Week 6: What do audiences do with media?

Historically, there has been much debate surrounding audience activity and audience consumption of media. New concepts such as the ‘Prosumer’ are being put forward, whilst theories such as the ‘Hypodermic needle’ are being labelled as ‘outdated’. In this week’s lecture we discussed media audiences and what audiences do with media.

In the lecture we also the Uses and Gratifications theory which although was proposed by Blumler and Katz in 1974, it still seems relevant today. In particular, the idea that audiences use media for personal identity and also personal relationships, corresponds with Mary Gillespie’s study which is discussed in the key reading.

The key reading looks at audience responses to the Australian soap opera ‘Neighbours’ and examines why such a white-casted show set in Australia evidently appeal to a variety of subcultures and groups in Britain. Especially those who are not culturally parallel to them such as British Asians.Brown (1987:22) found that one of the key pleasures women found in ‘soap talk’ is the validation of their own kind of talk. It is this validation that generates prevalent ‘small talk’ and ‘soap gossip’ amongst female friendships, which essentially strengthens their bond, this fulfils the ‘Personal relationship’ aspect of the Uses and Gratifications theory.

Field work on ‘Soap talk’ found very little gender distinction between male and female soap talks. It is presumed this is due to characters of both sexes in the show, providing audiences with characters to identify with.

In my acquired reading The Use of Media Entertainment and Emotional Gratification(2010) it is suggested that media can serve social relationship functions on a variety of levels: as media can be used to connect with, or escape from real-life relationships, and can also be used to form parasocial relationships with media characters and celebrities. Such claims support the Uses and Gratifications theory.

For my own research I would look at why reality television shows Love and Hip Hop and Keeping up With the Kardashians are proving so popular with audiences, especially young women aged 18-24 who are their main demographic. Is it because of the reasons mentioned in the uses and gratifications theory?

References:Gillespie, Marie (2003) “Television, Ethnicity and Cultural Change” IN Will Brooker and Deborah Jermyn (eds.) The Audience Studies Reader. London: RoutledgeBartsch, A. and Viehoff, R. (2010) ‘The use of media entertainment and emotional gratification’, Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 5, pp. 2247–2255. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.07.444.

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