PART 2 Chapter 4 IN SEARCH OF THE AUDIENCE
4.5 CONCLUSION
This chapter has examined media audiences and the approaches that are used to study these audiences and their interactions with media in an attempt to fulfl the fourth research aim. The aim of this chapter was to establish what the literature holds regarding the nature, role and signifcance of the media audience in the communication (or meaning-making) and research processes. This was done by providing an overview of the most popular and prominent mainstream and critical approaches to media audience research, focusing on the development, concerns and contributions of media audience research. Particular attention was paid to relevant audience studies that have contributed to our understanding of audiences and media use. Table 4.1 provides a summary of this overview.
Basic assumptions and
goals Preferred method(s) Criticism/shortcomings MAINSTREAM APPROACHES
Effects research The media have a direct and
immediate effect on media audiences. The audience is perceived as passive individuals who are exposed to media messages. Effects research aims to establish what the media do to people, i.e. its goal is to
determine the direct and
immediate effect of the media on the audience. The audience is viewed as a homogenous entity that can be categorised, while it is assumed that its encounters with media texts can be counted, measured, categorised and generalised.
Media effects research focuses on textual analyses and places no value on the experiences or interpretations of the audience.
Based on its assumptions about audiences, it follows a
quantitative approach, specifcally one that includes media surveys.
The audience's part in the meaning-making process is not taken into account, i.e. effects research disregards the active audience. It is criticised for its refusal to grasp the complex nature of the audience and media behaviour, which results in an inability to offer adequate explanations for and descriptions of media-related behaviour.
Uses and gratifcations
This approach introduced the concept of the active audience to mass media research. It is based on the assumptions that individuals have certain media needs that they attempt to gratify by selecting and using particular media products. The audience is perceived as goal-oriented and their behaviour as motivated.
U&G aims to determine why people select certain media products and what satisfaction they receive from using those.
This approach relies strongly on a quantitative research design, believing that audience characteristics, their needs, preferences and gratifcations can be measured, categorised and statistically analysed.
The approach is criticised for focusing on the individual's media experience and thereby
disregarding the fact that social, economic and political factors contribute to media choice and interpretation. Moreover, despite introducing the active audience, U&G still fails to recognise the multidimensional nature of the audience and is still viewed as a sub-tradition of effects research – an approach that does not acknowledge the active role the audience plays in creating meaning. The approach therefore fails to provide insight into complex audience behaviour.
CRITICAL CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES Media ethnography
This approach takes into account the political, economic and social contexts in which media are consumed, for it assumes that these contexts impact on the audience's use and
interpretations of media texts. It
This approach is part of the interpretative paradigm and ethnographers believe that media experience should be studied from the viewpoint of the audience. For the reason that it aims to provide detailed and in- depth descriptions of media use,
Owing to the value it places on participation and observation, the approach is time-consuming and it sometimes makes almost
impossible demands on the researcher in terms of resources such as time and money. In addition, the approach is criticised
acknowledges the audience as active decoders of media messages, i.e. it argues that the audience performs an important function in the meaning-making process. Moreover, it recognises the multidimensional nature of the audience.
it follows a qualitative approach, which is based mainly on observation.
for focusing solely on the audience while neglecting the role of the text.
Reception research Reception researchers study the
relationship between media producers, texts and consumers, assuming that all three play a critical part in the production of meaning. They attempt to establish how people ft the media into their lives, what role media play in their daily lives, as well as how they make sense of the media they use. The audience is viewed as complex,
heterogeneous and active, yet the power of the text is also taken into consideration.
Reception researchers hold that textual analyses combined with empirical audience research is crucial if we are to understand the interplay between producing and consuming media products, as well as how audiences make sense of the media to which they are exposed. They therefore advocate content analyses and prefer the personal interview as an empirical method.
Reception research is a fairly new tradition and has been developing since the 1980s.
Critical reception
A critical reception approach holds the same assumptions on which media ethnography and reception research are based. A critical approach to audience research, however, advocates an awareness of the nature of audience research, regardless of the approach one chooses to follow. Researchers should be self- refective, acknowledging that they are only interpreters who cannot provide an objective, true and comprehensive representation of media use – they can only contribute in terms of detailed descriptions that offer mere glimpses into the lives of audiences and their experiences with media texts. This study follows a critical reception approach, and approaches the interviews with readers from an ethnographic perspective. The study does not claim to be based on an ethnographic research framework because ethnographical methods are extensive and time-consuming. This ethnographic perspective entails observation and participation to some degree, realising that these details provide insight into media behaviour. Its main method remains the qualitative personal interview, conducted in this case within the audience's natural environment and not in artifcial settings.
Table 4.1: The main approaches to studying the media audience
The nature of audience research and the role of the researcher in this process were briefy mentioned as well. In this regard, a critical approach to audience research holds that a self- refective approach, in which the researcher acknowledges his/her task to describe audiences and media use and not to provide true refections of the audiences’ reality, is crucial. The researcher has to accept that his/her fndings are only interpretations of the audiences' constructs of their own media use and that it is therefore not possible to establish “the truth” about audiences and media use. Lastly, the literature review has demonstrated that there is a great need for qualitative
research on news reception, in particular printed news – and especially in South Africa. We still do not understand why South Africans read newspapers, what role newspapers play in their lives and how they go about using newspapers.
In addition, the chapter has provided an overview of the research design, which is based on a qualitative approach. This approach is ideal for an exploratory study that aims to understand social phenomena, such as tabloid newspapers, for it enables the researcher to provide in-depth and detailed descriptions of media behaviour, which a quantitative approach does not have the capacity to do. Within this framework, various methods were implemented to construct data.
These include: (i) a literature review to place South African tabloids in context; (ii) a content analysis of the Son and discussions with its assistant editor to determine how this newspaper establishes a relationship with its readers; and (iii) questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with readers to gain insight into their media experience and interpretations of the Son. This is only an overview and the detailed discussions on each method will be given in the relevant chapters.
Taking all of the above discussions into account, it is suggested that the readers of the Son are active decoders of this tabloid. They are not subjected to the mercy of media producers with their political and commercial aims. For the reason that text-based analyses often reaffrm our prejudices about media audiences, it is important that the content analysis in the previous chapter be used as a framework only and not be used to form conclusions about audiences. Moreover, it is imperative that the readers of the tabloid, as well as their interpretations and interactions with the newspaper, be taken seriously. One must be open and willing to be surprised by what one fnds.
Furthermore, the important roles of the text and the audience should be acknowledged and the immediate surroundings in which media consumption takes place should be taken into account. It is ultimately concluded that a critical reception approach that includes an ethnographic perspective is most appropriate, since it not only acknowledges the importance of a textual analysis, but also realises the need to study media use in its immediate surroundings in order to gain insight into the relationship between text and audience. This critical reception approach applies research within the qualitative framework, for it has the capacity to provide detailed and in-depth descriptions of audiences' media experiences.
Based on the review provided in this chapter, another two theoretical statements are formulated to guide this study of readers of the Son newspaper (see section 1.4):
MTS3: “Audience” is a complex and multidimensional concept – not a single, homogeneous entity. Audiences hold many different identities, are unpredictable and fuid and, therefore, cannot
be categorised. Moreover, because audiences bring their various backgrounds, experiences and knowledge to texts they arrive at their own interpretations of these. They are consequently not victims of media texts, but active decoders of media texts who play a vital part in the meaning- making process. A textual approach to media audiences often only confrms and reinforces preconceived ideas about audiences and media use. The social and cultural contexts, as well as the immediate environment in which media are consumed, infuence audience interpretations and behaviour and it should therefore be taken into account in seeking to study audience interactions with media texts.
MTS4: Whereas effects research over-emphasises the power of the text, other approaches tend to disregard it. In this regard, reception research holds that if we were to understand the relationship between audiences and texts, it is crucial that we pay attention to the audience's perceptions and interpretations, as well as to the media text itself. This approach acknowledges that audiences are active decoders of media texts, but also realises that the producers of media texts have various tools at hand to encode an intended message and convey it to an audience. Reception researchers, therefore, acknowledge that the encoder and the decoder of the message play critical roles in the meaning-making process and for this reason, they argue, there should be a balance regarding the attention paid to the text and to the readers. Semiotics is a useful approach when one wishes to explore these texts, for it enables the researcher to analyse the structure of a message, while it takes into account that readers ultimately decode these texts and arrive at their own interpretations. Semioticians hold that we communicate with signs and that everything, including colour, a gesture of a spoken or written word, is a sign. These signs are combined by means of coding and this process results in sign systems. When applied to media texts, or the newspaper, this means that the newspapers staff have various sign systems (or communication elements) at their disposal to construct a message for their audience. These include a linguistic sign system (i.e. the stories) and visual sign systems (the photographs, layout, colour and graphics). These systems work in combination to convey messages to readers. By exploring audience encounters with media texts and how these messages are structured, in other words how the sign systems are applied and combined to support each other, researchers could gain insight into how the newspaper perceives its audience and approaches its readers. This exploration will give insight into the signifcation process, or what reception researchers refer to as the meaning-making process. An understanding of how the message is structured and how the encoder perceives its audience will provide a valuable background to exploring the decoding, or interpretation, process. A semiotic approach will therefore enable the researcher to explore one of the two elements reception researchers regard as fundamental to the meaning-making process: the text.
The next chapter will focus on the empirical audience research, which was conducted by means of questionnaires and qualitative semi-structured interviews with readers of the Son. The readers' experiences and interpretations of the tabloid and their encounters with the newspaper will be analysed from their viewpoint in an attempt to establish their relationship with the Son. The chapter will seek to fulfl the ffth research aim regarding the readers' preferences with regard to content and style.
PART 2 Chapter 5