Role of the Media• Limited Effects Theory• Class Dominant Theory• Sponsorship• Culturalist theory• How the media views the elderly• Women in the media – 1950s America

Limited Effects Theory

• This theory argues that people generally choose what to watch based on what they already believe. The media has only a limited influence. However, this ignores the impact that the media has in setting the agendas and creating public interest in particular subjects. How media frames groups and ideas in content, affects the conclusions people may draw. Also, this theory came into existence when the availability and dominance of media was far less widespread.

Class Dominant Theory

• This theory suggests that the media projects the views of an elite minority, which controls it. When a minority control output, other groups have no control over what we see and hear, and therefore, no control over how they themselves are represented. Also, those in control can manipulate the media content to suit their own agendas, ensuring that it supports their dominance.

Sponsorship

• This adds another problem. Advertising revenue is essential to most TV channels, and they are then reluctant to produce programmes that show their biggest sponsors in a bad light. E.g. TV companies who received million in advertising revenue from companies like Nike, were slow to run programmes focussing on possibly human rights violations, by these companies, in foreign countries.

Culturalist Theory

• While small elite groups may have control over what is produced, personal circumstances play a powerful role in how audiences react and what message they take from media content. e.g. In an episode of the Royle Family, the family gather round the TV to watch The Antiques Roadshow. Instead of showing interest in the antiques, they lay bets on the price that will be quoted, and the person who is closest to it wins the pot. This is an example of a group choosing how to consume a text. They reject the middle class reading, where the audience are interested in the antiques, in favour of one that suits them.

How the media views the elderly

Audience perceptions• If an individual does not have contact with an older person, then their

perceptions are limited purely to what they see in the media. Negative perceptions are often reinforced through media content. However, those with contact are also affected to some degree.

• For example, there is a common perception that older people are more likely

to be victims of crime. The news media has a tendency to focus on stories which portray this, even though most victims of violent crime are in fact young men. Research would suggest that most who feel this statement is true do not know an older person who has been a victim, although all have seen stories in the media and feel it happens all the time. However, when it is suggested that all elderly people are as vulnerable as this, those with grandparents etc. deny it. They see their old people as different, but are still likely to accept the idea that other elderly people are likely to be victims.

Women in the media• When considering film noir we need to learn about a patriarchal

discourse. This is one where society believes that men are the more dominant sex and more capable than women. It also sees men as the provider and women as the home maker. • The media does not provide us with ‘reality’ but with a constructed

version of the world. Who constructs it determines which discourse we are shown.

• What does this ad tell us about women?• Who might benefit from this discourse?• Family Date, Dinner In A 1950's Home - YouTube

Patriarchal discourse in magazines

We often decide on our own identities based on how we are represented within the dominant discourse.

What can we work out about the world of 1950s America from these adverts?

Women at warDuring WW11 millions of American women joined the war effort by working in munitions factories and other areas that supported the men who were fighting. This was a major change in the role of women, who had traditionally stayed at home whilst their husbands went out to work. In fact it was so alien to many women that a major recruitment campaign was launched to persuade these, mainly middle class, women that this was the right thing to do.

The returning soldiers• After the war millions of men returned to find the America they had left no

longer existed. Their place in the family had shifted with the employment of women and the structure of the family had also changed.• Women who had had the freedom of a job and no husband to tell them

what to do were often reluctant to go back to the way things had been. • Many men found this situation very difficult to adjust to and felt isolated

and lost. They had been part of an almost entirely male society in the army and struggled with the situation they now found at home.• The men in film noir often lose control of their lives after they make a

mistake and this loss of control was what it was like for many returning American men. They therefore connected with the characters.

Femme Fatale• The femme fatale is a nightmare version of economically and sexually free

women after the war.• Men were worried that women might not return to their pre war roles.• The femme fatale will do anything to protect her freedom, including killing her

husband.• Men who fall for these sexually promiscuous women are destroyed.• This suggest that men must keep the power over their women and sees

women who are in control of their own lives, including their sex lives, as dangerous.• The femme fatale is always punished for what she does, which suggests to

women that they should be happy with what they have, as more is dangerous.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFgvkvjVN5Y• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur9GKLl8v4U

Has society’s attitude to women changed?• “Studying media representations of gender, class and race helps us

recognise that gender, class and race are social and cultural constructions, not biological ones.”• Groups with less power in society have less control over what is said about

them and how they are represented in the media, yet most of these groups are understood more by what the media tells us than by our actual interactions with real people. This is particularly true when we think about the kinds of attitudes these groups have and what they believe to be right. Think about the differences in what a devout Muslim or Christian would consider to be acceptable and what is actually portrayed in mainstream media.• Women and the elderly have less power in society but are not a minority

group. Therefore we have all had actual interactions with them. Why then, are women still treated differently to men?