Ideology means a set of values, beliefs and ideas that are presented by a media text. Dominant ideologies are accepted and understood by the majority of people as part of our culture and expectations. Some Dominant ideologies are: Patriotism- to love, support and protect one's country and its people. Marriage and Family- The "right way" to live is to marry an opposite sex partner and have children. Male superiorty- Men are suited to positions of power, decision making within work and the home.
Roland Barthes states:
For ideology to work there must be a set of shared values and myths.
The only way these codes can become shared is through frequent use in communication i.e. reinforcement. (Media, Newspapers)
These shared values and ideas are called ‘signs’.
These signs are then used to realise social values in public forms.
Every time these signs are used we are maintaining cultural ideology.
We are formed and socialised via these ideologies; i.e. we identify our membership in a culture by accepting and promoting these signs and myths.
Therefore the audience of a any medium such as a film or magazine becomes the means or vehicle by which an ideology can be maintained; we ourselves become promoters of values.
Representation can be a single image, a sequence of images or a whole programme. Whatever representations are used there are ideologies and meanings in that presentation. This gives the insitutions power as these representations can influence social attitudes to the audience in many ways.
This links to Stereotypes and Personal Image, Stereotypes are used to understand a text. They are an extreme form of representations. Stereotypes in texts are just 'types' rather than the complex person, they are usually negative exaggerations with a lot of assumptions. Stereotypes occur when there is a power imbalance between members of society, such as: gender, race/ethnicity, disability and age. Stereotypes help to re-affirm and reinforce dominant ideologies.
Star Image is when an artist has a unique selling point, which could be their own image to market themselves or a symbol thats consistent with all forms of their branding (on their cd covers, videos, etc). For example: Will.i.am is known for his iconic logo which he features on his CD album covers, music videos and even on his clothes.
When creating our music video we have to think about the representations of our artists and how the audience are going to take in our text. We need to think about creating the right 'star' image of our artists in our video, through their chlothing/ general styling, whilst helping the audience understand through the use of stereotyping.
I have been doing some research into what me and Laura want in our music video ie- mise en scene, fonts, shotting, settings. I have created a moodboard of ideas as a 'come to' place to inspire us when planning, filming and editing our music video. When creating this moodboard, I looked back to the feedback from the Audience Research of what people want from our music video, after they listened to our 'song' idea.
For my Audience Research I am going to do a number of things to ensure I am targeting the right people and catering to their needs and expectations. I need to find out who is listening to specific genres of music and what type of people they are, and I need to find out what people want from a music video. I have also selected a track, which me and my partner Laura are keen on using for the song in our music video, and intend on getting audience feedback to what they see and expect when hearing it.
Me and Laura, asked our class to close their eyes and listen to this song and then write down anything they thought of whilst listening to it, For example setting, instruments, characters etc.
Results:
Calm atmosphere Pastel of vibrant colours Close-ups (allows personal aspect of relationships to be highlighted) Set in summer- field of flowers Reflection of past relationship in black& white Natural environment Pale clothes, pastels and whites Solo artist in a dress, walking in natural scenery Reflections of past in sepia Summer Bright colours Performance scenes Band Sepia Live performance scenes White dress Instruments like guitar Narrative- boy and girl Summer Field Boy and Girl relationship Summer/Spring Girl with guitar Past memories as flashback scenes
From this feedback of the song choice, we feel the audience are aiming our video at an indie/country type genre with natural scenery and quirky clothes. The expectations of this video were all relatively similar in that it should be half narrative half performance with scenes of memories or flashbacks in black and white or sepia.
Audience Theories
There are many theories that we can apply to help us come to a better understanding of the relationship between texts and audience, such as the: The Effects theory, The Uses and Gratification Model and The Reception Theory.
The Effects Theory: The effects theory (sees Audiences as Mass) is the consumption of media texts and its effects or influences upon the audience. The effect is normally negative, the power lies with the message of the text and the audience are 'passive' powerless to prevent the influence. The BoBo Doll experiment, was conducted by Albert Bandura in 1960, it was a controversial experiment that "proved" children copy violent behaviour. In the experiment children watched a film where an adult attacked a clown toy called a BoBo Doll. The children were then put in a room full of toys and told they were not to touch them. They were then taken to a room full of BoBo Dolls and the results found were 88% of the childen copied the violent behaviour they had just viewed. 40% of them children, 8 months later were still imitating the same violent bahaviour. The conclusion made was children will reproduce violent media content. The theory suggests the audience are influenced by the media texts they see, however the theory is flawed in the case that many people do consume violent texts and are not influenced so...
The Uses and Gratification Model was introduced. This model is the opposite of the Effects Theory in which the Audience are seen as 'active', they use the text not used by it. This model shows the audience is free to reject, use or play with media how they like. Therefore using it for: Escapism, information, pleasure, diversion etc. Controversially the consumption of violent texts is helpful rather than harmful. It suggests the audience use the texts to act out violent impulses through the consumption of media violence rather than physically commiting the acts themselves. Both theories have their flaws and limitations so...
Stuart Hall an academic at Birmingham University in the 1970's came up with the Reception Theory.
The idea that texts encoded by the producers and decoded by the audience. A producer will encode a text with a meaning and the audience will understand the message and correctly decode it. In some cases the audience will reject the message or not understand it properly. Hall identified three types of audience decoding of texts: Dominant- the audience decodes the text the way the producer wants them to, understands the message and agrees with it.Negotiated-the audience rejects, accepts or refines parts of the text in light of previous views. Oppositional-the meaning is decoded but rejected for political, ideoligical or cultural reasons.
Profile for the Type of Audience listening to County-Pop
