NEWSPAPER THEORIES

CURRAN AND SEATON

- MEDIA INDUSTRIES
• Political economy approach to media.

• Ownership and control affect how the media operate.

• Capitalist pattern of increasing concentration of ownership into fewer hands

• This narrows range of opinions

• Pursuit of profit at expense of quality and creativity

• Internet doesn’t represent a rapture with the past in that it doesn’t offer a level playing field for
diverse voices to be heard.

• Constrained by nationalism and state censorship.

• News is controlled by powerful news organisations who have successfully defended the oligarchy.

• This is applicable when asked how ownership and regulation affects news reported and the
political affiliations of newspapers.
 LIVINGSTONE AND LUNT
- MEDIA INDUSTRIES
• Studied 4 case studies of the work of Ofcom

• Ofcom serves an audience who may be seen as consumers and/or citizens

• Consumers have wants, are individuals, seek private benefits, use language
of choice and require regulation to protect against detriment.

• Citizens have needs, are social, seek public or social benefits from the
media, use language or rights and require regulation to promote the public
interest. Traditional regulation is being put at risk by: increasingly globalised
media industries, the rise of the digital media, and media convergence.

• This is applicable when discussing press freedom and self regulation

as well as editor’s codes of practice.
 HESMONDHALGH
- MEDIA INDUSTRIES
• Capitalist pattern of increasing concentration and integration.

• Cultural production is owned and controlled by a few conglomerates who vertically integrate across a range of
media to reduce risk.

• High risk in cultural industries because of difficulty predicting success, high production costs, low
representation costs and the fact that media products are ‘public goods’ - not destroyed on consumption but
can be reproduced.

• Cultural industries rely on ‘big hits’ to cover the cost of failure.

• Industries rely on repetition of the use of stars, genres, franchises and repeatable narratives.

• Industries and governments try to impose scarcity, especially through copyright laws.

• Internet created new powerful IT corporations, has not transformed cultural production in a liberating and
empowering way - digital technology has sped up work, commercialised leisure time, and increased
surveillance by government and companies.

• This is applicable when talking about the response of newspapers to competition for the readers and
advertising revenue from the ‘new media’.
 BANDURA - MEDIA EFFECTS
- MEDIA AUDIENCE
• The media can influence people directly - human values, judgement and
conduct can be altered directly by media modelling.

• Direct influence - can it lead to imitation?

• The media may influence directly or by social networks

• So people can be influenced by media messages without being exposed

to them.

• Different media have different effects. The ‘new’ media offers

opportunities for self-directness.

• This is applicable when discussing regulation relating to people.

 GERBNER - CULTIVATION
THEORY
•
- MEDIA AUDIENCE
Exposure to television over long periods of time cultivates standardised roles and behaviours.

• Gerbner used content analysis to analyse repeated media messages and values, then found
that heavy use of TV was more likely, for example, to develop ‘mean world sydrome’ - a cynical,
mistrusting attitude towards others - following prolonged exposure to high levels of TV violence.

• ‘Mainstreaming’ - a common outlook on the world based on the images and labels on TV.

• A repetitive reader of the Daily Mail may get more strongly right winged views after exposure to
their biased stories.

• A guardian reader may get more centre-left views after constant exposure to those sorts of
viewpoints on stories.

• The ‘norm’ is terrorists and celebrities

• This is applicable when discussing regulation and the changing views of audience
members.
 STUART HALL - RECEPTION
THEORY
• - MEDIA
‘Encoding - decoding’ model AUDIENCE
• Media producers encode ‘preferrer meanings’ - may be read by readers in different
ways:

• The dominant - hegemonic position: preferred reading that accepts the text’s
messages and ideological assumptions behind messages.

• The negotiated position: the reader accepts the text’s ideological assumptions but
disagrees with the aspects of the messages. Negotiate the meaning to fit with their
‘liked experience’.

• The oppositional position: the reader rejects the overt message and its underlying
ideological assumptions.

• This is applicable when discussing the effect of political options and ideology
on readers.
 JENKINS - FANDOM
- MEDIA AUDIENCE
• Fans act as ‘textual poachers’ - taking elements from media texts to create their
own culture.

• Development of the ‘new’ media has accelerated ‘participatory culture’ in which

audiences are active and creative participants rather than passive consumers.

• Generates ‘collective intelligence’.

• Convergence is a cultural process rather than a technological one.

• Jenkins prefers the term ‘spreadable media’ to terms like ‘viral’

• This is applicable when discussing participatory culture in online media.

• ONLY VALID WHEN REFERRING TO ONLINE MEDIA

 SHIRKY - END OF AUDIENCE
• - MEDIA AUDIENCE
In old media, centralised producers addressed atomised consumers. In new media every consumer is a
producer.

• Traditional media producers would ‘filter then publish’

• As many ‘new’ media producers are not employees they ‘publish then filter’

• Amateur producers have different motivations to professionals, they value autonomy, competence,
membership and generosity. User generated content creates an emotional connection.r

• Can generate a cognitive surplus

• e.g. Wikipedia - can aggregate people’s free time and talent to produce value that no traditional medium
could match

• The audience’s predictable behaviour is gone. It’s variable across different sites.

• Some create, some synthesise and some consume.

• Old media creates a mass audience

• New media provides a platform for people to provide value for each other.

• This is applicable when discussing audience response to media and participatory culture.

• ONLY VALID WHEN REFERRING TO ONLINE MEDIA.