Theory & the Media Professional

Stephen Hill
Objectives
Does the proliferation of web 2.0 user generated content and affordable
creative technologies pose a threat to the integrity of the media
professional?
LINK TO THEORY (MARXISM): Does the deregulation of the means of production'
(Karl Marx, 1848) pose a threat to the integrity of the media professional?

AIM: To explore the ways that academic media theory can help the
media professional understand the interactive potential of the audience in a
digital age.
To explore how three classic theories of audience might help answer the
question:
Overview
Forms and Conventions Audience Institution Representation
Three Theories of Audience
1. Roland Barthes Death of the Author (1967)
2. Dick Hebdige Subculture (1979)
3. Chris Anderson The Long Tail (2006)
Does the proliferation of web 2.0 and affordable creative technologies pose a threat to the integrity of the media
professional?
How academic media theory can help the professional understand the interactive potential of the audience in a digital age.
Five Institutional Models
1. Music Video Production
(Foundation Degree Popular Music)
2. Multi-media Journalism
(BA Hons Journalism and Communication)
3. Advertising and Marketing
(BA Hons Marketing and Communication)
4. Television Production
(BA Hons Media Production)
5. Computer Animation
(BA Hons Computer Animation)
The Media Theory Timeline
Forms and Conventions Audience Institution Representation
1900 1950
2000
Roland Barthes
Death of the Author
(1967)
Dick Hebdige
Subculture: The
Meaning of Style
(1979)
Chris Anderson
The Long Tail
(2006)
.
.
.
Roland Barthes, Death of the Author (1967)
Forms and Conventions Audience Institution Representation
Contemporary Relevance: Web 2.0 user
generated content is blurring distinction
between producers and consumers.





Influence on: Stuart Hall Encoding/ Decoding
(1973)

Influenced by: Ferdinand de Saussure Cours
de Linguistic (1912)
The Big Idea: The meaning of a text is inscribed
by the audience who essentially re-write it. The
reader becomes an author rendering the real
author dead.
Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979)
Forms and Conventions Audience Institution Representation
Contemporary Relevance: With the proliferation of
digital technology and multi-platform branding,
niche markets and defined communities of
consumers are the key to profitability across media
platforms e.g EMAPs Kerrang!
The Big Idea: Subcultural audiences construct their
identity by using material objects as symbols of
group belonging e.g Punks and safety pins. These
objects become ideologically loaded and stable
signs in their own right.
Influenced by: Jean Baudrillard The Consumer
Society (1970).
Influence on: Stuart Ewan All Consuming Images
(1987).
Chris Anderson, The Long Tail, 2006
Forms and Conventions Audience Institution Representation
Contemporary Relevance: The future of Media
industries is selling more of less. For example, BBC
received 4.7% of funding though it only has 1.8% of
BBC1s audience its niche market programming
can be sold on more easily. Excess capacity in
schedule = mother of invention?
Influence on: Too early to say.
Influenced by: Vance Packard - The Hidden
Persuaders (1957)
The Big Idea: The fragmentation of media audiences
into niche markets has transformed patterns of
media consumption. Combined with the marketing
and distribution possibilities created by the Internet,
possibilities have now opened up for the
profitability of fringe creative industries.
Music Video
Forms and Conventions Audience Institution Representation
Impact on professional: destabilised the
relationship between producers and
consumers.

Barthes: The interpretation of the musical
soundtrack by the video director
exemplifies the authorial tension in
Death of an Author.
Hebdige: Sub-cultural codes that denote
particular niche market have become
central to the visual style of music videos
aimed at defined communities of
consumers.

Anderson: Multi-platform branding has
seen the emergence of some very
specialised markets for music video:
Smash Hits TV, Q TV, Kerrang! TV etc
Foundation Degree - Popular Music
Digital age: audience embracing cheap digital
video editing software and YouTube
Traditional view: Music videos are the ultimate
example of the post-modern text.
Prospects for future: reinstated some of the
key conventions of the genre.
Multi-Media Journalism
Forms and Conventions Audience Institution Representation
Barthes: questions the truth of
objective reporting. Meaning of
news inscribed by the audience.

Hebdige: Lifestyle journalism
cohered around sub-cultural
niche markets: Angling Times to
Living in France

Anderson: Traditional journalism
increasingly fragmented
specialist television news
channels etc.
BA Hons Journalism and Communication
Digital age: Traditional journalism competing with
blogs, message boards, Amazon reviews, forums etc.
Impact on professional: boundaries blurred between
current affairs and entertainment.

Traditional view: press as the Fourth Estate
(Peter Wright/David Kelly)

Prospects for future: multi-platform branding of old-
guard. High quality journalistic = niche market
Television Production
Forms and Conventions Audience Institution Representation
Traditional view: Concept of broadcasting. Tension
between paternalistic sensibility of BBC and populist
awareness of independent channels

has been replaced by narrowcasting. The schedule has
been replaced by TV on demand.


Barthes: Interactivity means
audiences are now the
authors of their own viewing
schedule.

Hebdige: Narrowcasting to
sub-cultural groups has
replaced broadcasting.

Anderson: Lower production
costs and increased channel
numbers means minority
television production is now
profitable.





BA Hons Media Production
Digital age: Narrow casting. Multi-channelling. Greater
audience interactivity (pressing the red button) +
convergence
Impact on professional: More television being made more
cheaply, less freedom about its content. Reality television
placing greater emphasis on audience participation.
Prospects for future: YouTube, reality television reinforce
old conventions. More sophisticated audience more
receptive to hybridity.

Computer Animation
Forms and Conventions Audience Institution Representation
Traditional view: animation discrete genre of film-making -
19
th
Century (flip books and zoetropes).
Barthes: Animation
supposes authorial
creativity on the part of the
audience in the form of the
willing suspension of
disbelief.
Hebdige: Animation is a
discrete sub-culture of the
film industry with its own
sub-genres.
Anderson: Proliferation of
New Media technologies
has opened new niche
markets for software and
animation based film.
BA Hons Computer Animation
Digital age: Proliferation of anime. Domestic packages like
GIF Movie Gear allowing audiences to produce their own
animation for broadcast on YouTube

Impact on professional: Convergence of animation with
special effects in mainstream film is opening up new
cinematic possibilities.

Prospects for future: Amateur productions e.g Anime pop
music videos widening audiences for animation films.
Conclusion
Forms and Conventions Audience Institution Representation
Roland Barthes, Death of the Author, 1967.
The shift is irrelevant. The audience has always been in procession of the
means of production in the way in which they inscribe meaning into the
reception of a text; creative media technologies are an extension of this.

To explore how three classic media theories of audience might help answer the question:
Does the proliferation of web 2.0 and affordable creative technologies pose a threat to the
integrity of the media professional?
Dick Hebdige, Subculture and the Meaning of Style, 1979.
The output of the media professional is always open to appropriation by
subcultural groups who will re-work its meaning. Moreover subversive
readings are always dependent on the hegemony of the media
professional and thereby reinforce it.
Chris Anderson, The Long Tail, 2006
Much of the creativity is fairly illusory. Though products may be niche
marketed most domestic technologies reinforce the conventions of the
dominant means of production. Long tail opens up new opportunities.