 Hi everyone. In this video I'd like to talk to you about the concept of reception analysis as a portion of critical media studies. And with this video if you're following along the progression of these videos we've we're taking a little bit of a turn away from some the perspective of individual groups or the organizational creation of these things and really focusing in on the audience and their role in this whole avenue of critical media studies. So reception analysis is starting our look down that avenue of things in the audience in this whole crazy game of critical media studies. So let's take a look at reception analysis. First of all reception analysis examines the role of the audience in the process of meaning making in the media. Remember that all of this is really interpretive and that's where we start to focus on the audience that when we study any kind of media or when we take in any kind of media that it's really an interpretive process dependent on especially looking at reception analysis here the the role of the audience in interpreting and then making meaning out of that media examining exactly what that means. There are a variety of related theories to reception analysis that we're going to take a quick look at some of these and then spend a little more time on others but in the early days reception analysis really focused on centered around what's called the hypodermic needle approach. A hypodermic needle approach meaning that media really is just injected into our brains essentially and that you know really doesn't take into account the complexity of the human mind and the various interpretations of that media but we're really just saying that the that media is kind of pushed into our consciousness and we just accept it mindlessly that's sort of the hypodermic needle approach that media serves to relay that information and then we take it in and that's really to just kind of like a needle just kind of shoots that directly into our brain. We very quickly progress kind of past this approach with the idea of there's really more to it than that in what's called the two-step flow approach the two-step flow approach. So where the hypodermic needle approach said you know media is just pushed directly into the individual and that's it the two-step flow approach added an additional layer of what to call opinion leaders. So it says that media really goes to these opinion leaders who are prominent people in the society who are the people that other individuals kind of follow along with to a certain extent they take their cue from them. Now this could be you know in our modern day it could be celebrities and things like that we think of those people as opinion leaders but there's also a lot of other opinion leaders or what we would call significant others in the development of our ideas and things. So when you're a child for example your parents would be very strong opinion leaders or community leaders people that you really look up to would be opinion leaders. So when they see something in the media or take this in their stance really does affect yours it doesn't mean that the individual automatically just goes along with that again we're not mindless zombies just doing whatever people tell us necessarily but but we are more inclined to follow the lead of those opinion leaders and so two-step flow approach inserts that additional layer between people and the media the individuals and the media. Let's get into what we call cultivation analysis which really emphasized and focused initially on the idea of violence in the media that you know the kind of most common example of cultivation analysis is that the belief was that when children watch violence in the media it causes them to be violent that that was sort of the cause or the identified as the reason for why there was an increasing amount what they considered an increasing amount of violence in young people was that because they were watching more violence on tv and that gave them the idea that well the world is a violent place so you know it also goes to the idea of when we see on the news media constantly stories about break-ins or you know hold-ups and things on the street people being mugged on the street then we start to behave in a more fearful manner because it cultivates that fear in us from seeing that on the media whether it's in the news or whether it's on these violent tv shows or just tv shows in general when we watch shows that feature people being robbed and murdered that we start to believe that's kind of the norm of the world it cultivates that belief in us but so cultivation analysis was a factor in studying the impact of media on the audience or the audience's role in how we interpret these things that that if we see that constantly in the media then we start to believe that's the reality of the world another really kind of more modern thinking about reception analysis or theory that informs reception analysis i should say is what we call gender setting theory and this is you know to broadly categorize it it's the idea that the media does not tell us what to think like it does in the hypodermic needle approach right then in the hypodermic needle approach the the media is really telling us what to think it's it's providing those thoughts and putting them in our head agenda setting theory says that the media doesn't tell us what to think it tells us what to think about or it informs heavily what we think about which is interesting and there is sort of this triangular aspect to it as you can see here that we have our own perception of reality that's based on our reality what we see in the world what we experience those types of things but then we also have and and the media is informed by what they choose to put in front of us we'll get into this and a little more but but the media makes choices they can't tell us about everything that happens all over the world and can't tell us about what happens every day in our own personal lives right so they have to pick and choose and they set the agenda what are they going to talk about and then that kind of informs us about well this must be important if they're talking about it on the news or if this is what's being featured in movies and television shows and things then it must be important so it sets that agenda for what are we going to think about and what's going to occupy that that you know space in our mind that we reserve for processing information right so we not only have the reality that comes to us through our own world but the reality that then is filtered through the media who chooses then what to talk about again selection omission and framing of stories we'll talk about this in just a second a little more detail but but it goes through those processes and then kind of tells us you know oh these are the things that we should be focusing on so we have these dual influences not only the reality itself but then the reality of what the media is telling us is important and what we should be focusing on next you have uses and gratification theory and this is this posits that people will pursue media that that provides them a pleasure that gives them pleasure right that things that we enjoy or things that we feel like are important to us things that we feel like will have a strong impact on our lives and have you know the ability to influence our lives in in whatever way so the uses and gratification theory says that people will use and seek out media that performs those functions and kind of exclude others right that will that will focus in on on certain media whether that's media platform or media channel like a specific tv show or television channel that that we feel is especially important to us in terms of either providing us with enjoyment or with functional information that we can use to better our lives and that the people will naturally gravitate toward those things and exclude others these are all just i went through these pretty quickly because they're kind of hodgepodge of different theories that will provide the foundation for reception analysis and inform some of these other theories but really want to focus and spend a little more time on some of these other areas more specifically so the first one we're going to take a look at is was developed by steward hall in in some work that he published in 1973 that focuses on kind of the encoding and decoding process and the impact that the audience has on that process and and that the way that the audience influences those things so it starts with you know on the on the kind of the creator side the organizational or creator side of things and says okay the organizations or the people who are creating this media have a specific framework of knowledge meaning their experiences their beliefs their values their cultures so forth that create kind of who they are then also their relations of production so what kind of media is this that will influence the type of thing that they're sharing with us and then the technical infrastructure that they have through which they provide that media so the the the organization or the creator of this media this artifact has those specific things going on then they engage in a process of what's called encoding they have to decide how to share that information with us right so um so they're they're creating meaning in the way that they choose to to share this again through technological aspects is this going to be a video is it going to be a written article is it going to be a book is it you know long form short form so they're making choices about encoding there what kind of language are they going to use in in presenting this material and sharing this information and or or what kind of visual choices will they make what kind of symbols are they going to use that's what we call encoding right so they're they're making all these choices as to how they're going to convey this information and those choices have meanings they're they're choosing some things and excluding others and and doing so in a conscious or subconscious way that that provides that that meaning in how they choose to encode this information at the same time on the other side of the world here you have the audience right you have the audience who is has their own framework of knowledge they have their own things going on their own experiences their own uh cultures their own backgrounds their own beliefs values attitudes those types of things then they also have a a relation uh of production how are they how are they taking this in and how are they processing it right and their own technical infrastructure and we know that different people have access to different types of technology so those are important things that are happening on the audience side of things then the audience is going through what we call the decoding process the the content creator chose ways to convey this information the symbology right the language and the the images that they choose and the technology that they choose to use to convey this information on the other side the audience is decoding trying to understand first of all what's the language being used here what are these symbols and then what do they mean and is there some deeper meaning right so what do they mean on the surface you know what is that is that a cow is that a dog is it a car is it whatever and then what does that mean why did the audience why did the creator choose that particular thing how does that all work together why did they choose this word instead of some others and uh how does that influence my thinking so the audience themselves is creating meaning or have that meaning structures the second type of meaning structure right so we have the encoding creating meaning structure on the creator side and the decoding creating structure on the audience side and then those combine to create that that program as meaningful discourse right the program is meaningful discourse though so the the combined efforts there between the encoding the decoding and all the various frameworks of knowledge at play for the creator in the audience combined to create that program is meaningful discourse and then it comes back again that creates it's kind of cyclical that creates a new framework of knowledge for both the audience and the creator and and they're influenced by that for the next round of encoding and decoding and so forth right so this is steward hall's idea of encoding and decoding moment this creates a really important foundation for some of the work that's to follow for example uh then you have a gentleman named john fisk who kind of expanded on hall's work and said okay yeah great we have i agree we have the framework of knowledge from the the organizer and the creator side right and they encode they make choices that encode that information we also have this idea of program is meaningful discourse the fisk is following along with all this and yep yep yep check check check i love all this stuff and the audience is in fact decoding and creating that second type of meaning structure but then he diverges from hall and says that but there's more to this decoding than just you know it's not as simple as the audience as a whole has one framework of knowledge in truth the audience has multiple meanings because the audience also has multiple frameworks of knowledge and different things so each person or group that is receiving this information has their own framework of knowledge and that as a result creates these various meanings so that on the audience side of things you have multiple meanings being created from a single artifact because everyone's going to interpret it differently right that's interesting that makes sense i think that logically that follows along we know that each person their framework of knowledge is very individualized and so that that does you know that that tracks i think that makes sense then you have this idea of the you know um celeste condit who's another researcher came along after fisk and said okay you know i'm sort of buying this i i understand this and i agree with what fisk is saying here however the structure in this model still really implies and really is applicable to what we would call a dominant culture base right that people this is this is being created by a specific you know there's that dominant culture we've talked about that before that you know really media historically has been created by heterosexual white men because they have the power in the structure and they're they have the ownership of the media organizations and so forth so the the vast majority of media that comes to us comes from that that that culture group right the dominant power group of heterosexual white men and is influenced by that and so it has meaning in particular for that same group or especially you know it is particularly heterosexual white men but then you can get into you know that would have one meaning probably one meaning group and then another meaning group is probably dominantly white women because they can at least relate to the the a lot of the aspects of the the the of white people being the dominant power group and and having the the power to create that media and so forth so they they're going to have more meaning and more understanding it's going to relate more to them than it would for what what what conduct called the marginalized audience right so what about minorities you know what about what about african-americans and hispanics who again when the predominance of media is created by heterosexual white men that's who's going to be featured in the media that's the viewpoint you know and you add in the idea of culture and for example um you know the um the the prominent values of christianity in the creation of the united states and and that dominate the united states historically that that's going to come through but what about people of what about people of color what about people of different religious beliefs who can't necessarily relate to the values that are being conveyed because of that dominant power group she calls this the marginalized audience and they will have meaning but they won't you know if they watch it at all they will have a separate meaning of course but they may not be watching it at all so that that audience is really separate in in decoding they may not be decoding it at all because they it's not really intended for them doesn't relate to them doesn't appeal to them in that way so so kind of points out that that while you have all this other stuff this is really still predominantly describing um the the predominant group i think i failed to mention this is what we call polysomy and polysomy just means multiple meanings right this this idea that fist came up with this polysomy meaning there's multiple meanings literally polysomy means multiple meanings poly multiple uh semi meanings right so um so uh that's really what we're describing here is the fact that that the encoding and decoding process really results in multiple meanings even more so condit says when you factor in this marginalized audience who have a completely different interpretation if they're interpreting at all so this is the basic ideas of polysomy and discussion around polysomy um and and um so condit goes on to talk about what we call um polyvalence polyvalence valence meaning meaning but uh interpretation valence it would be you know kind of interpretation of of things so polyvalence has to do with how are the different audiences interpreting it um uh just in terms of uh you know good or bad or or the intensity with which they're doing so and so forth so these different ideas of polysomy that come into to play here another you know extension of this kind of discussion of polysomy came from a researcher named liya uh seturelli seturelli i think is how you pronounce her name liya seturelli who said that okay great all of that is is uh is well and good it's also really not indicative enough of what's happening it's a little too too focused on the audience as the primary uh interpreter of meaning and and the only variances of meaning um coming from the audience so the you know she said that really this polysomy is not broad enough it's it's really uh polysomy itself is uh polysomus meaning there's multiple meanings behind those multiple meanings uh in in that whole process so she uh really described this process in in breaking it down into three different um uh factors here uh the first is what she called resistive reading resistive reading where polysomy exists as a quality of the audience so kind of what we've been talking about right where fisk and and kind of came from this this idea of of the audience providing multiple meanings and multiple interpretations based on their own frameworks of understanding is what seturelli called resistive reading but there's also she said different um avenues here one being strategic ambiguity which is what she called polysomy as a quality of the artifact creator so the person or the people responsible for creating this also have their own multiple meanings coming through here right and that's what she called strategic ambiguity so the that the creator on the on the other side so we have those branches as well coming out not just on the audience side but the multiple frameworks of the people who are touching this most uh most artifacts come through multiple or you know have have been touched by multiple people who are involved when you make a film it's not just the director it's the the producers that are impacting it's the editors it's the actors it's so forth all these people that have you know their fingers in the process excuse me i create that what we call strategic ambiguity that multiple meanings that come through uh as as a quality of the the artifact creator creators then then you also have the the idea of what she called hermeneutic depth hermeneutic hermeneutic depth which has to do with the polysomy as a quality of the critic or the analysts so so we for example who are engaging in critical media studies have our own interpretations have our own frameworks of understanding and and things so um so we add to that polysomy through our hermeneutic death whether that's uh through critical media studies or through uh critics you know film critics tv critics so forth have their own hermeneutic depth or look or depth not death hermeneutic depth are looking at it through a specific type of lens and coming with their own individual frameworks of understanding as well so just really really divides us out and says you know that we don't have just these branches on the audience side the multiple means those branches exist across the board as we look at things another idea surrounding reception analysis or no theory connected to this it comes to us from stanley fish what he what he calls interpretive communities interpretive communities so fish starts by saying that the words have no meaning until they're red all right the words as you know we're just symbolic we've talked about this before we're just symbolic they really have no meaning until they are red so they don't really mean anything until the person is uh what we would call decoding what hall would call decoding right that's where the provide meaning and then that meaning comes only through interpretation right so that those words don't really have any meaning until they come through the individual who's receiving it or the group that's receiving it and then we provide that meaning it's kind of this idea of is just kind of always reminds me of schrodinger's cat if you're familiar with that is the cat alive is the cat dead well really it's neither until we open the box and find out right it exists in this kind of ether and the same idea of if a tree falls in the forest and nobody's there to hear it does it make a sound yeah i mean this kind of you know intellectual thoughts it's kind of interesting but the idea that none of this really matters none of these words none of these symbols matter at all until somebody's there to interpret them and that then he fish goes on to say stanley fish goes on to interpolate that groups will uh will interpret things similarly when they share a culture so groups that have a shared culture will interpret artifacts similarly right because if they have nobody has the exact same um frame of reference or or framework of understanding and because we haven't all had the exact same experiences and we don't share the exact same beliefs and and values and and culture you know that's that doesn't all line up 100 precisely for any per any two people right but some groups are more similar than others right so these groups that have a similar culture a similar shared background a similar framework of of understanding will probably come to interpret artifacts in a similar way then right so um this always makes me think then of you know as example as an example that this news media especially in our current age right this news media and how it creates kind of this echo chamber right so if you are a cnn person then and you hear um former president trump make a statement or you know you hear president biden give a statement make a speech or you hear somebody you know in one political party if you're watching cnn you are a a um a regular cnn viewer that's you that's your preferred area then you will probably interpret it in a particular way and you will probably have a similar interpretation then to other people who regularly watch cnn and the same is true for fox news people who are regular fox news viewers will probably have a different interpretation of this uh the the speech uh for me they're of those people and president trump president biden they will have a different view of that speech then people who watch cnn or msnbc regularly but probably a similar interpretation and and decoding process to other people who watch fox news regularly right it does kind of create these these echo chambers and it kind of goes to uses and gratification too we're going to go to the media that really speaks to us and tends to follow along with our own frame of reference in our own value system and so anyway the groups with these shared cultures will interpret artifacts similarly not not terribly surprising in that regard either but then fish extends this to say that the people creating this medium are typically not typically they are products of a of a group they are typically born of one of these groups so that people who are you know going into create the the news that you see on fox news are on cnn or on msc probably msnbc probably come from a group that that adheres to those values and follows those values right so um so what that does then in fish's mind is then collapse that distinguish collapse the distinction between creators and audiences it's saying that that that these creators are part or part of that audience they come from that audience they extend from that audience right and so of course they're going to create this news or create this viewpoint that aligns with what this audience believes because they are part of that audience so there's really no distinction between in many ways creators and the audience right and that so that the audience plays a role in that as well in that they are really creating the creators that create their media then right it's all kind of cyclical okay all of that really interesting in terms of cultural analysis but we can also look at a very different type of call of reception analysis sorry than than all that which is ethnography ethnography ethnography is is a qualitative research um where we go we can look at ethnography ethnography is a a type of research it's a qualitative research methods focused on understanding a cultural phenomenon from the perspective of the members of that culture so what really happens is that um that a person becomes embedded they embed themselves a researcher or an analyst would embed themselves so to speak in that culture spend a really great amount of time in that culture understanding who that culture is what's their language what are their values really getting to know them and again just immersing themselves in that in that culture in that the group the audience in which they want to study right so um so it's a qualitative research method meaning that they're going based on personal observations more so than you know statistical data or empirical data so ethnography is when somebody does it a researcher would embed themselves and spend a great deal of time getting to know them so that they can understand okay what are the what's the predominant language here what's what would they call coding the dominant coding as opposed to the oppositional coding how do people frame things how do people use language how do people do things in this culture so we look at ethnography and one of one of the initial one of the more famous ethnographical studies that took place related to media was from a person named Dave a man named David Morley and David Morley was is a British researcher who studied um the perform what they call a nationwide study nationwide nationwide is a program that aired on the on the BBC back in the uh I believe the 70s 80s in that era so it was a while ago but when the study took place but he Morley embedded himself in a particular community and then examined how that community perceived the nationwide programming or really had different audiences than would perceive the nationwide study program so he looked at this you know it's a news program so he looked at this news program with different audiences and he developed what he called three kinds of codes um three ways of coding first there was the dominant coding structure right the dominant coding where people had agreed with that the program or whatever was airing in ethnography the dominant coding would be you know this aligns with my values that I agree with this and that's on one extreme end of this continuum at the extreme end of the opposite end of that continuum would be oppositional coding people who disagree with what's being put forth people who disagree with that notion and then in the middle though for the most part you have what's called negotiated and this is where most people will fall either closer to or further closer to dominant or closer to oppositional but somewhere usually in the middle this negotiated thing where they you know agree with some of it and and and disagree with other parts of it but and so fall somewhere in the middle there between dominant and oppositional where pieces of it will fall in their dominant coding and others will fall in the oppositional coding so they create what's called this negotiated coding and that's what ethnographer study they study how people are looking at this and how people are coding things and and how they relate to that as an audience then relate to that artifact based on that coding we talked about a lot a lot of things related to to reception analysis and really all of those things do play a role at reception analysis a very broad approach to critical media studies and so you really are kind of picking and choosing and but they really build upon one of them each other really each of these theories that we talked about do and understanding the audience as a role and the the the factor that the reception and the interpretation of that audience plays in the understanding of this artifact if you have questions about reception analysis or anything else related to critical media studies please feel free to shoot me an email I'd love to chat about that with you and provide any more information that I can in the meantime I hope you do give greater consideration in your study in your looking at the media to the role of the audience and the fact that each of us does have a role and specifically to play with a given artifact so I get out there do some more critical media studies and really consider the role and the factor of the that the audience plays in interpreting these artifacts