CCT109H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Audience Measurement, Social Forces, Thick Description

• School: UTM
• Department: Communication, Culture and Technology
• Course: CCT109H5
• Professor: Brett Caraway

Document Summary

Audience commodification: media networks deliver audiences to advertisers through media programming. Material forces: who own sells, and distributes media. Audiences and media companies both exert power over the media. Lifestyles and tastes are often shaped by media industry despite preferences feeling natural". Audience research filled with stereotypes + imprecise language. Audience conceptualization: imagining who the audience is and its characteristics using social norms and beliefs to inform this process. Passive audience: couch potato, idle, unquestioning content, not paying attention. Complete acceptance of media messages, media comprehended exactly as intended, social indifference docility, etc. Rebellious, non-conformist, dangerous, resistant to power, could interpret messages in ways sender did not intend. Linear communication model (hypodermic needle model): the media injects messages directly into your brain. Needle model > has assumption audiences are dupes to media. > political and moral agenda on social control (primary interest was on risky audiences to control people with certain tendencies)