Week 11 Lecture 2Audiences Worldwide

Methods of Audience Research

How can we apply audience research to

Global contexts?

Today• Last time we re-examined various audience

theories.• Today we ask whether these theories can

be applied globally across cultures.• How have audiences grappled control away

from editors?• Consider if audiences are becoming more

fragmented – even within one culture – but also ask why TV is increasingly “formatted”.

Three Types of Media• Primary Media: We play close

attention – for example in the cinema or when we read a novel.

• Secondary media: The media might be in the background but we are not concentrating on it. EG, having the radio on while you do work.

• Tertiary media – The media is present but we are unconscious of it. For example, advertising placards on your walk to school that you don’t pay attention to.

Gratifications (or codes) are not the same across cultures

• Needs are not the same across culture: Harre: “Different cultures, by emphasizing one sort of emotion rather than another, may produce people whose psychological systems differ from one another” (103).

Audiences in “non Western society”

• All the theories we spoke about last time were developed in the US and the UK

• Indeed, so much of Media Studies is Western• There is a disconnect between how television

(and other mass media) are theorized in the West, • …and how they play out in practice with global

audiences in the West and “the Rest”• Television globally was either:

– 1. Heralded as “Progress” or “development”– 2. Viewed with suspicion – what will happen to “national

culture?”

• “Traditional versus modern”• Unfair binary when it comes to

studying mass mediated culture outside the West.

• We must pay attention to the “multiple interpretations provoked by media texts”

Example Ramayan in India

• Late 1980s• Sunday morning series

on national television• Moral questions:

religious stories on state run television

• English speaking elites did not like it: cheesy and over-sentimental, “ice cream to be lapped up by eager multitudes”

Audience Reaction to Ramayan

• Wildly popular: fans rioted when the power went out during broadcast one weekend.

• Worker “Now we have seen it, we know it and believe it”

• College teacher “It is good they are showing it, this way our children will learn about our culture”

• Another viewer “often tears come to my eyes. Then I think that life should be like this…on the basis of ideals”

Contrast to American TV• In the US, emphasis on “private ambition

and material success” (remember Dallas).• In India, the most popular program at the

same decade was about family values and religious identity.

• Can “uses and gratifications” or the “pleasure of watching” be theorized the same way when watching a show like this?

Anthropological Approach to Media/ Rise of Media Ethnography

• Quotes from Ramayan fans are an example of this school of studying media.

• Since mid 1980s• Based around anthropological principles of

observation•  the researcher enters into the culture of the group

and uses questions and interviews to try to understand media engagement from the perspective of the group. 

• Lets look at two examples of anthropological studies of audience that put theories to the test.

•  

Radio – not so solitary.• Uses and Gratifications theory – uses for radio• Jo Tacchi (2002) – interviewed and observed

how Britons listened to radio.– To feel less lonely: Deborah “I stick the radio

on…it is comapary…the reason I like talk shows rather than [music]…knowing someone else is around.

– To relax: Anne “I look forward to time at home to just chill out…radio and TV.”

– To share with a partner: one woman changed her radio station habits based on who she was dating.

Map: Tonga and Papua New Guinea

Tongan Movie going• Elizabeth Hahn (2002) studied filmgoers in Tonga.• Films have been shown there since 1920s• Always with major audience participation• Examples from elsewhere?• Rocky Horror (USA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gS27fuPf6ME )– Back in Tonga…One 73 year old man described watching “a

film about Jesus Christ” and people in the audience were singing hymns.

• Mostly Western movies are shown – no native film industry

• Is this “media imperialism”?

Tongan Movie going• Movies would totally change their culture?• Wrong: they adapted films to fit their

existing performance culture• Language – people can’t understand

everything and so enjoy only action scenes– Interpreters do more than translate, they narrate

the story with jokes and extra information.– One older person said “we would ask, who is the

interpreter? First, and “What is the film” second.

Tongan Movie going• At least – that’s how it was.• With VCRs women and kids tend to stay

home to watch “video” where young men and women (teens) “go to the movies”

• Translators/Interpreters are no longer needed for films.

• Still, we can understand from this study how audiences adapt technology to their culture – its not just imposed upon them.

Dangers When Studying Audiences

Dangers! When Studying Audiences.

• 1. Imagining that all audiences resemble contemporary television and film audiences.

• 2. Treating audiences as if they were objects not relationships.

Adapted from Hobart, M.

• 3. Eurocentrism: Assuming that the way Euro-American audiences are today is how all audiences are, always have been, or should be

• 4. False generalization: Sentences that read ‘Audiences like/dislike/enjoy/are bored by…’

• 5. Mind-Reading: Sentences that read: ‘Audiences think/like/are engaged by…’

Dangers! When Studying Audiences.

Adapted from Hobart, M.

Are we becoming more fragmented as audiences even though our “media diet” becomes more

homogenized?

Fragmentation and Segmentation

• Technology allows us to have more channels• More channels means more diverse content.• More diverse content means audience

fragmentation.• 50 years ago, we’d all watch the same news

programme at night and read the same paper – not anymore.

• Does this lead to “fewer common experiences for a society?”

Fragmentation and Segmentation

• One study found that in Sweden, since private TV became widely available “people tend to watch more of their favorite genres, and less of other genres.” (125).

• “As the number of viewing options expands, people who share nationality are less likely to attend to the same information or entertainment media forms and content” (125).

• Is this good? Is this bad? Does it matter? Because at the same time ….

Homogenization of Media Formats…

• Export of TV formats…• The United Kingdom is the biggest

exporter of TV formats in the world:•   Overall sales of UK formats rose by

25 per cent in 2009 to £119 million. • Among the UK’s recent strongest format

performers are such programmes as The X Factor, Dancing on Ice, Strictly Come Dancing, Wife Swap, Come Dine With Me, Top Gear and Masterchef.

• Interestingly, these are all Formats where “the audience takes control” are the most popular on Television .

• Source: The Foreign Offcie

Where to?• Sales of British programs to “Asia, up 57% year

on year and Eastern Europe, up 43%. Sales to Canada increased by 43%, while France rose 29%.

• “A dozen media companies are able to do business worldwide by selling the same idea, and audiences seem to be watching regional variations of the same show.” (Waisbord, 2008).

 

Why is format programming so popular?

• Bypasses protectionist laws – locally produced shows not “foreign” and can get around the law.

• And…they tend to make a lot of money….

Watch today…• Afghan Star (2009)• “A look at how contestants on the musical contest

program "Pop Idol" in Afghanistan risk their lives to appear on the show.”

• Western format exported to another region – example of homoginization of media formats.

• At the same time, a completely different cultural context:

• How do different audiences interpret and change the same television format?