Power to the audience

“Speech belongs half to the speaker, half to the listener”

– Michel de Montaigne

So far we’ve seen how media has evolved and that it has an effect on public opinion. Now it’s time to explain how those effects are produced. That’s what audience studies do: analyse the relationship between media contents and their audience, and explain the process by which they have an impact on each other.

1920’s - 1950’s: passive audiences

One of the first theories was proposed by the Frankfurt School in the 1920’s, analysing the reaction towards Nazi propaganda; it was the effects theory. It was assumed that the audience was a passive mass, without individual distinctions, and media had an immediate effect on them. These researchers used a quantitative and positivist methodology for their studies. This theory was also called the hypodermic model, because it considered media like a drug that has an immediate effect on the consumer.

This was showed, for example, in advertising. Marketing techniques were simple and advertisements were quite straightforward and used simple slogans:

1920's advert. Source: http://www.artflakes.com/en/products/1920s-usa-31

As media evolved, audience studies evolved as well. In 1955, Paul Felix Lazarsfeld and Elihu Katz published the book Personal Influence, in which they explained their theory of the two-step flow. This theory was developed through a study carried out during the presidential election of 1940. This model suggests that media has an effect on some “opinion leaders”, who then have an influence on people in their environment. Thus, the effects of media are mediated by these opinion leaders. Here the audience is not considered as a mass, but as an integration of several social groups, each influenced by their opinion leader.

Diagram of the two-step flow model. Source: https://kieshaboa.wordpress.com/audiences/audience-theories/two-step-flow-audience-theories/

1970’s: the awakening

In the 1970’s, theorists start to view audiences as active. Audiences have woken up and act with a purpose. According to the uses and gratifications theory, the audience is not a passive mass and each individual uses media with a certain aim. This theory focuses on psychological aspects of the individuals, but lacks from a socio-cultural perspective. The five types of needs that media gratifies are: be informed or educated, identify with characters, entertainment, enhance social interaction (not only social networks, but watching contents with family or friends and talking about them to other people) and escape from the stresses of daily life.

Stuart Hall developed the encoding and decoding theory in 1973. This model takes some aspects from previous communication theories. From the effects theory, it keeps the idea of mass media having the power to set agendas. From the uses and gratifications theory, it takes the perception of the audience as active, interpreting the contents and making meaning out of them; this avoids the individualisation and implements social and cultural constructions. From semiotics, it takes the conceptions of media messages as signs and symbols, which only get meaning through codes shared by the producers and the audience. 

Therefore, according to this theory media does have power (economic power, setting agendas), but audience takes over the interpretation. Individuals, influenced by their cultural and social contexts, can decode the messages in three ways. 

• Dominant reading: this would be interpretation wanted by the producers, the original intention of the message. The receptor agrees with the point of view of the message.
• Negotiated reading: this interpretation recognises the original intention, but agrees only to some extent and differs in some aspects.
• Oppositional reading: the message is rejected, or new meanings found. The message has effects that the producers weren't seeking.

One example of an oppositional reading is found regarding the song Over the rainbow, sang by Judy Garland in the movie The wizard of Oz. The song was interpreted by part of the audience as a gay hymn, the expression "friends of Dorothy" started to be used to refer to gay people (now LGBTQIA, to be fair), and Judy Garland herself became a gay icon!

'Friends of Dorothy' bridge club ad. Source: http://www.bridgeguys.com/Gay/online_bridge_players.html