COMN 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Frankfurt School

• School: York University
• Department: Communication Studies
• Course: COMN 1000
• Professor: George Georgopoulos

Document Summary

This chapter broadly frames media audience relationships as interactions between active, meaning-seeking entities (e. g. , persons, groups) and meaning-generating systems (e. g. , the media, cultures). Such a perspective provides a framework for explaining how media, audiences, and culture interact in an orderly but nondeterministic fashion. The various theoretical approaches reviewed in this chapter focus on different elements of that interaction. For instance, focusing on the relationship between individuals and media content, effects research considers the direct impact of the media on the behaviour of audience members. In the face of the failure of effects research to uncover any meaningful effects, uses and gratification research focuses on what audience members tend to do with media content. Marxist research and the frankfurt school step back in focus to consider how production of media and cultural products have the potential to advance the interests of the producers and the elites in society over those of ordinary people.