Ideology Ii

IDEOLOGY II

• Last week we spoke of ideology in the media as working at the level of Interpellation, where it isolates and places an individual to receive it in some way.’ • This process takes place at the level of identity – individuals are identified as audiences of media products, and defined through their identities

Identity • Identity refers to who we are in relation to others in society. • People are constantly in search of who they are. This is part of the identity crisis. Identity is not fixed • The media has become a significant site for reproducing identities • Previously, people used the traditional sources of identity such as the family, work and religion

• The wide-spread nature of the media has ensured that it occupies a major position in defining identities. • Media’s cultural content is informed by differences in identities

Media audiences • There are two forms of media audiences defined around identity: – Audiences as markets – Audiences as social and cultural products

The audience as market • Audience – social construction used to refer to people who consume a particular product or the imagined recipient of a media product. • It is an ideological concept • It exists in the way it is defined by particular groups for particular purposes • How the audience is constructed determines how it can function and how the relationship between the media and their audiences can be described, measured and evaluated.

Audience as market • The audience is often seen as a potential or potentially overlapping market (one person can occupy several positions of audience) • A market identifies a subsection of the population as potential consumers of a particular identifiable product or set of products.

Example • How can you tell the potential market of a magazine? – Female? Why? – Letters section? – Themes – The example of the two Kenyan magazines, Adam and Eve.

• The audience as market is not a composite whole. It can vary in size, duration and stability/flexibility • Markets have identities attached to them eg Sex and The City; WWF wrestling, CNN news

• Beyond finding appropriate audiences, producers also include content that will keep others out of an audience

• Adam magazine – – – –

Men first Hummer F1 Strip clubs

• Eve Magazine – Motherhood – Good wife

• True Love – Maids in Mzansi-Why eve doesn’t want a black madam – Dream your way to better sex, think like a man etc

• Audiences are therefore defined as consumers or commodities • As consumers, the media producer always has in mind the person who is going to consume the product. • This idea is referred to as a market type. • People also categorize themselves according to their consumer positions (I wouldn’t live in Hillbrow; I like plasma TVs; I watch cartoons; I like RnB or 80s music)

• Producers must therefore develop specific ways to attract this audience • They do this in three ways – Demographics – Tastes and cultures – Lifestyle cultures

Demographics • Quantitative description according to a set of social or sociological variables. • Age, race, gender, income level, educational level, place of residence. • The producers make assumptions about consumers when making market categorizations. • That is why media organizations carry out extensive market researches

• This helps them to determine marketing strategies and advertising styles • Why do soccer adverts mostly feature black people and rugby feature white people? What is the demographic assumption?

Tastes and culture • This depends on the continuing commitment of a group of people to some type of product. • Watch SABC 1, SABC 2 and SABC 3. Look at the kinds of adverts. What are the assumptions regarding taste and cultures of those who watch these SABC channels?

• Producers operating with an understanding of the audience as taste n cultures construct media products according to their understanding of the features of the product that hold such tastes and cultures together rather than according to their image of a particular demographic group of consumers.

Lifestyle clusters • This is a mixture of demographic and consumption habits and tastes. • A lifestyle cluster represents a segment of the population that tends to purchase certain kinds of products or to make certain decisions, including voting – SAFM

• A lifestyle cluster creates groups in the population whose members have several characteristics in common. • These members often spend their money and time in similar ways. • Advertisers and media producers can target a specific lifestyle cluster

• E.g Adam and Eve • Shopping Malls – A pick n Pay in Hillbrow and one in Sandton – what would be the differences? • Time magazine and Drum magazine?

• The need to make people think of themselves as consumers • Media – instrumental in constructing the idea of consumers (one identity)

Origins of consumerism • Industrial development • Mass production • People had to be convinced to spend their money • Modern mass media – how to be a consumer

• This consumer is active - choices • So the producer has to convince • The media reminds the audience to be a consumer.

The Audience as commodity • The audience as commodity exists as an object to be sold for profit. • Think of how advertising works • The media produce an audience for their own media products then deliver that audience to another media producer – the advertiser

• When people watch TC shows, they are also watching adverts • One can argue that this audience can move away from the channels during adverts; buy DVDs and avoid them etc • Genres such as music sell their audiences – they sell them to clothing houses, Think of the Hannah Montana brands,

Cultural identities • Beyond being consumers and commodities, the audience can also be defined as cultural identities • Given that id is a product of a variety of social groups and differences, audiences are defined using multiple terms • In media, the question to ask is: what is the relationship between the images and sounds of identities made available through the media • How do people take up and live their own identities and relate to others inhabiting other identities

Categories • 1) Essentialist – representation of identity is natural, accurate and universal • 2)Non – essentialist – Categories of identity are culturally constructed

Stereotypes in the media • The media provides pictures of people and descriptions of different social groups and social identities • What do we think of how we are represented in the media? • Stereotyping – help to categorize, however, often viewed as biased. • The biasness can be in the form of absences, negative portrayals, distortions

• The media contributes to the construction of stereotypes as a result of systematic biases • The west’s view of Africa in the movies – – – – –

Hunger Salvation and salvaging Disease Blood Diamonds, Constant Gardner South African movies – blackness • Tsotsi • Jerusalema • Hijack stories

Representation as a cultural construction • Media representations are actively involved in construction of identity • In culture – How is a category of identity established – How are individuals assigned to it – How is meaning determined?

• Categories of identity such as gender and race are products of cultural codes which select some aspects of the body and make them significant signifiers whereas others remain just other parts of the anatomy. • Such codes organize signs in relation to difference, so that any signifier of identity is only significant insofar as its difference from other signifiers is provided as a code itself

• Culture selects the relevant dimensions that will constitute people’s identity and organize them into relations of difference • One term is always dominant and defines the norm. This norm is neither –ve nor +ve. It is neutral. E.g femaleness is measured against maleness; poverty against wealth; black against white

• In media, people are interpellated to get into their appropriate positions – women seem to be largely defined or placed as the object of male pleasure

ANNOUNCEMENT • NEXT QUARTER WE CHANGE OUR CLASSES TO TUESDAYS 14:00-15:45 • Same venue