ECLI a05_t17

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What are some models of audience? 
 
We turn here to some alternative ways of thinking about the media audience 
that focus on people ´s active attempts to construct identity and use popular 
culture, rather than be used by it. 
 
Barwise and Ehremberg (1988) describe television as ‘low involvement’, in 
other words, the audience does not have to do much in order to consume the 
product. They provide two examples of this low involvement: 
-Little effort need to be made by a viewer, and she or he views TV in the 
same way as every other member of the wider audience. 
 
-People often watch TV while waiting for something else to happen: it is used 
to fill up ‘dead time’. 
 
Two models suggest that popular viewing is highly active and creative: 
 
In the first model, known as the ‘uses-gratifications approach’ the audience of 
popular culture – in this case popular TV – are able to use the media for 
specific purposes. Thus if one needs background noise, the TV is used in a 
different way than if one is looking out for a particular item in a news 
broadcast – the audience have needs that they fulfill, or gratify, through 
active and selective TV use. 
 
Morley identifies three types of ‘decoding’ that are performed by audience 
members – that is, individual audience members ‘read’, interpret or pull apart 
(decode) the messages and images they see in different , ways with their 
backgrounds operating as filters through which this happens: 
 
-oppositional- Some audiences members reject what they see and replace the 
intended meaning with a new one that diverges from the message intended by 
those who made the product 
 
 
-negotiated- Some audience members twist the intended meaning to make it 
fit in with their own views of the world, and bits of each are fitted together 
for future use 
 
-dominant- Some audience members fully accept the dominant or intended 
meaning of the product and go along with it. 
 
Morley and Philo argue that our unique personal biographies, experiences and 
life stories act as a filter and influence our view of popular media products. 
The users of popular culture are seen as sophisticated, thinking beings, not 
necessarily taken in by dominant ideology or unable to think critically about 
the world because of the influence of mass culture.