Theories

Curran and seaton:power and media industries

• Patterns of ownership and control are important in how the media functions.
• Media industries are Capitalist and aim to increase concentration of ownership:this lead to a narrowing of opinions represented in the press, affecting plurality.
• Owners pursue profit at the expense of quality or creativity 
• The Impact of the internet on the ownership of news is nominal and it is still controlled by an Oligarch( a small group of people who have control)

Hesmondhalgh: Cultural Industries:

• Cultural industries follow a capitalist pattern of increasing concentration and integration so production is owned and controlled by a few conglomerates.
• Risk is seen in terms of loss of money. Risk is high because production costs are high
• Companies rely on repetition to minimise risk and cover failure. Repeated formats are easily recognisable to audiences and use copyright laws to protect products from reproduction and piracy.

Livingstone and Lunt: Regulation:

• Consumers are individuals who's seek private benefits from the media and require regulation to protect them from damage by the media. Citizens are social, seek public or social benefits fro the media and require regulation to promote public interest
• Regulation in the Uk is under threat by increasingly globalised industries due to technological convergence.

Clay shirkys end of audience theory

Believes that audiences are no longer passive.
Passive audience mindlessly watching as film or reading a newspaper without actually having to think about anything
we are now more active audienmces wanting to interact- due to technology changing- leding us to
expect to be able to share content
audiences like to speak back to producers
more equality of power between audience and producers.

End of Audience’ Model

"Every consumer is also a producer, and everyone can talk back.”
Media had been a hierarchical industry—in that one filtered first, and then published.
"All of that now breaks down….....
People are producing who are not employees or media professionals. So we now publish first, and then filter. ” It’s all about connections, participatory networks




As a result of Caroline Flacks death there has been a proposal for a law called "Carolines law" that limits what newspapaers can do or say about celebrities etc.

Henry Jenkins:

Believes that fans play a key role in the media
This is due to them ecommenting and sharing thye item to friends and they are able to interpret the products in their own way and dicuss with other fans,
He uses a phrase called textual poaching-audiences taking a media product and remaking or reworking it to create their own emaning
This is caused by the improvement in technology.

Example:HOC

Gerbner’s Cultivation theory:

• The Cultivation Theory, also known as the Cultivation Analysis or the Cultivation Hypothesis, is a social theory that studies long-term effects of media on viewers’ ideas and perceptions, especially through the television medium
• Its main causal argument is that “Mass communication, especially the TV, cultivates concepts of social reality of its viewers,” giving the theory its name.
• Gerbner observed on the basis of the “people religiously watching TV” that we know some things not because we have experienced them but because we see them on media. Therefore, according to this theory, there is a direct relationship between TV time, the frequency that a person watches TV, and reality perception, how realistic a person thinks something is. The more frequently viewers watch TV, the more they are likely to believe what they see on TV. Furthermore, in his 1982 Violence Index, the results showed that violence is at least ten times (10x) more on TV than in real life. In other words, violence and other “realities” shown on TV are exaggerated. So if this was what the people were seeing on TV, these people were likely to have believed a distorted perception of reality.
• The Cultivation Theory is considered a stalagmite theory. A stalagmite is a mass of accumulated deposits that grows on cave ceilings, and so, it is a metaphor for the long-term effects of media.