Intro to Communication

Intro to Communication AK/SOSC 2410 9.0/6.0 Summer 2006 Course Director: Pierre Ouellet www.atkinson.yorku.ca/~sosc2410/

From Mass to Public to Audience

Lecture Outline • Reviewing the conception of the mass; • Essentialism vs, Constructivism; • Commodification and commercialization; • the public sphere, public opinion, publicity and public life; • the emergence of the audience; • the active versus passive debate; • uses and gratification theory; • the audience as public versus as market. • Audience Research Traditions • Structural • Behavioural • Cultural

Reviewing the Conception of the Mass • Three principles of social mass; • relationship between mass and individuality; • intellectual and aesthetic reaction to the mass; • individual development of consumer market; • introduction of the mass media.

Essentialism The term describes the idea that creatures, including humans, objects and things (texts – representations – artifacts) are possessed of particular characteristics and attributes which constitute their true “nature.” The essence of a thing or being is fixed and unchanging and possessed of a dual character, both as the innate property and the external typology to which all objects or beings conform.

Constructivism The prevailing academic and scholarly opinions dismiss, on the whole, most essentialist arguments, proposing instead that the body itself, as prototype of essentialist existence, is materially shaped by social ideologies, cultural practices and personal experience.

Commodification • The transformation of an object or practice from the realm of use-value to exchange-value and even fetish-value. • A Marxist concept that describes all things in a society (even people) as commodities. All material and social phenomena are products of a society and contribute to the production of other components in that society. This concept emphasizes the Marxist strategy of evaluating everything in terms of the economic exchange and competition occurring in culture. • www2.cumberlandcollege.edu/acad/english/litcritweb/glossary.htm

Commercialization • Sequence of actions necessary to achieve market entry and general market competitiveness of new innovative technologies, process and products. (IPCC) www.climatechange.ca.gov/glossary/letter_c.html • The process of developing markets and producing and delivering products for sale (whether by the originating party or by others). As used here, commercialization includes both government and private sector markets.  grants.nih.gov/grants/funding/phs398/instructions2/p3_definitions.htm

The Public, Publicity and Public Life • Early conceptions of the public; • Habermas and the Public Sphere; • public versus private public spheres; • the creation of Public Opinion and the control of mass media information; • the public as audience.

Habermas and the Public Sphere According to Habermas, the public sphere is "a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed. Access is guaranteed to all citizens. A portion of the public sphere comes into being in every conversation in which private individuals assemble to form a public body" ("PS" 49). A rhetorical theory of the public sphere emphasizes that "sphere" is a metaphor. The public does not exist prior to the conversations that bring it into being. ... www.wfu.edu/~zulick/MovementTheory/glossary.html A concept in continental philosophy and critical theory, the public sphere contrasts with the private sphere, and is the part of life in which one is interacting with others and with society at large. Much of the thought about the public sphere relates to the concept of identity and identity politics.  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_sphere

Distinguishing Public from Private Spheres • The Public Sphere included matters of political and social concern while economic and family matters remained private. • The Public Sphere was the domain of males of a certain social class and was therefore exclusionary by nature. • The “disinterested idealism” of the Public Sphere was, according to critics, a self-serving illusion which is maintained to this day in notions of philanthropy and other such discourses.

Public Opinion • Often proposed as the representative expression of popular/populist ideas, values or beliefs framed in terms of social practices, current events or political agendas. • Critical theorists and other social analysts point to the history of “public opinion” and the work of Lippmann and others to discuss the agenda-setting and social engineering aspirations of the practices of gathering and disseminating “public opinion.”

The Emergence of the Audience • Historical traditions and characteristics; • the origins of the modern audience; • the active versus passive debate; • the audience as market; • a typology of mass audience formation.

Historical Traditions and Characteristics According to McQuail, early public events or performances 1. were planned and organized; 2. they were public in nature; 3. their content was secular and oriented to the enjoyment, entertainment and pedagogy of those in attendance; 4. the attendance had a voluntary aspect; 5. these events occurred typically within an urban environment and often had a commercial basis; 6. these events were part of a larger apparatus which included writers, performers, musicians, producers and so forth; 7. these events conformed to a set of conventions which defined not only their content but the nature of those who attended them; as such, performances could be differentiated according to class, gender, race and so forth.

The Modern Audience and Technological Change • The first “modern” audience can be said to be the result of the invention of the printing press; • Every modern technological change brought about a new set of concerns about audience effects and new research methods to understand these effects; • The dialectic of alienation and community has been the meta-narrative of modern audience formation and research.

Conceptual Origins of the Modern Audience • as an "ideal type;" • of considerable size and widely dispersed; • with anonymity of membership; • with a shifting and changing composition; • without a sense of collective identity; • not "rule bound" in the traditional sense of the term; • appearing to be subject to outside influence; • without interpersonal relationships between members as well as the outside source (message/text); • the nature of the communication was seen as inherently manipulative in intent; • in the end, a pejorative connotation came to be applied to this type of social formation.

The Active vs. Passive Audience Debate • Original meaning of concepts; • The passive audience as shift in participatory mode from interaction to concern with content; • Eventually assumes negative connotations based of the fear of effects and “the docile subject.” • Has been rethought in terms of “uses and gratification theory.”

Uses and Gratification Theory Uses and gratification theory challenges the assumptions of the passive nature of the audience consumption of mass media texts in mass society. It proposes that the viewer actively participates in the production of meaning as well as deriving a variety of pleasures and other necessary emotional uses from their relationship with texts. Uses and gratification theory is based on several assumptions, including • the intentionality of texts, their modes of construction and the subjective nature of intertextual signifying relationships (against the purely transmissive model). • the idea that the media reflects the lifeworld; • the universality of human experience; • the primacy of the appeal to emotions (Plato vs Aristotle) and the possibility of oppositional responses to dominant meanings.

Uses and Gratification Theory • To be amused • To see authority figures exalted or deflated • To experience the beautiful • To share experience with other • To satisfy curiosity and be informed • To identify with the deity and the divine plan • To find distraction and diversion • To experience empathy • To experience extreme emotions without guilt • To find models to imitate • To gain identity

Uses and Gratification Theory • To gain information about the world • To reinforce belief in justice • To reinforce belief in romantic love • To reinforce belief in magic, the marvelous, the miraculous • To see others make mistakes • To see order imposed on the world • To participate vicariously in history • To be purged of unpleasant emotions • To obtain outlet for sexual drives in a guilt-free context • To explore taboo subjects with impunity • To experience the ugly • To affirm moral, spiritual and cultural values • To see villain in actions

The Creation of Niche Markets • Audience remains insular; • Part of re-feudalization process – without oversight – transparency and accountability; • Brings about the privatization of public space; • Still operates according to the logic of commercialized culture industry; • Transmissive model; • Top-down hierarchy; • Professionalized communication; • New technologies and concentration allow for “niche” message to replace “mass” message with same effect.

The Audience as Market • members are seen as aggregate of individual consumers; • size and limits are defined primarily through economic criteria; • there exists no necessary relationship between members of a given market or demographic, save for patterns of consumption and socioeconomic status; • there are no social or normative relations with the mediated text; • there is no conscious awareness of membership or identity as part of a given audience; • this formation does not provide the basis for continuity and is thus considered highly unstable at the individual level; • research interests focus only on size of membership and individual patterns of consumption.

Media Models - Market and Public Sphere

A typology of Mass Media Audience Formation The conception of the audience which proposes society as the source and focuses on the receiver of the mass mediated message is divided into the social group, understood as the general public, and the gratification set which is based on personal need and desire. In considering the media as the source responsible for audience formations, we can distinguish between an orientation to content referred to as fan group or taste culture at the micro level and an affinity for a particular channel or medium at the macro level. Society as Source Media as Source

Audience Research tradition • The structural approach • The behavioural approach • The socio-cultural tradition

Traditions in Audience Research

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Intro to Communication