Case Study 2: Media Institutions Ch6

Analyze the excerpt from Media Institutions and Audiences, Ch. 6 Approaches to Audiences

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Media texts considerably affect audiences in a variety of ways. Through their outcomes of emotion and the vagaries of social science, audiences are continuously considered as a key concept of Media Studies. Media texts easily influence the working class just as visual media influences children. The ‘uses and gratifications’ theory model suggests that audiences use the media rather than being used by the media. In regard to the audience, this may help give them a sense of personal identity or help them gather information. Contrastingly, it could also gratify the desire for entertainment or assist social interaction.

Audiences also use entertainment to help them escape reality. Audiences choose texts based on what they desire at the moment. For example, if audiences want to be entertained rather than educated at a given time, they choose texts that they believe will entertain them. Audiences propose a number of particular ‘uses and gratifications,’ and there are many genres supporting them. Additionally, the ‘uses and gratifications’ approach also assumes that individuals have self-sufficiency from the media. As this is an unrealistic perspective, this approach widens our understanding of how audiences engage with media texts.

The ethnographic approach was developed after media theorists realized audiences needed to be treated like human beings rather than statistics or abstract models. Ethnographic study proposes the idea for researchers to become part of their audience in study. This will give closer insights into what audiences think of texts. The ‘uses and gratifications’ theory emphasized entertainment and the driving forces behind most media production. The concept remains difficult as we never know what is exactly going on in an individual’s head when they consume media texts.