Category Archives: week 9

wk 9 Audience and Influence

Posted on by

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 article states that with new audience research we have stopped seeing audiences as one passive entity to be controlled by the media. Particularly when it comes to being influenced to behave in certain ways. I’ve found that powerful media can still have an influence on my actions when it is meaningful and clever enough. When it comes to safety, the government has issues a number of very impactful ads. Transport Accident Commission campaigns always strike a chord with me because they are so relatable. What makes them powerful is their ability to lull you into a false sense of security and then allow you to place yourself in the situation they show. The scary “this could be you if you’re not careful” idea is indeed very memorable.

This ad takes a different approach by removing the driving and focussing on the family part. Its a beautiful piece that takes the seat belt and replaces it with the metaphor of a family’s embrace of safety. His wife and daughters arms across his chest and around his hips create an undeniable resemblance to the seatbelt. The slow motion enhances our longing for him to stop crashing to his death as we watch his family rush forward.

The idea of how printing allowed audiences to change by dispersing content across not only space- but also time makes me think about what will happen to our grandkids and our own facebook posts. Without knowing it i’ve already set up my own online “life book” where I’ll be easily traceable from my date of birth to my embarrassing year 8 emo phase photos.

The “active audience” theories empower audiences with a new found digital voice. The vlogging phenomenon on youtube has propelled ordinary people to internet fame making them a hybrid media consumer and maker. Although we as consumers have ability to post more things online, our opinions are still filtered through the edited and well refined structures of mainstream social media. For example, facebook takes the knowledge of social conventions and transforms it into their own version of online courtesy. This is especially prevalent with the “birthday posts” it is now considered abnormal to not receive a flood of posts on your birthday congratulation you on achieving yet another full year of life. People count these posts and measure it against their self worth, even calculating the length of the post against the closeness of the person posting it.

It has come to the point where facebook reminds me “hey hey Vanessa say happy birthday to this friend you haven’t talked to for 3 years make their day! Or are you just an lonesome asshole?”

Either way almost everyone falls into the birthday guilt trap. We have to ask ourselves, are we doing it because we want to or because the media wants us to?

 

 

wk 9 The People Formerly Known as the Audience

Posted on by

Jay Rosen (2006),’The People Formerly Known as the Audience’, PressThink blog, June 27. 

I found this article very useful in reflecting on how nowadays the relationship between media producers and consumers have become blurred. We are now in an information age where the mouthpiece for society is passed around like a communal joint and when someone makes a good point we all nod and move on.

As someone who grew up with the internet readily available I had never really thought of myself as an pure audience member whose role only consisted of consuming. I like to think of the modern relationship between maker and consumer as a sushi train restaurant. Each dish (media texts) move around the tasters (audience) on a mini train creating a constant stream of interesting visually delectable platters. The ever moving train (our news feeds) allows us to see a wide spread of food BUT we are the ones with the power to consume, and in turn recommend what we eat. In a way the eaters have the most power as we are the ones who decide what becomes popular. Naturally the most favoured dishes disappear quickly and this high demand is noticed by the chefs who then create more of that popular dish. This can explain maybe we there are so many damn superhero movies at the moment.

Also without audiences nothing goes viral which means The Ellen show has no viral videos to feature.

Vsauce one of my favourite youtubers investigated the history of clapping; why we do it, what it means and how its meaning has changed over time. I think that if we look at the history of clapping; an activity originally used to show curtesy and appreciation of a live act, we can track the shift in power in the media.

He says that clapping is a “a collective social gesture which we in groups to express admiration.” People used to have to see orchestras play music live in order to appreciate their favourite symphonies; but now with recorded music its so much easier to become an audience of one.  With more entertainment than ever and technology that allows us to “cacoon” our consumption of it in solitude it would seem like our ability to “clap” as a crowd would diminish. But to me that is far from the truth.

  • A highly centralized media system had connected people “up” to big social agencies and centers of power but not “across” to each other. Now the horizontal flow, citizen-to-citizen, is as real and consequential as the vertical one.

Instead of applauding in real life in substitution we have accumulative liking, sharing and commenting on content online. As Michael says, we create a “digital applause” as an ersatz applause.