Lecture notes

The media is a "text" that people read.
The producer makes the media.
The consumer reads the media.
The gatekeeper decides what goes in the media.

The producer encodes media with a preferred reading (the meaning that they want the audience to take away from it) which the consumers (the audience) will then receive and decode. This theory related to encoding and decoding was created by Stewart Hall.

However, people may not decode the text the way the encoders want them to, there are three different ways the decoders can do this.
Firstly, they can have negotiated reading which is where the decoders understand the meaning of the text but doesn't relate to it so they have no interest in decoding it.
Secondly there is oppositional reading which is when someone makes a conscious rejection or subversion of the preferred reading.
Lastly. there is aberrant reading. This is when someone misreads or misunderstands the message the producers are trying to portray.

There are three different theories related to how the audience consumers media and these are:

The hypodermic syringe: This is where the audience is passive and heterogeneous and accept all text presented to them. Basically the information passes into the the mass consciousness of the audience unmediated. This theory suggests that we as an audience are manipulated by the media and that the behaviour of the audience could be easily changed by the media-makers.

The Two step flow: This is where the media is consumed by opinion leaders who decode it and then pass it down to less active associates which they have influence over. The audience can then mediate the information they receive form the media with the ideas and thoughts expressed by the opinion leaders.

The uses and gratifications: This is where people watch the media because they want to watch it, they watch it for pleasure and aren't just mindlessly accepting what they're shown. There are four purposed that it is proposed the audience would use the media for and they are:

Diversion: The escape from everyday problems and routine.

Personal relationships: Using the media for emotional and other interaction, e.g substituting soap operas for family life.

Personal identity: Finding yourself reflected in texts, learning behaviour and values form texts.

Surveillance: Information that could be useful for living, e.g The news

The mode of address is the way in which the media "speaks" to the audience, e.g news reporters will be very formal. It is a construction using a number of codes from all elements of the text.

Roland Barthes came up with the idea that symbols in media texts affected how we decoded he information we received. He called this idea semiology (the study of symbols). For example, if you see empty bottles of alcohol on the table with two people acting drunk, you would think that they must have drunk the bottles of alcohol. Two words that are used to describe this is connotation and denotation. Connotation is what you see and denotation is what you deduce from what you see e.g, a red truck with a ladder and sirens is the denotation, and the connotation would be that it is a fire truck.