material.
• At the dominant level we don’t question anything; at the negotiated level we don’t question part of it.
• We don’t want the hassle of engaging in a struggle all the time

So, decoding = matching our social experiences with the ideology of the text

• Formed by intertext relationships too
• E.g. Mr. T (the ‘I pity the fool’ guy) says
• For a text to be popular, it must resonate with multiple audiences; it must allow for a series of different negotiated readings

Heteroglossia (multiple access)

• Means being able to speak with multiple voices
  • Similar to polysemic
  • [Polysemic means there can be multiple meanings for the same audience]
  • [Heterolglossia means that different audiences can read different things into the media product]
    • [E.g. audiences can think there are gay/lesbian relationships in the show Grey's Anatomy]

Bridge to next week

• Meaning is a constant sight of struggle. Not just over texts, but also a struggle for control.
• This week we talked about perception, next week we’ll talk about how producers control that perception

Key line from Fiske:

• Reading a TV text is that moment when the discourse of the reader meet the discourses of the text
  • When we make sense of our social experiences, we’re also making sense of ourselves.
• [Fiske says that the way in which we consume has a huge impact from what we take from it. If someone was watching TV at home they would experience something different than from watching at a bar.]

Meanings and politics evaluated—not in terms of content—but how audiences make sense of them in their SOCIAL CONTEXTS

• Some texts that counter an ideology will offend those who agree with that ideology
• [if your text has a meaning that is disruptive, it WILL offend others—e.g. Madonna entered the stage of a concert on a cross—offensive to Catholicism. Essentially, Madonna would have no meaning until the audience comes and negotiates that meaning

Culture is the process of making meanings in which people actively participate

• So, how is TV (media) used by audiences? How do we participate with it?
• Cultural studies states that audiences have a rule to play.

Fiske says the audience engages with 3 different levels of “textuality”

• The primary text
  • The text produced by the cultural industry. E.g. the song, the tv show, the movie…
• The sublevel of texts
  • Different aspects of the cultural industry that relate to the primary text. E.g. a theme song of a show, a comic book of the show
  • These are all the things that include publicity/promotion for the primary text
• The level of textuality that audiences produce themselves
  • Things audience produce for themselves. Audiences often talk about these shows

The social circulation of meanings always entails struggle & contestation

As Morley reinforces: no-one is a “free-floating” social agent. We don’t just float in a world of random social meanings and social messages.

• We all exist in some social formations.

We have to pay attention to the “supertext”

• A text is never a discrete thing.
• Remember intra-text meanings? And intertext meanings too…
  • The supertext says (if you’re looking at a TV show), that you cant just look at the characters themselves. The supertext alerts us that it is a show that is also communicating to us through commercials and advertisements.
  • Supertext views these industrially. You’re not just watching a tv show, you’re being exposed to many things. Likewise, what else is on that television channel? Are you being drawn into other shows? Hence, you have to study everything about itàcontext is a complex thing.

“readers” don’t have “rights,” per se

It is necessary to consider the context of viewing as much as the object of viewing

• So, consider their social architecture
• E.g. you can watch at home, movies, bar… But it’s more than just the place. You might behave one way at home and another way in the bar.
• E.g. you can watch a tv show and discuss it while watching, but if you do that at the movie theatre you’ll probably get told to shut up
• Hence, even if it’s the exact same text, there are different experiences depending on where you watch it. It’s the same text (i.e. remains static), but the social context changes it dramatically

Key issues for Morley:

• What is the status of the actual text (i.e. primary, sublevel, third…)
• The relation of text and context depending on where it is viewed
• The need to look at an expanded “supertext”: if I watch a show with commercials and another person doesn’t, Morley says we’ll each get different experiences from it
• The impossibility of “medium specific” viewing

Politics of the living room

• Who has the power over the remote control in your household? Who determines what is going to be watched and how it will be watched?
• This makes a key difference

To review:

• Meanings of media can’t be determined by textual analysis
• Nor can they be defined by just analysis of secondary texts or inter-texts
• Nor can we just focus on audience interpretations

Rather, it all needs to be combined:

• We have to look at how audiences interpret texts,
• By situating audiences within specific social circumstances,
• By recognizing that the “text” is part of a larger series of related discourses,
• By acknowledging that the text was designed by someone, for a specific purpose
• And that audiences are always struggling to balance their own lives with the message in the texts they consume

Cultural Studies and the Audience is a post from: The Glaring Facts

• Mass audiences vs. niche audiences:
  • link between these 2
  • although we speak of smaller markets, the mass audience hasn’t disappeared (e.g. superbowl)
• (fragmentation of the audience?)
  • We don’t have fragmentation that is final and absolute. There are smaller markets, but still larger markets (see above)
• Passivity vs. activity
  • Uses and gratifications discusses media audience as individualistic. We won’t be talking about that. Instead, we’ll be talking about how audiences are active.
• Messages vs meanings
  • We don’t just take in messages; we also apply meanings and make sense of them
• Today’s lecture: audience reception
  • Audiences as consumers vs audiences as citizens
  • Audiences as object vs subject
  • Mass effects vs interpretation
  • Audience reception: meaning; genre; context

Review: fragmentation

• Different logos:
  • Started with ABC World of Sports, then ABC split to ESPN, ESPN Classics, and NFL Network for different niches

Magic bullet theory

• There’s one answer for everything – we won’t follow this

Hypodermic needle

• Everyone is getting the same message and getting it directly
• Inglis calls this S–>R model, “an idiotically simple idea”
• S: Stimulus—a message that gets sent to consumers who respond
• R: Response—audiences simply receive messages the way they are sent. There is no complication. Audiences are empty vessels that are simply filled with messages
  • The problem is that this model casts society as consumers. Essentially, audiences are meant to be controlled—typically by sending messages that they like to receive.
  • You give them what they want and audiences want to be entertained. So audiences aren’t viewed as citizens who are capable of individual thinking; rather it says that mass media satisfies base desires. There HAS to be something more than this as this model is far too simplistic.
  • It thinks of audiences in terms of effects. Do audiences respond the way we expect them to? Not really. How do we determine if their responses are the appropriate response?

The quest to see how people are ‘affected’ lead to the study of how people are effected

• People are affected, but we search for media effects. Media affects is the search for something (e.g. survey results) that can quantify how people can be effected.
• It’s the difference between viewing the audience as an object vs. audience as subject.
  • An object is acted upon, and a subject acts.
  • A subject is a thinking, acting agent. Hence, we will look at audiences as subjects. How do they act, how do they do things with the media; how do they make sense of it?

For Inglis, audiences are practical subjects making active use of the cultural expressions they find. (vs. being a coach potato, a mindless consumer: i.e. audience as an object).

• Audiences are meaning making entities.
• Cultural expressions: how people connect media to real life experiences.

Audiences in real life are “messy”—not like studying people in a controlled environment

• Problems with the Hawthrone Effect: when people are paid attention to, their productivity increases.
• Audiences tend to be inattentive: people don’t pay attention to every stimulus. However, if they are told of the stimulus, it will become more apparent. That’s what happened with the Hawthrone effect. They know they were being studied so they increased their productivity because that is what they were expected to do. When audiences know they are being studied, they tend to act differently.
• This is why Inglis called the S–>R model useless because it doesn’t take into account everything else.
  • Different media have different effects on us; the same media can have different effects
  • E.g. is television making children anorexic (distorted views of women) or making them obese (watching instead of playing)?
  • People shouldn’t be treated as things. We don’t automatically respond to stimuli. The object does not think about how it is supposed to respond to the stimulus (e..g a thermometer raises with it’s how and decreases when it’s cold); by contrast, people DO think. Thus, people aren’t just objects—they have an ability to think and act and thus, should be treated as subjects.
  • The same response likely won’t be repeated again by people. Water always boils at a certain temperature; but human beings are self reflexive.
• Audiences are not something to be measured at the end of a one-way process. Water stops boiling when removed from heat, but people, after watching a show, continue to think about it. Thus, media audiences are no involved in a one-way relationship. Audiences exist in a 2-way or multi-lane highway. This is what effects tends to lose out on. To understand if TV makes you thin or obese, you have to look at the self reflexive component. Humans can think about how they want to respond to it—they can think about how good a show is compared to last weeks show; determine if they want to be a fan; etc.
• Essentially, media aren’t just used to satisfy individual needs and goals (uses and gratifications model), but rather used to connect people to their wider culture around them.
  • If we’re bored we tune into material that can excite us; if lonely, we tune into things to make us happy

We should attend to modes of interpretation (Inglis)

• Which is to say, how messages and audiences fit together (and how audiences make messages fit in with their lives and experiences
  • Effects isolate individuals from the world around them.
  • Affects looks at your situation and how you interpret it to the world around you.
    • We need to pay attention to the process: that audiences and messages fit together.
    • We should look at how it makes audiences feel, why they interpret certain things as being good and enjoyable compared to others. What is the meaning of abstract art? How do you interpret what you see? à your interpretation of an abstract art piece will likely be different than another.

The direction we’re headed in next week (Inglis mentions Hall’s model)

• Interpretation usefully understood as decoding
• Messages are encoded for us and it’s up to us to decode them

We have to discover the balance between manipulation and expression

• Inglis talks about the idea of what we pay attention to? We have to pay attention to the balance of manipulation from one side and expression on the other.
• Manipulation: is someone controlling your every move? E.g. corporate interests, programming that wants us to act in a certain way
• Expression: people aren’t confined to act a certain way
• Audiences that are completely passive are manipulated; audiences that are complete active are expressive. Inglis says both are inaccurate. We can’t always express ourselves the way we want to.
• Example from Hockey All Star game. Vote Rory Fitzpatrick campaign: audiences voted in for essentially a ‘nobody’ rather than voting for who the NHL wanted to be at the game.

John Corner – reception & media audiences

• Reception can be broken down to examine the following questions
  • WHAT meanings audiences make of what they see, hear and read
  • WHY these meanings rather than others are produced by specific audiences from the range of interpretive possibilities
    • In a world where you can be exposed to so many things, why do you choose to be exposed to one thing and not another?
  • HOW these activities of meaning-making might relate to ideas about the power of media and their ability to shape public knowledge, sentiment and values
    • How media might shape public knowledge: John Corner distinguishes popular knowledge from popular culture. We traditionally view audiences in terms of popular culture, but why not view them in terms of public knowledge.
      • We always talk about negative effects, but what about good effects?
• Reception: three key things to pay attention to regarding audiences’ reception and interpretation of messages: 1) meaning, 2) genre, 3) context
• Meaning
  • How do we make sense of meaning?
  • Rather than looking for objective results, reception looks for subjective meanings
    • We’re not looking at objective facts like scientific studies; audience examination is a process of looking for subjective meanings—your meanings may be different than mines.
  • Audiences confront media as “texts”—not as discrete products or “works”
    • Meaning is not limited by authorial intent!
    • Think about texts vs work. Television and films are texts to be read by audiences. We read meanings into things.
    • As an author in media culture, you don’t make meanings alone. The producer cannot control the meanings. Meanings are rather created by producers of text in conjunction with their readers (e.g. the Flick Off campaign in Toronto)
    • The meaning of something is not fixed until audiences construct the meaning of texts. Authors create a message, but meanings aren’t limited to authorial intent. Audiences are involved in making meanings. Meaning is open to be received or rejected by audiences.
  • 3 different types of meaning:
    • Intra-textual (requiring analysis of textual structures): the text is not a fixed thing. There are different elements to messages. It looks at the relationship between the elements that make up the meaning of that particular text. What are the component parts of a message—how is it made?
      • Paying attention to the component parts of the text
      • What story is being told; who are the characters, what style is it.
      • Things that come out of the actual text itself.
      • Star Wars: the story of the rebels vs the empire; Luke Skywalker vs whoever. We understand the text based on what is presented to us.
    • Inter-textual (requiring analysis, among other things, of genres and relations between them): the relationship between one text to others. We’ve all been exposed to multiple messages, not because of what they say, but because of associations we have with them. Thus, sometimes we link one text with others.
      • Meaning is constructed by linking the text to others
      • Situating a “text’s meaning” in a wider field of meanings
      • Star Wars is not just the film. There are related films, books, video games, Lego and other toys, etc.
        • The intra-textual element leads us to make connections to other texts.
        • How do we make sense of Star Wars by associating it with other texts? How are meanings constructed by placing them in other texts? E.g. Family Guy episode on Star Wars
      • Inter-textual meanings don’t have to directly reference the original text. We can situate The Matrix with God, with other science fiction films, etc.
    • Interpretive (requiring research into the situation practice of ‘receptive’ understanding): how the situation in which you find yourself, the reality of where you are and what you’re thinking at that particular time
      • How do audiences situate the text into their own practices & understandings?
      • There are many ways people can interpret a text.
      • NOTE: obviously, interpretation can be inter-textual too.
  • 3 different levels of meaning:
    • Primary signification: what you recognize immediately when you experience a message; the literal meaning of the thing itself. Essentially, what you see.
    • Secondary signification: suggesting that there are secondary levels to this meaning. When you have an association with something, that’s secondary signification. When you see something and it makes you think of implications and associations of that text, it goes beyond the primary level. E.g. the White House at the primary level is that it’s a big white house; secondary is that the White House is the home of the president and if you don’t like the president, you think of something else.
    • Evaluation: after seeing it and thinking of secondary associations, you often evaluate it in terms of whether it’s good or whether it’s bad.
      • How audiences can attach a special significance to something.
  • Media is not a linear thing. We don’t go from primary to secondary to evaluation. Part of the reason for this is because media is inter-textual. We can associate something with multiple and various texts. We go through all these things all the time.
    • The reason for this is that meaning is polysemic: One word can have multiple meanings.
  • Despite a general textual ‘openness’—we cannot ignore that there is a considerable degree of DETERMINANCY possessed by texts
    • Media producers would like to determine what you think about their products.
    • We have to think of media audiences as the coming together of interpretive action and textual signification
      • Audiences act, think and interpret. Producers have, at their disposal, signification. Producers want to signify certain things. Corner talks about texts and what they want to signify. Inglis talked about manipulation/expression; Corner discusses this in interpretation/signification
      • Metaphor: we make structures/buildings and then we live in them. So our freedom is confined with what we built. We can make meanings but we can only respond to what is given to us.
• Genre: social situation—this lecture room is a genre (stadium seating, non-moving chairs)
  • Disco vs. Folk? Both are types of music. Recognizing that a song is in a certain genre leads you to expect certain things.
  • Why do you find one more meaningful than the other?
    • Answer could be pleasure: one allows you to have a certain experience.
  • Genre is one way of organizing meanings.
• Context—our experiences are never context free. We are always in a ‘con-text’.
  • For audiences to make sense of something—to make it meaningful, it has to be socially situated. It has to be placed in a particular context
  • A context is a situation that can be described by discussing other texts. It is the relationship between one text and another. We exist within a national context, in a social context. Do you drink to get drunk? Do you drink for other purposes?
  • There are 2 types of context:
    • Social relations of viewing: we pay less attention to what is viewed and more to how it’s viewed and where it’s viewed
      • Objective variables: who are you? What is the context in which you exist? Are you male/female? How old are you? What class are you in?
      • Subjective factors: your knowledge of a certain genre can change; some audiences are experts, others are neophytes;
    • Space time settings: what we traditionally associate with context. We are in the lecture hall at the moment—our physical context.
      • Where are you at a particular time, at a particular place? Basically, it is the location. You may watch a TV show at home, at a friend’s house; you may watch a hockey game on TV at home, in a bar, or at the actual stadium. The location will change the nature of the experience.

Corner says you need to pay attention to Meaning, Genre, and Context in order to make sense of someone’s experience

Review:

• The audience can certainly interpret media content
• But the audience’s power is not so large and wide-ranging that it trumps the power of the media: you have the power to interpret but the media has the power to package certain things for delivery—you can accept/reject, but you do so as a receiver
• Similarly, audiences don’t have any instinctive ability to resist most of what they see or hear in the media
• There are questions of communicative form; and then there are questions of interpretive activity
  • To fully understand audiences, we should look at both. We can’t just look at the context, we need to look at the dynamic relationship between the 2.

Core Concepts Regarding Audiences is a post from: The Glaring Facts

• Interpretation vs effects
  • Not an either/or.
  • We’re all affected by meaning. It’s just difficult to find them.
  • The way in which we find these effects is by talking to people who are making these meanings
• The role of meaning-making

So how do we interpret meanings?

• Meanings are received and made sense of via CODES
• Meanings are not force fed to us; but there are a series of predetermined (sometimes dominant meanings) that we have as choices. E.g. we make out buildings and then our buildings make us (from last class)
• There is a certain amount of determinacy. Meanings are partially determined for you.
• Anything can be a sign of something else. E.g. a red light means stop.
• There’s no way of us making sense of what the other people do without CODES
• Codes are our way of translating the material that is out there.
• Meanings are translated into our own experiences.
• Nearly all of reality is encoded by someone. When humans are making sense of things they are encoding reality, and subsequently we decode them.

Remember last week? (one-way & linear models of communication = bad)

• Mathematical models of communication, such as Shannon and Weaver’s model—i.e. sending info, that info being encoded via a channel medium and being sent to the receiver—is far too simple. It merely states encoding and doesn’t acknowledge the complex decoding process. Instead, it assumes the audience will simply take in messages as they were intended
  • There’s no way of knowing how audiences make sense of them

Hall’s model:

• Frameworks of knowledge à encoding à discourse à decoding à frameworks of knowledge

1. Frameworks of knowledge/relations of production/technical infrastructure
2. Encoding meaning structures
3. TV program as meaningful discourse, i.e. how is meaning received rather than just information
4. Decoding meaning structures
5. Frameworks of knowledge/relations of production/technical infrastructure

• There are frameworks of knowledge at encoding and decoding levels
• Audiences encode meanings as they are decoding their messages
• Audiences have to decode meanings meaningfully in order to encode
• The process of encoding is a process of production (because you are creating something)
• Reception is also a moment of production—because we create meanings & understandings
  • E.g. evaluating TV shows as good vs bad is a process of creating meaning
  • When you are creating a meaning, you are working with something already sent to you.

Great quote (Hall): if no ‘meaning’ is taken, there can be no ‘consumption’. If the meaning is not articulated in practice, it has no effect

• There is no effect if there is no reproduction of the encoded meaning

There is no intelligible discourse without the operation of a code (Hall)

• E.g. “dominant ideology”
• Dominant ideology: a movement that seeks to make its idea widely shared (i.e. dominant)
• Suggests that there is a certain sense of thinking about certain things that shape us to view it in a certain way
• Certain codes are so widely distributed in a specific language community or culture, and are learned at so early an age that they appear to not to be constructed (i.e. something natural, a way that the world works)—Hall says these things are constructed. They appear to be natural and not social constructions, but in essence there are certain groups in society that can make their meanings appear to be natural

So, some meanings appear to be “natural” & “universal”

• By which we mean generalized as common sense within some culture or social group
• There will be certain assumptions that will guide the way you are expected to think.
• If there are certain assumptions, we can think of that as being a dominant ideology
• Dominant ideologies are those which already seem generalized and natural
• Hall asks how does the media assist in constructing and disseminating this dominant ideology
  • Example of a dominant ideology: the theory of evolution; another is heterosexuality—the dominant ideology (straight couples & the church) reacts when their ideology is challenged (via same-sex couples)
• The ways in which we perceive things can sometimes be done almost as ‘autopilot‘ à our perceptions of the world are based on our acceptance. We don’t consciously decode everything.
• Media would love to operate in the sense that the only way of audiences seeing their product was the way they wanted you toà but it doesn’t actually work this way
• Ideologies are always encoded in texts; encoding carries the meaning to be given—the meaning that you want our audience to receive
• Decoding is the meaning that you hope is actually taken out of it—meanings that you hope are received
• The power of the producer to encode meanings is greater than the power of the audience to decode
  • Audiences only have the power to decode what they are given whereas encoders are in the position of giving it to you

The media do not “transcribe” reality

• Remember last week?
  Primary & secondary signification…= Denotation & Connotation
• Primary signification is denotation – it is a literal thing. E.g. a picture of the white house depicts the white house
• Connotation is secondary signification – it is the meanings that we connote to it (white house=president=I don’t like the president)
• There’s no such thing as universal meaning. Even when you’re encoding certain things, there’s always going to be associated meanings with it. There’s no pure meaning to it.
• When you see a picture of a pipe: one person says “it’s a pipe“; the next person says “it’s a picture of a pipe”
  • When someone sees the pipe, they think of their grandfather who always used to smoke a pipe, as well recalling the smell of the pipe. No one else would share this with you
  • Essentially, there are few instances where signs express only their literal meanings
  • All messages have different messages for different audiences
• At the denotative level, signs are generally “fixed”
• But the audiences can actively transform the meanings of things at the connotation level. Audiences are always making sense of things at this level. Ultimately, meanings aren’t always determined at the level of production, audiences can always attribute different meanings

But there are limits to polysemy

• All societies try to encode their preferred ways of seeing things. They classify the world the way they see it. E.g. Slavery is bad, sexism is bad, racism is bad…these are expressions of the dominant cultural order in society.
• There is polysemy, there is the production of multiple meanings, but there are still dominant ideologies that exist.

The goal of (most) communicators is “transparent communication”

• Most communicators want the meanings they produce to be the meanings you receive

Meaning is produced by endless, symbolic exchanges within a dominant code (Baudrillard, 1988)

• We produce meanings in conversation with everything that has been produced by others
• There’s no such thing as misunderstanding. Right or wrong interpretations are only right or wrong from the point of the producer. When the producer acknowledges that people don’t get the message they wanted audiences to receive, they don’t have transparent communication. Thus, there are no successful/unsuccessful messages. People decode messages according to their points of view.

Hall’s 3 “reading positions“: 3 decoding options the reader’s of texts have. This tells us why we have dominant ideology and polysemy at the same time.

• Dominant hegemonic: this position is when you reproduce the dominant ideology. Because humans think for themselves often, the negotiated position is the most common position for audiences
• Negotiated: a mixture of adaptive and oppositional elements. Neither mindless automations nor completely autonomous. i.e. in the dominant receiving position we just take in messages, in negotiated we don’t accept every single thing.
  • E.g. 24 is a good show, but there are certain things that annoy me. I don’t reject the show, I accept the way in which reality is encoded for me. But there still exists things I don’t agree with.
• Oppositional: texts are decoded in a “globally contrary” fashion. The oppositional position states that we can resist messages from the text.
  • States that we can understand the message (i.e. decode it properly) but you don’t accept the message (i.e. you decode it in a different fashion)

Hillary Clinton is a great case study of different decodings

• The media constructs her image, and these images are decoded by audiences
• Brown (an author) notes that “meaning construction does not stop with the moment of the consumption of text“à we consume messages of Hillary and then we respond to them in different ways
  • No one agrees on what Hillary stands for; there is a divide between the people who love her (dominant) and people who hate her (oppositional)

Hillary Clinton disrupts the “preferred reading” of “women“?

• Women are seen in public life as ‘fashion models’—i.e. in fashion magazines. This is the dominant code.
• Preferred reading is the dominant hegemonic position.
• She also disrupts the preferred reading of politician—she’s a women and a feminist.

To review:

• Meaning extends beyond the moment of the production and the moment of consumption of texts…
• Audiences can take one of 3 reading positions
  • Producers want transparent communication, but audiences tend to use negotiated reading
  • Oppositional readings take a lot of work. We have to be highly motivated to challenge and reject meanings, so oftentimes we just negotiate meanings
• By admitting audiences have a capability to respond differently, it means that they can exert some control over the communication process. Not everyone who sees Michael Moore documentaries will agree with them.
• Everything is open for interpretation—there are no “wrong” interpretations (but some are better than others)
• Hegemony is never complete—”dominant” understandings can never be guaranteed.
  • Hegemony is always ‘leaky’. Dominant ideology doesn’t always work.
  • Resistance can also never be guaranteed. Resistance also isn’t futile, but it always occurs in a world of asymmetrical power relations. The audience can resist against dominant meanings, but there is always a dominant ideology being pushed down on you.
  • Attempts to manipulate people to a certain meaning are always going to extend beyond original meanings. Producers can never control how audiences interpret.

Encoding-Decoding Model is a post from: The Glaring Facts

Media are actively engaged in creating tastes and producing demand.

• Media have to cultivate a need for products—you likely won’t see an ad for Sony Televisions during a program for Global Warming. You will, however, during a sports game with emphasis on HD viewing. Also think of the types of trailers you see when you go and watch a film on theatres or on DVD.
• Mass media and mass consumption go hand and hand.
• Media not only produce programs, but attract audiences as commodities to sell to advertisers (says Political Economist Dallas Smythe).—McAllister (from the reading) is influenced by this approach. The idea that media generates a pro-capitalist atmosphere.

Advertising and the ‘audience commodity’

• Capitalism depends on generating demand. People need to buy your product!
• Advertising creates ‘problems’ which can be solved by consumption of products (E.g. a problem for us is global warming and the hole in the o-zone layer. So how do we solve that problem? Simple, go out and by sunscreen to prevent harmful exposure to the sun; go out and buy energy efficient air conditioners, florescent lighting, and other products that are ‘environmentally friendly.’ basically, things we can solve buy shopping)
• Audiences work for advertisers in spare time learning about shopping for products (E.g. I would do my own research for the best pimple removers to buy something for my sister; research for the best laptop. Basically, I spend a lot of time learning about products and why I need them).
• Commercial audience research sells the audience commodity to advertisers (We voluntarily educate ourselves to consumer—e.g. cooking shows).

High initial production cost, low reproduction cost

• (side note) People aged 13-24 spend on average 48 hours a week consuming media. This number was the same in 1981 and in 2001. The reason for that is because with the internet, you often use it and watch TV at the same time.
• (side note) Proprietary data: (Neilson) ratings for television consumption collect first hand and sold to media companies.
• Media products are talent goods, experience goods, and information goods.
• You can’t assume consumers will know about your product (talent), need to take risks (experience) and need to inform buyers (information)
• Production cost to create Titanic was $200 million. Once the film goes into the cinema, it gets distributed to consumers; later it gets distributed by DVD (small costs), etc.
• High cost of production & high risk
• Ease of digital reproduction & distribution (YouTube, etc)
• “Scale economies in media production are determined by massive consumption, not by massive production” (Angel Arese Reca, 2006). The more we consume of that particular product, the better economies of scale are.

Semi-public goods or ‘joint consumption’

• (side note) health care is a public good because we all need it. Defence/security is another public good because we all need it. Education is a public good, everyone needs it and everyone gets it.
• Media products, on the other hand, are not entirely public goods. There is a private aspect to them.
• Media as a public good—widely available, shared access, social goals
• Print, radio and TV (ad supported programming) are ‘free’ or low cost to consumers.
• Consumer media products (music, film) can be easily shared & redistributed (Can lend to a friend, can download from the net, etc…)
• We think of media products as shared goods, because they are supported by advertisers, available in multiple forms and channels. They’re also widely available and easily accessible.

Audience maximization, overcoming risks to reach markets

• Media need to be managed so that it reaches as wide an audience as possible
• Rise of marketing, promotion, and branding (McAllister) helps to overcome spatial separation (E.g. huge promotional budgets).
• Competition in teen magazine market lead to changes in format, content and quality of product or ‘tabloidization’ (Nice article)
• Strategies: repertoires, formats, genres and star talent, popular or critical quality, marketing and branding –> this are things to focus on for media products on the media log assignment.

Repertoires: a list arranging different products; a collection or catalogue of different things—the company producing the product and what else they have to sell

• Harry Potter films—they offer more than just one, but 4 different movies. Harry Potter films together have now earned 4.47 billion.
• Warner Brothers have had many successes, but have also released some horrible films.
• The accumulation of more than one type of product, in the event that some are unsuccessful, unprofitable ventures. WB has many films a year in case some of the films suck; they still have others to rely on in boosting their revenue.

Formats

• Genre. In newsprint a paper can be quality (Globe and Mail) or tabloid or filth (Toronto Sun). With television, there are many specialty channels now—Cooking Channel, Golf Channel (Film genres would include Horror, Sci-Fi. Etc).

Star talent

• Cinema and television rely on bankable stars to bring audiences to their products (Michael Moore was once unknown, now he’s a sure sale).
• Some stars choose bid budget pictures because they are assured of high promotion (E.g. in Harry Potter, strategic combination of unknown child actors and ‘star power’).
• Adults get something from the stars, the kids just come because it’s Harry Potter

Quality

Three standards of quality that are applied simultaneously:

Objective quality defined by media produces and professionals based on quantitative audience measure

• Grading, how often music gets played in the media, number of sales
• Ratings, box office revenue, chart position of a song, measuring demographic, etc

Subjective quality, both audience interest and critical tastes

• What others think of it—reviews, fan sites—do some research on audience interest. Check out the ratings for it, go to tv.com and look at audience ratings and number of ratings. Evidently, the more people submitting their votes, the more people care enough to voice their opinion online.
• Audience might just buy it randomly or for obscure reasons. Hard to tell exactly what subjective qualities are. Could be something that was read in a journal or review

Social and cultural qualities to the product, ability to meet the public goals

• What are the public goals of the media product? Creating people’s awareness about social issues, ethnicity and gender and race issues.
• Are they trash? Like teen magazines?

Advertising and the Audience is a post from: The Glaring Facts

Introduction:

• By retail credit I mean both the idea of acquiring goods on the promise to pay and the conventions used in these transactions, including credit reporting.
• Although credit reporting arrived well after quantification had been established in many spheres of human activity, it marks the historical moment when individuals were quantified as consumers, an identity they exercised daily
• Credit appeared to submit traditional virtues such as character, reputation and trustworthiness to quantification and, hence, authentication. In the process it threw into doubt previous knowledges about social identity, and also diminished the prerogative of the gentry in certain economic contexts; ‘character’ could be had by anyone who maintained a good credit record.
• Second, credit reporting institutionalized a deeply embedded system for monitoring the economic behaviour of the new middle class by the business elite. The implications of this surveillance grated against the democratic vision of the decent man.
• The paradoxical forces of retail credit were picked up and amplified by the popular literature of the period. Thus mass circulation magazines offered stories about how retail credit would freee individuals to pursue material comforts and also of how credit reporting could be used to identify and detain societal misfits and troublemakers
• Popular media framed the issue of credit by drawing upon existing discourses about ethos and trust. By using familiar rhetorics to explain credit’s social effects, mass magazines generally assured readers that credit information would not restructure relationships or uncover new truths, but that it would reinforce existing relationships and certify established truths using more efficient, ‘modern’ techniques.
• Headlines declared that credit ‘worked’ because the vast majority of Americans were as honest as the day was long. These reassurances helped consumers overcome their reluctance, rooted in strong norms of privacy and propriety, to reveal themselves to strangers. Surveillance cannot harm you if you have nothing to hide. Rather, surveillnce is beneficial because it disciplines the deviant others.

Credit and Commerce

• Retail credit began to spread in the last quarter of the 19^th century but did not become a significant part of the US economy until the early 20^th century.

The Spread of Credit Reporting

• With better information, some credit failures might be avoided

Credit and Character

• A rhetoric of ethos played a critical role in making the idea of retail credit acceptable to a culture that for centuries had resisted the notion of debt as inconvenient and possibly immortal.
• The view that credit was the path to social ruin maintained currency well into the 20^th century.
• The average individual could not control his/her desired under the spell of the new consumerism.
• Most people who receive loans use them to alleviate the short-term ‘embarrassment’ or ‘inconvenience’ of their debts, but are incapable of using credit to improve their long-term prospects.
• Credit verified a man’s ability to eep his promises and served as a public sign of rectitude.
• Retail credit seemed to bring new groups of people, among them clers and mechanics’ wives, into contact with a vast array of consumer goods and the possibilities of ‘lifestyle’.
• Prominent among the social groups who seemed liberated by retail credit were women. Credit appeared to release wives from the fiscal authority of their husbands. But women were traditionally considered individuals of weak character, and therefore likely to be poor credit risks.

Credit and Trust

• Mass media stories about credit reporting often stressed the speed, reach, and efficiency with which credit information could be exchanged among stores; the system was unbeatable.
• By paying this price in humilation and hard work, the young man proved his character and earned the right to return to the society of decent, honest Americans. Thus by depicting individuals who did have something to fear from the credit authorities as either criminals or fols, popular discourse helped consumers to rationalized continual monitoring of their behaviour.

Conclusion

• The discourse about retail credit suggets how popular culture tried to come to terms with the transition toward using beureaucratically processed information in everyday transactions.
• Credit not only set the stage for broadcasting, modern advertising and marketing, but it was a highly salient event. It was, in fact,, noticed and commented upon as an imitation of a more general transition to a society organized around information.
• Popular discourse did much to apologize for the evolving credit economy. It converted credit from a source of shame to a source of pride.
• It suggested that surveillance of retail credit transactions was necessary, proper and non-threatening. In many cases, it assumed that credit information would reinforce, rather than undermine, inherited assumptions about class and gender.

Retail Credit and Mass Media is a post from: The Glaring Facts

Corporate synergy, product placement, branding and cross promotion have found increased emphasis

From Flick to Flack is a post from: The Glaring Facts

Introduction

• The representation of minorities in advertising has long been of interest to communication scholars, an interest rooted in concerns that minority under-representation might contribute to perceptions that these ethnic groups do not matter much—as consumers and as members of society.
• The question of whether minority models might be employed more often in ads that target minority consumers has not been addressed in empirical research.
• We assume that ads in media popular with minorities convey a different picture than the mainstream media.
• Advertising models should consider model ethnicity, ethnicity of the targeted consumers and situational or biographical reasons for awareness of it, and product appeal involving ethnic cues. The literature also examines how corporate advertising spending should be channeled to reach ethnic minorities effectively.
• The portrayal of ethnic minority models in magazines popular with minorities clearly indicates that advertisers aim to reach and appeal to ethnic minority consumers.

Theoretical Framework

• According to theory and empirical evidence, advertising model ethnicity has an impact on recipient’s views and behaviours. These effects can be interpreted in various theoretical frameworks, including social-cognitive theory and the cultivation hypothesis.
• Social-cognitive theory does not explain why ethnicity might be especially relevant to the individual when it comes to selective attention based on similarly. It is helpful to draw on distinctiveness theory.

Social-Cognitive Theory:

• Social-cognitive theory suggests that individuals learn behaviours through observational learning and vicarious experience.
• Models of behavior can be observed in the immediate social environment, but in modern societies, a vast amount of information about values and behaviours is obtained from the symbolic mass media environment. Advertising messages form a large part of media content, portray actions in repetitive manner, and show rewards for thee actions.
• These aspects should, according to social-cognitive theory, encourage onlookers to adopt behaviours seen in advertisements. But obviously not all actions observed in advertising appear equally relevant to the audience. Selective attention is believed to moderate such impacts, as onlookers tend to focus more on portrayed models that they perceive as being similar to themselves because of shared characteristics such as gender and race.

Cultivation Hypothesis:

• The cultivation approach, on the other hand, describes broad impacts ofmedia use on recipients’ conceptions of social reality.
• It suggests that media users experience long-term, extensive, and “relatively nonselective” exposure to media content with consistent features, which, in turn, is said to mold world views. Cultivation researchers have often compared media representations with real-life occurrences and found many disparities. These may also affect individual concepts of the self. If one’s social group is underrepresented in the media, this observation is likely to undermine self-esteem by creating theimpression that people like oneself are seen as less important in the given social environment.
• In contrast to social-cognitive theory, the cultivation approach does not consider selectivity in the media use process. However, media channels are becoming more and more diverse and targeting specific ethnic groups. Thus, social-cognitive theory seems better equipped to account for potential effects of selective exposure to media content that feature advertising models from one’s own ethnic group.

Distinctivenes Theory

• This theory predicts that ethnicity will be more salient for people whose ethnic group is part of a numeric minority in social environment than it will be for members of an ethnic majority.
• African Americans, for example, are a numeric minority in society and the media. Hence, they should be more aware of their race in personal and mediated situations. On the other hand, whites’ ethnicity is less prominent in their self-concept and is unlikely to grow in importance until they are no longer in majority in specific settings.
• Accordingly, members of ethnic minorities like to select media outlets and messages that relate to their ethnicity, whereas members of the white mainstream are unlikely to take that aspect into consideration.

Previous Studies

• This approach corresponds with the logic of cultivation research in that media are assumed to be homogeneous but biased in their representation of the real world.

Analyses of Models’ Racial Composition in Ads in Media Popular with Minorities

• Research on advertising impact needs to consider the media channels that minority audiences favour

Research Questions:

• Analyzing social-cognitive theory with the assumption that individuals pay more attention to others perceived to be similar. Hence, our first research question focuses on this aspect. However, there is no “correct” frequency to be expected for a minority-oriented outlet. Thus, comparisons between various minority groups are of interest, as they might reflect different levels of orientation toward the white mainstream and toward other minorities
• Research Questions:
  • RQ1: To which extent do ads in media popular with a minority portray models from that minority?
  • RQ2: Does the advertising that targets these groups differ in terms of racial composition of models?
  • RQ3: Does advertising that targets a minority group include more models from other minorities than mainstream advertising?

Method:

• The current research studied ads in magazines with the highest percentages of minority readership of the three largest minority groups in the USA—African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian-Americans—in an effort to see how frequently and in what ways different minorities are represented in advertisements in magazines read by various minority groups.
• Data were compared to the three leading monthly consumer magazines for the population as a whole.
• The most popular magazines among the main minority groups in the United States were Jet, Black Enterprise, and Ebony for African Americans; TV Novelas, People en Espanol, and Vanidades for Hispanics; and Fortune, BusinessWeek, and Fast Company for Asians.
• In total, 1553 models were shown in the ads.
• The content analysis used both ads and displayed models as units. For each ad, the advertised product was coded. For each displayed model, sex and ethnicity were coded (Animated characters and individuals on video screens were not counted. Persons occurring repeatedly in the same ad were coded only once. Furthermore, very small depictures of individuals, e.g., as part of a crowd, were not considered when individuals’ race could not be identified.) These codes for ethnic groups were white, African American, Hispanic, and Asian. The inter-coder reliability of the two coders, based on a test of 10% of the ads, yielded satisfactory reliability values: product type .94, number of models .97, sex .96, and ethnic group .96.

Results:

• Of the 1453 ads, 26.3% came from magazines with high shares of Asian American readers, 23.5% came from magazines read by African Americans, 15.2% came from magazines favoured by Hispanics, and 35% came from general top monthly magazines.
• The average number of ads per issue was 60.5 with each ad having an average of 1.1 models. However, if ads lacking models are excluded, the average is 2.1 models. About half the ads (748, 51.5%) showed human models. One model was depicted in 30.4% of th ads, 10.3% showed two, 4% displayed three, 2.5% featured four models, and 4% showed five or mode individuals. Model gender was evenly split. The most advertised product groups were food/drinks (14%), electronics/computers (12%), automobile (12%), and finance/insurance (9%)
• African Americans models were the norm (89%) in the ads in magazines popular with African Americans. Asian American models were generally rare and showed up in only 7% of the ads, but there were significantly more of these ads (12%) in magazines favored by Asian American readers.
• These findings show that each minority group had its highest representation in ads in magazines popular with its group, and mainstream magazines were likewise dominated by white models.

Discussion:

• Our analyses revealed that the magazine clusters with substantial ethnic readership also feature significantly more models of the ethnic group in their advertising.
• Our observations fit better into the framework of social-cognitive theory, which suggests selective attention to those perceived to be similar. This framework accounts for selective exposure, which is certainly an important phenomenon in magazine reading.

Minority Models in Advertisements is a post from: The Glaring Facts

• Facebook can be seen as a well-received addition to the increasingly digital, “real-time” culture in which we live
• As many Facebook users live in large cities where life seems to unfold at an accelerated pace, Facebook has emerged as an effective tool for maintaining social ties, keeping family and friends updated on the happenings in one’s life, and for creating new affiliations. The following features are criteria which can be used to describe Facebook as a genre.

Form

• Image and text-based (users post pictures and leave messages on other users’
• profiles and group sites)
• Incorporates other mediums like television, video, and music players
• A modern-day mode of life-writing
• Resembles a diary, except pictures and other applications replace written text
• Flexible structure, user can customize his settings and profile
• Features constant updates (a 24-hour platform)
• Group pages emerge as public forums
• Has a language of its own (e.g. “poking”)

Style

• Informal writing style
• Shorthand is used, and messages often appear as though they were text messages
• Colloquial language frequently used and proper grammar/syntax rules are not necessarily followed
• Features brief, sporadic conversations between users

Themes

• Human affiliation
• Maintaining and creating friendships and other social ties
• Uniting for a cause (as seen on some group pages)
• Social networking

Content matter

• Immensely personal
• Personal/Seemingly private details of a person’s life can be viewed
• Besides group pages, this platform is rarely used for discussing serious issues (users mainly engage in brief, light conversation which can be viewed by other users not involved in the conversation)
• Pictures posted on the user’s profile reveal the users’ interests and recent activities
• Constant posting of pictures in combination with other postings on a user’s profile reveal a life-story that is constantly unfolding

Facebook as a Genre is a post from: The Glaring Facts