Representation Theories (Shirky and Stuart Hall)

 End of Audience Theory - Clay Shirky:

Audience behaviour has changed due to the internet and the ability for audiences to create their own content at home is now becoming more common due to the lower cost of technology. This new audience not only consumes media, but produces it, creating the term 'prosumer'.

His theory revolves around the main idea that there is no longer a  passive audience, but now is changing to a more active audience.

• A passive audience is more likely to accept the messages encoded into a media text without challenging it, and are more likely to accept and be affected by these messages which are based off creator's own ideologies.
• An active audience is more engaged and responds to a media text in different ways and is capable of challenging the ideas encoded in it. This wanting to interact with the media has been made more accessible and easier due to Web 2.0

Shirky believes that this change into an active audience is because technology has changed audience expectations and behaviour. For example, now audiences are more expectant to like, comment, and give their opinions on a media text.

This has also lead to a decline in the issue and use of magazines, newspapers, radios and other forms of 'old media' as audiences are more engaged and have switched to more active media platforms that are more accessible due to the proliferation of technology. Even some magazines and newspapers have switched to online forms as a result of this, e.g. The Times now has digital versions of newspapers, as well as websites and an app. This, as well as interactive options, now has to be kept up in order to keep audience engagement keeping the business alive.

Another point brought up in this theory is that audiences like to 'speak back' to producers of media. This hierarchy of having producers and directors at the top and audiences at the bottom has changed as they are now being more integrated to allow for this. For example, social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter has allowed for audiences to interact and communicate for people creating media, giving their opinions on what they like and what they don't like. Because of this, there is a more equality of power and this hierarchy is starting to dissolve, and also technology audiences are also starting to gain more power.

Stuart Hall's Representation Theory:

Stuart Hall challenged the idea that a subject has one specific meaning. In fact, he believed that something doesn't have a specific meaning until it is represented in the media, and we see this in news channels and other media texts that media actually gives meaning to these events, for example, when Donald Trump got voted as President.

The media can represent these things in either a positive or negative light, and we see this in different newspapers talking about the same event. This can influence audiences on what to think and how to react. Stuart Hall shows that representation isn't an after occurence of media that already has a fixed meaning, but rather a constitutive one, which has power to establish meaning.

'Media representations aren't reflections of things that already have meaning, they are the meaning makers of things that happen in reality.'

Much of society's understanding of the world is based on meanings which have been created by media producers which are in power as they try to fix a particular meaning to a certain thing.

Taking a closer look at the hegemonic organisations of the world and the people who actually make them up, what we almost always find is wealthy, straight men, and as a result of this the representations that we see in the media tend to reflect their ideology on things such as politics, social issues, gender, race etc. The results of this is that stereotypes are generated because of the limited representations the hegemonic elite show us.

Indians have been portrayed in a very stereotypical way in many movies, e.g. Peter Pan

In each case, the hegemonic media organisations offer us a repeatedly limited representation of aspects of the world in order to attempt to fix a preferred or dominant meaning to it in society. We see this mainly in the representation of people of colour, gay people and women. When these stereotypes are repeatedly used over the years, the lack of diversity and representations narrow society's perceptions of these things, so these representations become normalised and we stop questioning it. In extreme examples, ethnic minorities can become stereotyped as troublemakers in the UK, and even though not all audiences are going to accept these media representations shown by elite media producers, as we know from the ability to reject or negotiate with these messages encoded, the point is that the media producers are attempting to fix a meaning onto something for the majority of society to possibly assert dominance, to keep those in non-elite groups in their place, or to maintain social supremacy.

Dominant/Preferred Reading:

• This is how the producer wants the audience to view and interpret the media text.
  
  
• Audience members will take this position if the messages are clear and if the audience member is of the same age and culture.

Oppositional Reading:

• This is when the audience rejects the preferred reading, and creates their own meaning for the text.
• This can happen if the media contains controversial themes that the audience member disagrees with.

Negotiated Reading:

• This is a compromise between the dominant and oppositional readings, where the audience accepts parts of the producer’s views, but has their own views on parts as well.