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IDEOLOGY II
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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 definedthrough their identities
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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 notfixed
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
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The wide-spread nature of the media has
ensured that it occupies a major position
in defining identities.
Medias cultural content is informed by
differences in identities
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Media audiences
There are two forms of media audiences
defined around identity:
Audiences as markets
Audiences as social and cultural products
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The audience as market
Audience social construction used to refer topeople who consume a particular product or theimagined 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 relationshipbetween the media and their audiences can bedescribed, measured and evaluated.
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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 ofproducts.
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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.
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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
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Beyond finding appropriate audiences,
producers also include content that will
keep others out of an audience
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Adam magazine Men first Hummer F1
Strip clubs Eve Magazine
Motherhood Good wife
True Love Maids in Mzansi-Why eve doesnt want a black
madam Dream your way to better sex, think like a man etc
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Audiences are therefore defined as consumersor commodities
As consumers, the media producer always has
in mind the person who is going to consume theproduct.
This idea is referred to as a market type.
People also categorize themselves according to
their consumer positions (I wouldnt live inHillbrow; I like plasma TVs; I watch cartoons; Ilike RnB or 80s music)
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Producers must therefore develop specific
ways to attract this audience
They do this in three ways
Demographics
Tastes and cultures
Lifestyle cultures
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Demographics
Quantitative description according to a setof 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
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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?
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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 SABCchannels?
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Producers operating with an
understanding of the audience as taste n
cultures construct media products
according to their understanding of thefeatures of the product that hold such
tastes and cultures together rather than
according to their image of a particulardemographic group of consumers.
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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
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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
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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?
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The need to make people think of
themselves as consumers
Media instrumental in constructing the
idea of consumers (one identity)
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Origins of consumerism
Industrial development
Mass production
People had to be convinced to spend theirmoney
Modern mass media how to be a
consumer
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This consumer is active - choices
So the producer has to convince
The media reminds the audience to be aconsumer.
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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
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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,
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Cultural identities
Beyond being consumers and commodities, theaudience can also be defined as culturalidentities
Given that id is a product of a variety of social
groups and differences, audiences are definedusing multiple terms
In media, the question to ask is: what is therelationship between the images and sounds of
identities made available through the media How do people take up and live their ownidentities and relate to others inhabiting otheridentities
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Categories
1) Essentialist representation of identity
is natural, accurate and universal
2)Non essentialist Categories of
identity are culturally constructed
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Stereotypes in the media
The media provides pictures of people anddescriptions of different social groups andsocial identities
What do we think of how we arerepresented in the media?
Stereotyping help to categorize,
however, often viewed as biased. The biasness can be in the form of
absences, negative portrayals, distortions
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The media contributes to the construction ofstereotypes as a result of systematic biases
The wests view of Africa in the movies
Hunger Salvation and salvaging
Disease
Blood Diamonds, Constant Gardner
South African movies blackness Tsotsi Jerusalema
Hijack stories
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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?
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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 partsof the anatomy.
Such codes organize signs in relation to
difference, so that any signifier of identity is only
significant insofar as its difference from othersignifiers is provided as a code itself
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Culture selects the relevant dimensions
that will constitute peoples 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; povertyagainst wealth; black against white
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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
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