Example question: explain how historical contexts influence audience interpretations of media products. Refer to HYHGP…
historical contexts - the podcast is discussing the here and now. The issues represented are issues faced by the listeners
Audience interpretation - audiences can interpret media products in different ways depending on their cultural circumstances
Introduction example (too long winded to be honest…)
Have You Heard George’s Podcast (HYHGP) is a podcasted radio show produced by the BBC and streamed on BBC Sounds. The podcast is fiercely political, and allows audiences to interpret it in a number of different ways, which is typical of modern, digitally convergent media. I shall argue that understanding historical context is crucial to understanding how audiences interpret this podcast
Political background can greatly affect how audiences can interpret the show. The show demonstrates a left wing ideological perspective, as demonstrated through criticism of the tory government and progressive views on how to change society. In the episode Francophone pt 1, there is an an explicit criticism of France’s and the UKs colonialist past, which may be challenging to many audiences. Perfect example of Hall’s audience negotiation
- Inclusive mode of address is typical of some modern media
- Politically active audiences are empowered through the interesting knowledge provided by the podcast
- The availability of digital media allows this show to target a pre sold and pre existing audience
- Audiences can become active, and can explore the complex themes addressed in this show
- The inculcation of negotiated readings: how Have You Heard George’s Podcast encourages a range of responses
Reception theory
Stuart Hall and his team suggested that audiences can broadly interpret media products in a variety of different ways, contingent on their social, political and economic background. This seems fairly obvious now, but an elderly Filipino woman in north London may well have very different experiences to a middle class white teacher in Cambridge, and this means that they will ‘get’ different things from the same media product. They might have the same absolute favourite TV show, but the ways in which we interpret the ideology of a media product can be wildly different from one another.
Every media product has an ideology that is encoded by the producer using media language. But not every audience will ‘get’ exactly what the producer intended from the media product. Again, this is related to a variety of factors. Hall and the gang referred to this process as ‘audience negotiation’. We give a little, we take a little, and we come up with a decoded reading that is a little different from everybody else's.
Grenfell
The Grenfell tower was a 24 story high rise building that burnt down in 2017 following an electrical fault. 72 people died in the tragedy, making it the single worst residential building fire in the UK since WWII.
While the fire was accidental, the speed at which the building burnt and the sheer number of deaths drew attention to a number of scandalous safety issues, which have since been found in similar buildings. The tragedy has arguably drawn attention to the poor standards of living of working class people in inner city areas, who are often disproportionately represented by ethnic minority groups.
The Grenfell tower fire is a tragedy, a political issue, a social issue, a cultural issue, and draws sharp attention to postcolonial attitudes towards people of colour
A Grenfell Story - initial positions
- Interesting
- Emotive
- Subdued and depressing
- Sad and distressing
- Upsetting and provocative
- Serious in tone
- Realistic
- Scary
- Eye-opening
- Personal
- Helpless
- Painful
- Chaotic and confusing
- Immersive
- Highly unconventional!
- Chilled out and relaxing
- Self-congratulatory
- Narcissistic
- Humanising
- Form and structure
- Has many theatrical/cinematic aspects, highly unconventional for a podcast. A confusing and postmodern address is taken throughout alienates the audience though a confusing and yet sophisticated mode of address.
Audience reception
- The highly polysemic mode of address of this episode encourages a range of negotiated readings.
- The episode uses a range of stereotypical representations in order to provoke audience response. For example, the SLT member is presented as snobbish, dismissive and stuck up, and constructs a binary opposition with the younger and more experienced teacher. This binary positions the audience to align with the teachers values and to oppose the values of organised education
- The episode presents a complicated ideology, and presents a range of criticisms of systemic failings in a number of areas, including housing, schooling, and childcare. It assumes a certain level of subject knowledge, and also asks the audience to engage with difficult concepts that they may not wish to confront. In doing so, this podcast favours active audience responses
- An exposure of the systemic failings of the Grenfell disaster, by focussing on a single individual, humanising her through the process of narrative. Sometimes when presented with large numbers, audiences can detach and switch off. By telling a human story, George positions the audience as someone who has lost someone in a tragedy.
- An uncomfortable and confrontational mode of address anchors the audience to decode the preferred reading
- A number of people would be affected by this tragedy directly due to the number of people who died. An oppositional reading may be that the shows' narrative focus trivialises the tragedy that happened
- The high pitched chimes and piano arpeggios constructs a deeply uncomfortable and complicated mode of address, that helps to anchor and confirm the preferred ideological reading
- “I want you to imagine you’re in a cinema’, engaging the audience purely through language, and using familiar imagery. A deeply postmodern mode of address that creates immersion. Links all the podcasts together, and constructs his own series of conventions and heightens the emotional impact for the target audiences
- The message, moral or ideology is not immediately clear. A lack of explicit anchorage forces the audience to come up with their own interpretations