Audiences

Audiences only exist through the interactions of people and technology. With the introduction of 20th century technology such as film, radio and television addressing a mass of people, the media industries aimed to control these mass audiences by aiming new communication forms of media that involved a lot of people, things like soaps. When DVD's came around, the amount of audiences increased and it also allowed the viewers to choose to watch what they wanted, when they wanted, instead of having it chosen for them by the broadcaster.

Ross and Nightingale in 2003 provided 5 dimensions to research into audiences:

1. the people involved
2. their activities
3. the media materials they use
4. the media time in which the engagement with media occurs
5. media power structure

However, they noticed that most studies of audiences cannot include all 5 of these dimensions, therefore during research, there had to be a lesser emphasis on medias contribution to events and more so on the people involved and their activities.

Adorno and Horkheimer.

In their book, Enlightenment As Mass Deception, Adorno and Horkheimer express their view that culture industries use the media to exploit the powerless, or the lower classes in order to make money and say that nothing is made unless there is hope of making profit.

"The ossified forms—such as the sketch, short story, problem film, or hit song—are
the standardized average of late liberal taste, dictated with threats from above."



When I use the term masses, I refer to the everyday person, who does not hold a place of power in society. It is these people that culture industries aim their advertisements at.

Raymond Williams.

Raymond Williams pointed out that there were 3 general catagories of culture. These are:

1. "Ideal" - Where culture is in a state or process of human perfection.
2. "Documentary" - "culture is the body of intellectual and imaginative work, in which, human thought and experience are variously recorded."
3. "Social" - Culture is a description of a way of life that "expresses certain meanings and values not only in art and learning but also in institutions and ordinary behaviour."

He also said that there was value in all 3 of the above definitions as it is necessary to look for meanings and values and to record the creative human activity in institutions and forms of behaviour aswell as in art and intellectual work.

However, in an example of Antigone of Sophocles, Williams points out that we cannot just use one of these general definiations of culture to fully understand anything.

Raymond Williams comes up with three levels of culture.

1. The lived culture of a particular time and place - only people who live in this time and place are fully accessable.
2. Recorded culture of every kind, from art to everyday facts.
3. Culture of selected tradition - A past period is studied by new periods, which eventually forms a tradition.

Disclaimer - All the ideas are Raymond Williams. Not mine :)