David Morley (2005), Entry on ‘Audience’ in New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society, Ed. T.Bennett, L. Grossberg & M. Morris (Wiley-Blackwell), pp.8-10.

The brief piece on audiences discusses the evolution of what an audience meant and the theory regarding it, such as the effect media has on an audience and how it is consumed.

Morley writes how audience, as a word, has evolved from meaning the ‘action of hearing’ to its broader and expansive meaning, where it becomes ‘the idea of a group of people who are consumers of a communicative event’. He acknowledges its departure from addresses of a sermon, or speech to further encompass readers of a book and, eventually, to the consumers of all forms of communication.

He discusses the contemporary research into a number of aspects of audiences, such as audience research and ‘active audience theory’. He stresses how contemporary research differs from prior, where the audience is perceived as active, rather than passive, in their consumption of media.

There are parallels here which align with popular culture, where new media forms from the interaction, consumption and repurposing media. It is a useful piece as it acknowledges the importance the audience has in all forms of media and ultimately is the reason that media communications is an area for research and debate.

Hallin, D, Mancini, P 2004. Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics. Cambridge University Press.

A focus on traditional print media is highlighted throughout this book, where the purpose of newspapers is discussed in a range of countries. There is a major focus on Western Europe and the United States and attempts to identify variations between the role and the political power that newspapers encompass.

The book uses a wide range of statistics, such as number of newspapers sales, demographics, gender differences in reach and scope, and consumption, to analyse newspapers as a media institute. They generally conclude that there are strong connections between political systems and the media systems that are frequented in those countries, explaining that political characteristics are manifested more or less directly in media structures’. They acknowledge that media institutions, especially since the 1980s and increased globalisations, have homogenised and eroded variations amongst national media systems.

It was unlikely to be valuable for project brief 4 as there is a limited focus on both Australia and a range of media institutions. Our focus on a more modernised and local perspective of institutions did not make use of the information regarding newspapers and their focus in history.

DeRiddler, S 2015. Are Digital Media Institutions shaping youth’s intimate stories? Strategies and tactics in the social networking site Netlog. Ghent University, Belgium. New Media and Society.

This article published in Belgium analyses a local website Netlog, which is seemingly a low-scale and localised version of Facebook, with some elements aligned with a blogging website, such as MediaFactory. In particular, the article discusses how social network (and institutions) can provide a backdrop for story telling practice that ‘give meaning to sexuality, gender and relationships ad development a feminist and queer political critique’.

The main focus is how people, specifically youth, use these media institutions to be involved in an online community. Here, the media institutes provide the tools (text, pictures and videos) to allow users to engage in media and social communications.

Initially, our group had a focus on social media and their role as a media institute – as our focus shifted to ACMI and a local perspective in Melbourne, this information became increasingly irrelevant to the topic. It does provide an excellent perspective on the balance of business and social usage on internet forums and websites, drawing some parallels between Facebook and Twitter, for example.