Audience Responses

Preferred ReadingThis is when an audience understands and agrees with the message given in a media product. For example when the audience reads a piece of text from a magazine they will fully understand the message what the text is saying to the reader. This is from the Reception Theory by Stuart Hall. For example using one magazine cover to demonstrate Preferred Reading- Cosmopolitan- this magazine puts across the message to the audience that this magazine is aimed at women and is about Sex, fashion, makeup and love. It shows this by having girly colours and words on the cover. Like ‘Spice it up’, ‘Eye makeup’ and ‘First Date Rules.’ I have the same interests in what this magazine projects onto its audience. I want to read about first date rules and Miley Cyrus. This makes me want to read the magazine even more because I am a fan of Miley Cyrus. I am understanding that this a magazine for girls so this will make me want to read it because I can see that the magazine cover is pink and has a idol on the front which a lot of girls look up to.

Negotiated ReadingThe audience accept the preferred reading but this preferred reading is modified buy interests experience and they interpret in their own way. This is from the Reception Theory by Stuart Hall. Again using one magazine cover, the example of negotiated reading is:Cosmopolitan- I’m a big fan of Miley Cyrus so her on the cover would make me buy the magazine. I interpret the magazine cover myself because I am a fan of Miley Cyrus this makes me want to read the magazine more. Someone who reads this magazine may not be a fan of Miley Cyrus but they may still want to know about other stuff in the magazine like the fashion and the gossip and makeup. Just because they do not like who is on the cover they still want to read the other content in the magazine. Even though no one looks that perfect in real life because the cover star as been edited and airbrushed to look perfect I still think she looks good and I know that Miley Cyrus has been edited. . I like who is on the cover and I think that it is important to have a women with such talent on front of a very popular magazine because she works hard for her fame compared to these role models off realty shows who do not work hard and girls still look up to them. These are the girls that should not be on the covers of these magazines.

Oppositional ReadingOppositional is the opposite reading depending on your own values and backgrounds. This is the opposite message the product gives. This is also from the Reception Theory by Stuart Hall. An example of this is…Cosmopolitan- I don’t think women should be showed on the cover looking so perfect when in reality no one is perfect because I like who is on the cover this makes me want to buy the magazine. I don’t like about this that women can be airbrushed and edited and girls look at these role models and think that we must look like that. This is all edited and no one has

perfect airbrushed skin and perfect hair. The whole cover page is covered in trying to look good and captions like ‘go down a dress size’ and captions about weight and trends this is making girls think that they need to be slim and they have to wear makeup. Girls will see these captions about weight and think that they need to lose weight if they want to look like the people on the cover off the magazine.

Participatory CultureThis is when the audience is invited to interact with the media and be involved with it. They can ‘have their say’ and feel a more personal aspect about the media they are interacting with. This has become popular with the use of social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Participatory media can include blogs, tagging, hashtags, music-photo-video sharing, podcasts and video blogs. These audiences are very active as they interact with the media and the ideas; it is a direct way to have your say on things. For example – Xfactor on ITV. This show is very popular and it invites people to vote for their favourite acts and has an app where you can join along and comment on what you think of the acts. An after show is available for people to watch where they can ring in the show and tweet and their tweets get read out to the public and opinion’s shared to the public. Radio one has a show on called Dan and Phil, which I listen to on my laptop. This show allows you to use a hashtags on twitter to get involved with discussions and you can text into the show and request songs and say hi to the celebrity guest they have this allows me to interact in a more personal way with what I am listening to.

Cultural Competence

Media texts require audiences to have a certain level of cultural understanding. This means they must have an understanding of language used in media to be able to interpret the symbols and signs used. We can understand meanings in symbols and signs used but this might not always be the case for people in different cultures from ours. The representation of the colour Green is different and varies in lots of countries. In the UK the colour green in represented as Lucky, spring, new life, Greed and jealousy. Whereas in China the colour green is represented as Fertility, Hope, Exorcism and disgrace.A cow in our culture is something that we eat and it’s just a common farm animal where as in a Hindu culture they see cows as a religious animal where they don’t eat it and they adore them. Clothes/films/ songs can have different cultural understanding. Different cultures have different understandings about how clothes and what clothes are worn for example in the travelling cultures young traveller girls wear very outrageous provocative clothing which shows them in sexual way and shows a lot of flesh and this is normal in this culture. It’s just the normal travelling girl attire. Whereas in normal British culture these types of clothes are seen as non respectful clothing and only flusey

kinds of girls wear this type of clothing As you can see the same type of clothing are the same but are seen in different types of ways to two very different cultures. In an Indian culture some films they cannot watch because they contain scenes that are against their religion for example Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, some of the scenes in this film contained violence and rape which in India is inappropriate to watch so they wanted to cut the scenes out but the director refused not to. This is also the same for music and songs because some songs can contain lyrics, which cultures can find offensive for example a song in America culture got banned because the lyrics reflected a tragedy that happened in American and they offended people who were affected by it for example Boomtown Rats, I hate Mondays. This is because a girl went to school and shot all the teachers because she didn’t like Mondays. This was a tragedy in America and the Boomtown Rats sang about it.

Fan CultureFan culture describes and audience taking an active role in the creation of an existing media product. This includes fan fictions of alternative endings to their favourite films, TV shows and books or what they would like to happen to their favourite characters. Fan fiction is now very popular because of the means of social networking where people can share their fan fiction and their ideas of this fan culture of theirs.

People who vlog on YouTube have a massive fan culture such as Zoella and Marcus Butler and Dan and Phil. fandom’s of these British You Tubers create stories including these vloggers and create collages, drawings and mashups of them.

I am a big Fan of the TV show skins and I follow a Fan culture on them through Instagram and Twitter. Where I have followed a lot of the pages that are about this TV show and I retweet quotes, pictures and videos that are about this TV show.