Audiences: What do people do with media?

This week’s lecture was focusing on audiences and what audiences do with media. In this lecture I gained knowledge on the different ways how audience use and consume media in various ways.

The first reading is taken from Marie Gillispie, this reading discusses the relationship between audiences and soap operas by focusing on the links that the audiences create from these soaps, to their owns lives. The reading suggests about the link that woman have with soap operas discussing the reasons why they find them relatable as the characters talk like them in terms of speaking informal, as well then woman have pleasure of ‘gossiping’ about the soap operas with others. I thought this finding intriguing as it discusses that this creates a bond within female friendships.

The second reading I will be writing about is taken from the core text book, the aspect I found intriguing was how it discusses how audiences use the media in a similar way to Gillispie’s reading, as it talks about how audiences create an identify from the media they are exposed to. The reading discusses that audience’s critic themselves in relation to the people in the media and create an identify for themselves from this. I think this reading shows how much influence the media has over an audience, but more importantly how much influence the audience allows the media to have over them for even simply things like the way they talk and dress.

The reading I have found myself for this week by Stuart Hall is very similar to the first reading from Marie Gillispie as I have chosen to focus on the aspect of the relationship that woman create from soap operas as I believe this shows what audiences can do with the media. My reading discusses again how the audience relates themselves to particular characters in this media form and believes that they are going through the same situations as these characters. This reading agrees with all the other readings this week as it secures the idea of how audiences use the media in their own lives. Hall’s reading adds to this as ties in with the theme of creating a personal identify which is mentioned in the core text book, it appears that audiences need to link their lives with the media for their own benefits.

In terms of my own research the methodology I would undertake to analysis how audiences consume media would be qualitative. The research I would produce would be based on conducting interviews and focus groups with female audiences of soap operas, as I would like to research further into the relationship that is created with them and the show.

References

Gillespie, Marie (2003) “Television, Ethnicity and Cultural Change” IN Will Brooker and Deborah Jermyn (eds.) The Audience Studies Reader. London: Routledge.

Hall, S., 1997. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices [online] Available from: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=dAqycFD4PBsC&pg=PA365&lpg=PA365&dq=soap+opera+female+audience&source=bl&ots=383X_NYag0&sig=fijAORUtarfMdna44HV8k1rhMyo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=TBpHUaSGKqSL7Aa2_IHIAQ&sqi=2&ved=0CEIQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=soap%20opera%20female%20audience&f=false [Accessed 15 March 2013].

Long, P and Wall, T (2012) ‘Investigating audiences: what do people do with media’ IN Media Studies: Texts, Production, Context (2nd Edition), London: Pearson. pp 300-337