Media

Q1.Briefly define and compare the ‘magic bullet’ or ‘hypodermic’ model of media research

with the ‘encoding – decoding’ model of media research. Please use examples in

your answer.

Q2. Marxist media theorists discuss the media in terms of their role as ‘ideological

apparatuses’. Explain the key notions behind this research, paying particular attention to the

concept of hegemony and the media’s role within it. What is ‘hegemony’, and why is it

important to media audience studies?

Referencing:

Remember to cite all sources, to reference your work and to place one list of all references

used at the end of your paper. Please access the Griffith University ‘Referencing Tool’ via the

Griffith University library and follow the AGPS Harvard style.

At this level of study, we expect students to include a range of scholarly sources including

peer-reviewed journal articles, text-books and reputable websites.

File type and Format:

• Please use Microsoft word document: doc or docx

• Use 12pt font or above (Arial or Times New Roman)

• Double line spacing

• Include page numbers

• Include header or footer on each page with your name, course code and date.

• Use italics for titles and bold for headings.

• Use the AGPS Harvard referencing style (refer to the Griffith University library

referencing tool)

Short Answer Responses Assessment includes the following criteria:

The Student has:

• demonstrated a clear understanding of key terms, concepts, theories and

methodologies and has applied them appropriately with relevant examples;

• acknowledged the word limit of 750 words per question;

• answered articulately and clearly expressed their ideas;

• used correct grammar and spelling; used complete sentences (no sentence fragments);

• underlined or italicised book, film, TV, and Internet titles;

• enclosed article titles within inverted commas;

• clearly identified new paragraphs by spacing;

• referenced direct quotations and paraphrased material;

• listed references cited.

*** I have added the core readings, with their references, after each question that

needs to be answered. But still references from scholarly sources must be used

such as peer-reviewed journal articles, textbooks and reputable websites

Question: Marxist media theorists discuss the media in terms of their role as ‘ideological

apparatuses’. Explain the key notions behind this research, paying particular attention to

the concept of hegemony and the media’s role within it. What is ‘hegemony’, and why is it

important to media audience studies?

READING
1. In order to fully understand the various concepts covered by this unit, it is first necessary to

acquire a basic understanding of media theory in general. Most importantly, it is necessary

to understand both the reasons for studying the media and the different approaches which

are used for this purpose. To this end, this section will be aimed at answering two

fundamental questions:

a. What are the various relationships between the media and society?

b. What theories have been developed to explain these relationships?

In the opening chapter of Media and Audiences (2003) Ross and Nightingale explore questions of the

social integration of media into our everyday lives, the importance of critically examining the

information provided through media technologies, and how to set about researching the media

according to particular goals and interests. There are two inflections of the term ‘media’ that are

crucial to this week’s reading. Foremost ‘media’ refers to something being an intelligible object like a

page of text that we can understand through the various ways it is presented to us. This meaning

encompasses the main technologies of media distribution like television, newspapers, radio, and the

internet. Another inflection of ‘media’ refers to the institution of journalism specifically devoted to

reporting news and which also defines the idea of what is newsworthy. This latter sense is more akin

to the way we speak of ‘the media’ in our day to day lives, whereas the former is a meaning often

found in media research and critical studies of the media as a social and cultural phenomenon.

Common to both these inflections is the sense of media as an agent of mediation, something that

functions as a link and filter between people and things that happen in the world at large. According

to Ross and Nightingale because we live in the information age, and anything has the potential to

become media worthy, our world undergoes mediatisation. Hence critical studies of the media are

important to understanding the way we live and the ways our societies operate.

In the present era the media plays an important role as a social and political institution informing

populations of events and helping shape public opinion about these events. However, the media

does not purely exist as a macrocosm. The boom of ‘new media’ and ‘social media’ technologies, for

example YouTube, twitter, Facebook, internet blogging and mobile phones able to shoot digital

video, reveals mediatisation at work on the very grassroots level of contemporary social spaces.

People, beyond those employed by media institutions, are becoming media producers. Suffice to

recall how often television news reports of dramatic social occasions like civil uprisings, ecological

disasters, royal weddings and live concerts, rely on material created by persons present at these

events that are not necessarily affiliated with the news service.

Another way mediatisation integrates into our social lives is through spectacle. A spectacle is created

when an everyday activity or object is made into an exception from the run of everyday living,

having all of its marketable aspects revealed through the media exploiting the now spectacular

object to the greatest extent. The explosion of ‘reality television’ in the early 2000s is one such

example of how popular the spectacle of everyday living can be. It is crucial to a critical

understanding of the media that we admit every news report is constructed; every piece of media is

created by someone. If we construct our identities from many different pieces and forms of media as

Ross and Nightingale contend, then the critical analysis of the construction of media is a necessary

part of understanding ‘who’ we are and coming to grips with our desire to know things. A spectacle

is a phenomenon whereby an otherwise ordinary thing is made visible in a very intense way, with

many of its hidden features put on display. In the reality television show the spectacle is how the

people live in the specially constructed house with cameras in every room, including otherwise

private spaces like the toilet and shower. The popularity of Big Brother demonstrated it was

necessary to go beyond studying audiences or ‘people factors alone’ to understand the show’s

popularity as a media text; it was not informing people of anything particularly groundbreaking or

new, but rather Big Brother offered a fly-on-the-wall view of the minute details of everyday lives in a

contained space.Big Brotherwas popular because it was an accessible spectacle, something

audiences could be part of (i.e. voting off housemates each week) as well as watch.

2. In the reading for this week, ‘Cultural studies, multiculturalism and media culture’, Kellner

(1995) demonstrates the critique of ideology and diagnosis of political economy with

effectiveness. For Kellner the media is a pedagogical device that helps us to build our sense

of everyday and extraordinary things, to define different objects and see their differences

and similarities. Thus the media is marked in its pedagogical conception by its ability to

reinforce the hegemony of the ruling capitalist elites (i.e. the media owners who have the

ultimate say about what their media networks present for their audiences) because it

operates through the filter of spectacle mentioned with reference to reality television in

Ross and Nightingale.

A ‘spectacular filter’ invigorates stories about everyday things to make them appear exciting, and for

Kellner this almost inevitably involves constructing a sense of ‘them and us.’ Hegemony puts an

interesting twist on this opposition as a way of manufacturing consent by means other than overt

force. In hegemonic terms a ‘them and us’ opposition can be portrayed as the reason the rich and

powerful should remain rich and powerful is because they appear to govern well, they use their elite

status to help the poor and disenfranchised without actually relinquishing their status.

As a concept hegemony is at the centre of much of the recent academic media research. Originally

formulated by the Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci, hegemony proposes that the ruling class in a

society can maintain their position, not through the use of the police and the military, but through

the manipulation of those institutions responsible for the cultural and intellectual lives of the

population. By manipulating these institutions, which include the church, educational facilities and

the media, the ruling class can persuade the subordinate class that the situation in which they live is

natural, thereby undermining any possible resistance which might arise.

Perhaps the most important aspect of the theory of hegemony is the notion that the process is

essentially invisible to those who are subject to it. Because hegemony works by the manipulation of

key ideological institutions, the ideas of the ruling class come to be perceived as being the same as

those of the subordinate class, so that this group sees the action of the rulers as being in their best

interests.

Although widely associated with Marxist analysis, feminist theorists have arguably gained the

greatest insights through the application of hegemony, for this theory provides one of the best

models for explaining the division of gender in our society. Throughout the various arms of the

media, women are continually depicted (both explicitly and implicitly) as being subordinate to men,

and through repetition these texts work to reinforce the idea that this situation is natural.

Of course, one might argue that legislation designed to eliminate sexist representations indicates

that the media has failed in perpetuating hegemony, in that the gender stereotypes it presents are

no longer seen as natural or common sense. However, this in fact demonstrates one of the key

features of hegemony itself: although the hegemonic class has won the consent of the subordinate

class to govern it, such consent is never totally secure. Rather, hegemony as formulated by Gramsci,

is a continuous process, in which the hegemonic class must continuously win the consent to govern

through the manipulation of institutions like the media. Opposing this are various groups within

society who also seek to manipulate the media and other institutions, with their success being

measured by the extent to which formerly common-sense ideas are called into question. In this

respect, the introduction of regulations aimed at eliminating gender bias in the media can be seen as

an indication of the success of the feminist movement in opposing hegemonic ideas about male–

female relations.

Given the central role played by the media in the production of hegemony, the amount of attention

it receives from academic researchers is hardly surprising. As Kellner explains, the field of cultural

studies in particular has made significant contributions to this area of research, drawing together

three main methodologies to form what is commonly referred to as the critical approach. Firstly,

political economy is employed to examine the production and distribution of media texts, focusing

on how the interplay between various institutions can effect the types of texts which are produced.

Secondly, various methods of textual analysis are used to examine the actual content produced by

media institutions, often deconstructing the text in order to identify the ideologies which are

disseminated through it. Finally, critical theory also uses different types of audience research to

explore how media texts are received, with methodologies such as ethnographic research

representing the prime theoretical tool of this area of study.

Reference

• Ross, K and Nightingale, V, 2003 ‘Introduction – audiences today’ in Media and Audiences.

New Perspectives. London: Open University Press, pp 1-11.

• Turnbull, S 2002 ‘Audiences’ in Cunningham, S. & Turner, G (2002) The Media and

Communications in Australia. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, pp 85-98.

• Kellner, D 1995 ‘Cultural studies, multiculturalism and media culture’, in G. Dines and J.M.

Humez (eds) Gender, Race and Class in the Media, Sage, London, pp. 5–17.

Question: Briefly define and compare the ‘magic bullet’ or ‘hypodermic’ model of media

research with the ‘encoding – decoding’ model of media research. Please use examples in

your answer.

READING
1. In Week 1 Ross and Nightingale discussed the integration of media into our everyday lives

and how this integration relates to quantitative and qualitative traditions of media research.

This week’s readings will look at the history of media research in greater detail, focusing on

the two main theoretical streams as defined by Ross and Nightingale, and examine how they

developed over time.

Why is it important to understand the history of this research? The main reason is that in order to

understand how the various theories of the media work in relation to each other, it is necessary to

examine where they come from. Like the media itself, theories of the media do not exist in isolation

but rather exist as part of a vast terrain of intersecting, and often competing conceptual

frameworks. To understand the form of this terrain we must trace the development its key

components, for many current theoretical debates have their origins in the historical backgrounds of

the respective approaches.

To garner some understanding of how the theories of the media have developed, it is first necessary

to clarify exactly what the object of study is. And in this respect the concept of a ‘mass’media is of

central importance. This is because many of the theories we will examine in this section have been

developed in relation to a very specific model of the media, one which has at its centre notions of

‘mass.’

Although the idea of a mass media is referred to today so frequently as to be almost meaningless,

the idea has significant historical origins. As Ross and Nightingale explain in the first of this week’s

readings, the concept of ‘mass’ came into existence long before it was associated with the media,

and can be traced to two ongoing historical movements.

The first of these is industrialisation with its beginnings in Europe, which forever changed the way

people related to the process production. As Marx argues, industrialisation initiated a process of

alienation, in which the worker became distanced from their work, their fellow citizens and,

according to certain interpretations, themselves. This process was actualised through three of the

central components of industrialisation — the factory system, corporatisation and the development

of bureaucracy, with the common thread between them being an increasing marginalisation of the

individual.

The second key movement identified by the authors is mediatisation , which to some extent

coincided with the Industrial Revolution and is still continuing today. Mediatisation augmented the

social alienation created by the marginalisation of the individual in industrial societies through

technologically replicating and amplifying the human senses. Often this process of mediatisation

substituted the first-person account of the world-at-hand with second-person observations that

emphasise the flow of information, i.e. seeing a movie at the cinema is substituted with the

experience of going to the cinema. According Ross and Nightingale industrialisation acted as a force

of social change by making mediatising technologies like television cheap to purchase, produce

content for, and consume from.

The extension and substitution of the human body by mediatisation evokes the cultural imagery of

the cyborg, a human being transformed through a fusion with technological prosthesis. The cultural

myth of the cyborg emphasises the preoccupation with showing how media empower people,

emancipating them from their ignorance and complicity. However, this preoccupation also reveals

the deep dependence of an industrialised mass media on co-opting human bodies to sustain their

industrial viability. For example in televised news our sight and hearing is augmented by the

television yet by lifting our veil of ignorance with ‘the facts’ the evening news also operates to

produce a consensus with these supposedly neutral facts, manufacturing consent to sustain its

hegemony as an outlet for the flow of information.

The isolationist aspects of mass society drew the attention of media theorists who assumed that a

group of isolated individuals could be more easily influenced by media messages than a group with

strong social ties. With the decline of previously powerful forces like the church, it was thought that

those who controlled media such as print, radio, film and television could exert tremendous

influence on public perceptions of the world. Thus, early studies of the media were conducted

according to a specific agenda, one which was explicitly based upon notions of a powerful media.

We have already noted that much of the interest in the media arose out of a belief that members of

the new mass society were vulnerable to influence from the media, but until the 1920s these beliefs

were largely unsubstantiated. This was because media studies had yet to develop a widely accepted

methodology which could be used to verify the assumptions being made by its key theorists, a

problem common to many of social and behavioural sciences of the time.

In contrast, disciplines within the physical sciences like chemistry, astronomy, medicine and biology

had already established a set of methodologies which were used to verify theoretical predictions.

These disciplines had firmly established their position as the dominant discourses within Western

society, to such an extent that in many ways science replaced religion as society’s primary belief

system.

Given the prominence of physical science and its attendant methodologies, it was inevitable that the

behavioural sciences looked to their physical counterparts for methodological strategies. In

particular, the social sciences adapted the process by which the physical sciences used empirical

evidence to support their generalisations, a process which gave physical science the favourable

status it enjoyed.

The move toward empirical analysis in the social sciences is especially important with respect to

media studies, because a substantial portion of early media research was based on disciplines such

as sociology. However, the empirical study of the media was not developed in a theoretical vacuum,

and indeed the methodologies in question can only be understood within the context of the theories

to which they were applied. In this respect, theories of media effects represent the most significant

single area of research, as questions of media effects lent themselves most easily to analysis using

empirical techniques

With the application of methods used in fields such as psychology and marketing, media theorists

believed they now had at their disposal research tools which could be used to demonstrate the

effect a powerful media could have on a vulnerable mass audience. However, contrary to

expectations, initial research found that all individuals did not exhibit the same effects from

exposure to a media source. Over the years which followed, many revisions were made, primarily

centring on the models of how the media were supposed to influence audience behaviour. As Ross

and Nightingale demonstrate with Merton’s early theory of the ‘boomerang effect’ that moved focus

onto content and response analysis, media researchers produced increasingly sophisticated models

in which the power of the media was seen less as an independent force and more as a force which

worked in concert with other socio-cultural factors.

2. McQuail compliments the Ross and Nightingale overview of how quantitative and qualitative

methodologies of media research have developed with an examination of how the field of

media research has developed its concept of audience over time. In this respect, McQuail’s

overview provides an insight into some of the key developments in media theory history. His

analysis examines the history in terms of broad theoretical themes rather than specific

methodologies.

McQuail begins with a discussion of the origins of the term ‘mass,’ although he does not address the

subject in the same detail as Ross and Nightingale. According to McQuail, the modern concept of

‘mass’ itself did not come fully into operation until after World War II, at which time notions of a

mass society first became popularised. Even at this early stage, the term had already accumulated

both positive and negative connotations. On the one hand, ‘mass’ referred to large, undifferentiated

and supposedly unruly groups of people (as in ‘the masses’), whilst on the other, being used to refer

to positive social actions involving large numbers (as in ‘mass movements’).

Within media studies, the more negative connotations of ‘mass’ have become dominant, with the

term being commonly used in relation to three main areas. The first of these is ‘mass’

communication, a concept which — as McQuail notes — first came into prominence in the 1930s.

The labelling of a communication form as ‘mass’ is primarily a function of its mode of address, in that

the communication tends large scale, one- directional and based on a model of few senders and

many receivers. Based on these characteristics, most of the media we encounter are examples of

mass communication, with the only possible exception being new media like the Internet which

complicates the few senders–many receivers model. This issue will be discussed in some detail later

in this unit.

Mass audience represents the second common usage of the term, and according to McQuail can be

traced to the definition of mass proposed by Herbert Blumer. Blumer argued that modern society

had produced a new type of large-scale social formation which he contrasted with earlier formations

like the group, the crowd and the public. The group which he classed as mass was both larger than

the other formations and more anonymous, with its members existing in relative isolation from each

other. Most importantly, the mass group was heterogeneous, containing members from all social

groups and demographics. This definition of the ‘mass’ is widely associated with media audiences, as

well as notions such as mass markets.

The third context in which the term ‘mass’ is commonly used is also arguably the most derogatory

and relates to the concept of mass culture. Mass culture is the product of the mass media as it is

consumed by the mass audience. In the widest sense it consists of all the different types of

information disseminated by different media. Mass culture tends to be defined as inferior to so-

called high culture, and is often characterised as mass- produced, commercial and homogenised.

Having established the objects of media research, we can now move on and discuss the

development of theories of the media themselves. Once again, McQuail provides an overview of this

topic.

According to McQuail, there are two main trends in mass media research, which he calls dominant

and alternative paradigms. The former refers to the set of theories which have been accepted most

widely within academic circles, whilst the latter refers to those theories which have been developed

in response to perceived inadequacies within the dominant paradigm.

As McQuail explains, the dominant paradigm developed in response to a view of a ‘good’ society,

which is democratic, liberal, pluralistic and orderly. The significance of the media with respect to this

view lies in its ability to influence socialisation and opinion-forming patterns among the populace —

in other words, in its ability to shape the values which underlie the society as a whole. Accordingly,

the main focus of media research in this paradigm is the exploration of how the media do or do not

help to create a good society.

One of the key features of the dominant paradigm is undoubtedly its reliance on scientific

methodologies. Most of the theories of the media which belong to this paradigm have their origins

in sociology, social psychology and information science, disciplines which all rely heavily on

quantitative analysis to support their propositions. Furthermore, the emphasis on scientific

methodologies displayed by these disciplines can itself be understood in terms of the infatuation

with science which has developed in Western societies, particularly in the post-World War II period.

This emphasis on scientific methodologies can also be tied to the model of communication which the

dominant paradigm assumes. Although not originally designed in terms of inter-personal

communication, the model which was widely adopted by media researchers sees communication in

terms of a very narrow sender–receiver model which assumes a one-way flow of information from

the former to the latter. This model was primarily designed to allow for differences in information

transmitted and information received to be detected, with such differences being explained in terms

borrowed from electronics and communications research such as ‘interference’ and ‘noise.’ The

work of Shannon and Weaver is often considered to be one of the main origins of this model of

communication, and a copy of their famous diagram has been included in your ‘Readings’.

Shannon and Weaver’s diagram represents the structure of the so-called ‘magic bullet’ or ‘model’.

The model assumes that the messages disseminated by the media are ‘injected’ directly into the

consciousness of the receiver. Furthermore, the hypodermic model of communication also biases

media research toward certain specific questions, especially those concerned with ideas of media

effects.

Although the hypodermic model of communication has been widely discredited among media

researchers, it still informs much media research and public debate about the media, especially

where children are concerned. This topic will be discussed later in this unit, but for the moment it

will suffice to say that arguments around children and television, and more recently children and the

Internet, tend to have at their heart notions based explicitly on simplistic models of the

communication process.

By contrast, the alternative paradigm, which is closely associated with critical theory, represents a

challenge to the dominant notions discussed above. Most importantly, rather than simply examining

the relationship between the media and society as it is, researchers subscribing to this paradigm

look at the relationship in order to determine how best to change it. In this respect the alternative

paradigm is utopianist in its orientation, for it studies the media in order to create a better society.

However, although critical theorists believe there is a better alternative to the capitalist, rationalist

patriarchal society which dominates the world today, they seldom state explicitly what would

constitute such an alternative.

3. Whilst it is possible to detect reactions against the dominant paradigm throughout the

1960s, it was not until the 1970s that the alternative paradigm really began to take shape. As

McQuail explains, the major impetus for this development came primarily from European

researchers, who produced a more sophisticated concept of ideology which cast new light

on the role of mass media in society. Whereas proponents of the dominant paradigm were

more concerned with the mode of transmission of media content, critical theorists turned

their attention to the content itself, attempting to ‘decode’ the ideologies being

disseminated through mass media forms.

Coinciding with this more sophisticated concept of media content was a more sophisticated concept

of the relationship between sender and receiver, one which refuted the idea of a passive audience

into which ideas were ‘injected.’ The alternative model posited that the content of the media was no

longer fixed but was open to interpretation. Consequently, audience members could actively

decipher the messages coming from media sources according to their own belief systems and

specific needs. Significantly, this model accounted for the existence of oppositional readings, in

which the audience could construct meanings from a text other than those intended by the source.

Another key characteristic of the critical perspective is its definition of media institutions. Whereas

the dominant paradigm treats such institutions as essentially value-neutral, critical theorists examine

them in terms of their role in the dissemination of ideology. Critical theorists focus their attention on

how the operational strategies of media institutions work at local, national and international levels,

and on how these three levels interact.

The paradigms also differ in their choice of methodologies, with the alternative adopting qualitative

rather than quantitative research techniques. This stems from the differing orientation of each

approach, for quantitative methods do not lend themselves to the study of competing ideologies

that forms the central concern of critical theory.

Although the two paradigms outlined by McQuail are very different, it should be noted that they do

not necessarily exist in isolation. In practice, elements of both paradigms can be found in many

studies, especially in terms of attempts to combine quantitative and qualitative methodologies.

Furthermore, neither of the two paradigms are static, with practitioners of both continually trying to

refine their approaches.

The actual object of study is also subject to change, with new forms of media like the Internet

quickly increasing in prominence. As McQuail explains, the main feature of these media which

separates them from traditional forms such as television, film and radio is their interactivity, a

feature which implicitly challenges their status as mass media. Indeed, the more interactive a

medium is the less accurately it can be described as ‘mass,’ because the study of interactive media

necessarily entails a shift in focus from the group to the individual. This not only challenges the

traditional models of audience discussed earlier in this section, but also emphasises the relationships

between media and society.

The final reading for this week by Stuart Hall represents a good example of McQuail’s alternative

paradigm, and demonstrates the tendency toward placing the process of textual interpretation

within a wider socio-cultural context. Two points are of particular importance in this reading. The

first is the idea that texts do not posses meaning until they are read. The second point, which is

closely tied to the first, is that both the production (encoding) and reading (decoding) of the media

message take place within specific contexts, and these contexts have to be considered when

analysing how meaning is generated.

In reviving the powerful media model, Marxist scholars were also instrumental in shifting the

theoretical focus away from the interaction between text and audience, and toward the institutions

which produced the texts in question. This emphasis on media institutions itself diverged into four

distinct, though inter-related, areas of research, which examine media institutions with respect to

their institutional structures, political economy, professional ideologies and their interaction with

the socio-political environment. Several of these areas have already appeared in the Kellner reading

from last week.

It is important to note that, whilst general Marxist theory was instrumental in shifting attention on

to media institutions, Marxism itself is not an entirely unified discourse. Indeed, there are in fact

three distinct approaches to the media within Marxist theory, these being structuralist political

economy and culturalist. Structuralist approaches focus primarily on the production of meaning by

media texts, and are based on a model of ideology first articulated by the Marxist theorist Louis

Althusser. In this model, ideology is not seen as something which is forced upon the subordinate

class by the ruling class, but rather it is viewed as the way by which people make sense of their

existence. Thus the aim of Marxist structuralist analysis is to explore how the processes of

signification inherent in media texts work to produce a specific conception of reality.

In contrast to the textual orientation of structuralist analysis, political economy focuses directly on

the institutions which produce the texts themselves. The status of ideology in political economy is

different from its status in structuralism, with political economists tending to foreground the

material conditions of production whilst reducing the emphasis on ideological factors. According to

political economists, ideology is the result of material production processes, thus negating the

relatively autonomous status it is given by structuralist theorists.

Finally, the culturalist variant of Marxist theory occupies a position somewhere between the

extremes of structuralism and political economy, although it actually opposes some of the central

conventions of each approach. Rather than focusing on media institutions in isolation as is the

tendency with political economy, culturalist scholars prefer to examine them within the context of

an immense web of meaning-producing agencies. As with structuralist analyses, ideology is once

again a key concern, but in contrast to structuralism, culturalist studies do not always identify the

media as the primary method of disseminating ideological elements.

As this week’s readings have demonstrated, the history of media theory is not a simple process in

which one theoretical model is superseded by a better one. Rather, a number of theoretical models

and methodologies have competed and coexisted, with some models falling out of favour with one

school of thought only to be resurrected by another. Empirical analysis of the media demonstrates

this process. Whilst early variations of this methodology were found to be inadequate to describe

the communication process, elements of empirical research can still be found at the heart of many

branches of media studies. This is especially true of the media’s own research enterprises like ratings

measurements, which are implicitly based upon models of communication which have been widely

discredited by most academic media theorists.

Reference

• Ross, K and Nightingale, V 2003 ‘Audiences in Historical Perspective’ in Media and

Audiences. New Perspectives. London: Open University Press, pp 12-41

• McQuail, D, 2005 McQuail’s Mass Communication Theory (5th edition). London: Sage

Publications, pp 396-417

• Shannon and Weaver’s model of communication, reprinted in Fiske, J. (1990),Introduction to

Communication Studies, Routledge,London , p.7.

• Hall, S. (1980), ‘Encoding/decoding’, in Culture, Media, Language, Hutchenson and Co.,

London: , pp. 128–138.