Denham and Matheson Essay Example For Students

Denham and Matheson Essay The media is able to build up an explosive cocktail, manufacturing stories, reporting on events before they occur and producing alarmist forecasts so that if and when a problem occurs it achieves the notion of a self-fulfilling prophesy. As Poulton (2005:31) describes: The media thus provides the news that fulfils the expectation they create, whether or not they elicit fulfilling behaviour this demonstrates how news values work and how the media actively engage in news-making. Poultons (2005) description of the process of news-making not only emphasises a manufactured process, but allows for further debate concerning the capitalist economy of news-making. From a general production perspective, Marx (1946, in Murdock, 2000) states that in a capitalist economy, raw materials are transformed into saleable goods and services. Whether it is to achieve audience ratings or actual consumer purchases, the media are part of a capitalist economy. Where television works to gain ratings and advertising revenue, the printed press works to sell copies of newspapers or magazines and so on. The needs and wants of the consumers must be met in order to create capital and recognition of the processes of manufacturing are an integral part to production (Ang, 1991; Hagen, 1999). The media violence debate has also extended to include thoughts concerning media output and its influence on human behaviour. In the past this has been documented in many high profile violence and murder cases such as the James Bulger case and the Columbine killings. Livingstone (2005:12) suggests that the media has often been the scapegoat for the supposed moral impact of family life, on ethnic stereotyping or on crime statistics; however this is contested by an audience research agenda which is driven by the conflict of interests surrounding the issue (ibid. , 2005). Violence is only one such representation which is discussed in terms of media output and the influence upon audiences, other popular topics include: politics, health, racism and war (Iyengar, 1997). When approaching the subject of direct media influence upon crime rates using stimulus/response research, Berkowitz and Macaulay (1971, in Berkowitz and Heimer Rogers, 1986) found significant increases in the rate of violent crimes following several sensational murders in the 1960s. However, Berkowitz and Heimer Rogers (1986) go on to propose that these incidences are not like for like copycat incidents. They claim that the concept of cognitive-neoassociationism provides a framework to analyse these phenomena. They state that, peoples reactions to what they read, see, or hear in the media depend considerably on the way the message is interpreted and the thoughts and memories that are consequently activated (ibid. , 1986:58). The media and popular culture are hypothesised to be part of a set of factors that contribute to societal violence as it is difficult to measure human thought or to precisely know how media influence their audiences (ibid. , 1986). This particular stance further supported by Lull (2000:100) who argues that people mediate the influence of the media, particularly if they are within a setting that allows for social mediations to occur, i. e. with family, friends or peers. This allows recipients to raise questions, pose criticism or reinforce positive messages. Lull (2000) claims that the media audience has not changed much, but that it has just taken researchers longer to describe the complex relationships between the media and its interpreters. As an alternative to principally analysing the direct effects of media output, research has shifted to include the audience into the large body of research. Allor (1988, in Mosco and Kaye, 2000:31) suggests that the concept of the audience is the underpinning prop for the analysis of the social impact of mass communication in general. Though Moores (1993:1), finds difficulty in defining what the audience actually is, suggesting that there is no stable entity which we can isolate and identify as the media audience. Recommendation Report EssayKlapper (1966:18) theorises that generally people will expose themselves to those mass communications which are in accord with their existing attitudes and interests. With this in mind, it is taste and pleasure which Ang (1985) and Radway (1991) emphasised was a key positive effect that audiences derived from media texts, which Ang (1985:17) further comments is an idea which is at odds with the doctrine that mass culture primarily manipulates the masses. Though Marxist beliefs will detail that the pleasure derived from texts is a false kind of pleasure a trick of manipulating the masses more effectively in order to lock them in the eternal status quo of exploitation and oppression and to further the capitalist economy, it only presents one side of the argument because to successfully sell a commodity, such as a media text, the commodity itself must have some usefulness (ibid. , 1985:17-18). Morley (1992) added that there is the potential for different individuals or groups to operate different decoding strategies in relation to different topics and different contexts. A person might make oppositional readings of the same material in one context and dominant readings in other contexts. He further noted that in interpreting viewers readings of mass media texts, attention should be paid not only to the issue of agreement (acceptance/rejection) but to comprehension, relevance and enjoyment (ibid. , 1992: 126-127). Further Criticism of Halls model raises the question; does the preferred meaning actually exist?. Moores (1993:28) asks of the preferred meaning, Where is it and how do we know if weve found it? Can we be sure we didnt put it there ourselves while we were looking? And can it be found by examining any sort of text? . Moreover, Morley (1981:6) pondered whether it might be the reading which the analyst is predicting that most members of the audience will produce and wondered whether the concept may be applied more easily to news and current affairs than to other mass media genres. Based upon the assumption that widely available communication forms play an important role in mediating society (Matheson, 2005:1), both Matheson (2005) and Wareing (2004) highlight the potential ability of language to create new meanings and inflict power upon society. The previous discussion regarding the media and violence authors such as Denham (1999) and Matheson (2005) detailed the process by which media discourse and verbal reduction may shape forms of representation and ultimately create meaning and agenda.