How to teach audience - Valentine McCarthy

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Valentine McCarthy & Kirsty PainterJune 2006

How to teach ... Audiences

Page number Contents1-3 Audience demographics

4-7 Theories of Audience

8-9 Social Class Questionnaire

10 -21 David Gauntlett - 'Ten things wrong with the "effectsmodel'" (1998)

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22-37 David Gauntlett - 'Using creative visual researchmethods to understand media audieflces' (2005)

38-39 Documentary - Definition for a digital age c:.

40-47 Documentary resources ~~~' .

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48 Channel 4 Monthly viewing profiles' ~~ _- ~~~\M

49-56 BARB information - ~~ ;\-e

57 -64 BBC articles on Digital tv and World cup 2006coverage

65 Daily Mirror article - Wednesday 21 st June

66 - 67 Bibliography

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Valentine McCarthyJune 2006

Audience Demographics

A - Upper Middle Class - (Higher managerial Gudges, surgeons)B - Middle Classes - Middle Managerial (Lawyers, teachers, doctors)C1 - Lower Middle Classes - skilled Non-manual- Supervisory "White collar"(clerical, junior management, bank clerk, nurses)C2 - Skilled Worker - "Blue collar" Goiners, electricians, plumbers)o- Working class - Semi and unskilled manualE - Lower level - (pensioners, widows, casual workers, students',unemployed)

Registrar General presents a "Social Class" scale based upOn occupation andreferred to as The National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification .

1. Higher Managerial and Professional occupations1.1 Employs and managers in larger organisations (e.g. company

directors, senior company managers, senior civil servants, seniorofficers in police and armed forces)

1.2 Higher professionals (e.g. doctors, lawyers, clergy, teachers and socialworkers)

2. Lower Managerial and Professional occupations (e.g. nurses andmidwives, journalists, actors, musicians, prison officers, lower ranks ofpolice and armed forces.)

3. Intermediate occupations (e.g. clerks, secretaries, driving instructors,telephone fitters.)

4. Small Employers and own account workers (e.g. publicans, farmers,taxi drivers, window cleaners, painters and decorators.)

5. Lower supervisory, craft and related occupations (e.g. printers,plumbers, television engineers, train drivers, butchers.)

6. Semi-routine occupations (e.g. shop assistants, hairdressers busdrivers, cooks.)

7. Routine occupations (e.g. couriers, labourers, waiters and refusecollectors)

8. This category covers those who have never had paid work and thelong-term unemployed

(courtesy of Richard Harvey's pack 2002 - How to teach ...Audiences)


Psychographic categories

Mainstreamers/conformists

Make up 40% of consumers, are those who do not want to stand out from thecrowd; they need to feel that they can trust products and services they buyand will therefore tend to buy well known brands

Aspirers

Are those for whom personal status is if significant importance. They aspire tosuccess and would want pro~ucts and services that are considered smart andfashionable and demonstrate that success. Products would have to contributetowards the aspirers' perceived image.

Succeeders

Have already made it and have nothing to prove. They have already arrivedrather than being on their way up. They will be looking for luxury and comfortand can afford to pay for it. What characterises them is their need for controlin their lives and their work. Advertisements that stress power and control aretargeted at them.

Reformers

Are a highly influential group, mostly well-educated and interested ininfluencing society. They are likely to put the quality of life before theacquisition of material wealth.

Individualists

Are determined to be different and want to try something new. But will notwant to be part of the crowd: Package holidays are not for them.



Lifestyle categorisation

YAKS - Young Adventurous Keen and Single18-24 year olds who have no heavy financial burdens. They live at home orrent cheap property

EWEs - Experts With Expensive lifestyles - At the peak of their earning,children have left home. Probably 55+ and at the end of paying off theirmortgage, more disposable income with all long term debts paid.

BATS - Babies Add The Sparkle - These are probably EWES who are in asecond or third marriage and have young children

CLAMS - Carefully Looks At Most Spending - Probably aged 33-44 withheavy financial burdens, mortgages and possibly school fees

OWLS - Older With Less Stress - In the 45-55 age range and movingtowards their peak earnings, children leaving home and the end of themortgage in sight.

MICE - Money is coming easier - Aged 24-34 with two incomes, mortgagebut no children. Sometimes also referred to as DINKies - Double Income NoKids


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Theories of Audience - a' comparative summary

Refer to this chart as you study further pieces of research.

Theory/Model What does the Strengths of this Weaknesses of thistheory suggest? approach?

iapproach?

Effects Studies 1: 'hypodermic' is a word The idea that the media The audience is alwaysusually associated with has effects on audiences considered to be passive

The 'hypodermic' model needles, drugs & does draw attention to and powerless. Thisinjections. certain ideas about the model has been more

media: usually applied to studiesIn this context it suggests • media producers have of children or women and

that the messages from a lot of power to create the media.the media go directly into textsthe minds of the viewers. • the kinds of media There is very little attempt

texts available to to account for the verySome theorists of this audiences becomes a many different ways

model have actually matter of debate and people use and enjoy thesuggested that the media argument media.can be "addictive", justlike narcotics.

Effects Studies 2: It suggests that the more This approach does The attitudes measured inCultivation Theory TV the audience watches, acknowledge that viewerS these approaches are not

the more likely it is that may gain some of their measured against thethey will develop certain knowledge of the world audience's wider set ofkinds of views about the from television. values and where theseworld. The worry is that have come from.these will be "fal~e" views. Rather than insisting on

direct effects, it shifts the People might believeAn example of this theory argument towards the there is more crime in thein application is that the idea that television is a world for a whole series ofview of crime offered in profoynd or important other reasons e.g. real lifeprogrammes like feature of our social lives. experience, press, jobCrimewatch feeds experience etc.perceptions that crime ison the increase in the UK.

Effects Studies 3: This theory suggests that One of the main strengths It is extremely difficult toDesensitisation the audience's attitudes to of the theory is that it prove how attitudes may

violence can be affected draws attention to the have been affected by theby having been exposed sheer volume of violence single stimulus of media.to too much violence on on screen and raises There may be many otherscreen. questions about the variables involved.

degree of exposureExposure to too much audiences should have tofictional violence is argued violent and aggressiveto amount to the audience images and language.being 'desensitised' toreal life violence.

Effects Studies '4: Whilst the idea of One of the reasons the Short-term behaviouralModelling or copycat watching a film is often idea of copy-cat behaviour changes are easy totheory linked to negative has such power is that observe but if a child

behaviour e.g. Power parents do report , copies Power RangersRangers might make kids anxieties about their kicks at 6 years old, doescopy the kicks, or Natural children's behaviour. this mean they will do thisBorn Killers may have all their lives?sent young Americans on Of all the strategieskilling sprees; very little available to parents toresearch has been done teach their children goodto test this assertion. It is habits, the advice to limita theory that is television seems one ofmaintained by the Press, the most achievable.rather than by research.

Uses and Gratifications This theory challenges the The audience is assumed Sometimes arguing fortheory assumptions underlying to be thoughtful and audience power has been

the different theories of intelligent and capable of done at the expense ofthe effects tradition. In this distinguishing fiction from thinking about questionsmodel it is argued that fact. of media power or thepeople will 'read' the power of ceJ:tain texts.media in very different Work in this traditionways according to their speaks about consumer

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personality and how they choice giving priority to Some theorists in thisare positioned in the exploration of the ways in tradition have Claimed thatworld. People may be which audiences may use the media has noaffected by the media if it the media. influence or effects at all.confirms their beliefs orenhances their role or Life experience is strongerimage. However, it argues than media experience.that the media will notchange beliefs that have The media is'credited with

. been accumulated from providing pleasure forlife experience. audiences and pleasure is

not seen as abad thing.

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)IUUY Research Question Research Method Conclusions Where was this reported?

~Professor Tony Does television encourage anti- Researchers observed the behaviour of children In 51. Hel~na, a small Researchers found no increase In hilling, punching, Reported in Ihe National Press. The study wasCharlton lrom social behaviour? South Atlantic Island, as television was Introduced for the first lime. The pinching or fighting after television was Inlroduced. This seen to have Iitlle application to the mediaCheltenham chddren's behaviour was studied before and after television was was despite the content of television being much stronger salurated countries like GB and US. Thelind Gloucester Introduced. Although a small community, many groups were observed in 51. Helena Ihan In BrItain and the absence 01 a conclusions about a small Island In Ihe SouthCollege of to give a sense of the Island's life. 'watershed'. The strong sense of community had a much Atlantic were not seen as proof that the medIaHIgher EdOOltlon higher Impact on children's behaViour than did television. has no Impact on children's behaviour.(report 01Interim findIngsIn AprIl 199B)

Albert Bandura, Can aggressive behaviour In Bandura studied 48 boys and 48 girls aged 3-5. He placed them in The experiment concluded Ihal the children who had Reported in the Journal ofAbnormal and Social

®Ross & Ross children be stimulated by violent four separate groups, each exposed to different Images of violence been exposed to the violent acts displayed most Psychology (1963) in the US. It was seen as a(1963) - it US Images they watch on the Involving either it real-life dramatisation of violenc.e or cartoon violence aggression. Bandura drew a diStinction between the vllal piece 01 research that proved a linkstudy television? He predicted that the where characters were yelling or hilling a rubber doll ('bobo-doW). groups that had seen the 'real-life' enactment and those between watching media and behaviour. It Is the

closer the Images on television One group saw no film or action at all. After the 'viewing' the children who had seen filmed or cartoon violence. Ife concluded most frequently quoted piece 01 research onwere to the audience's reality, were deliberately made angry, then placed In a room with toy guns that the film violence had a greater Impact than the children and violence.the more likely 11 was that they and the 'bobo' doll. Behaviour was ranked according to how much 'theatrical' violence. He said that 'film characterswould be Imitated afterwards. aggression was displayed towards the doll. suggest Ihat mass media, particularly television, may

.serve as an Important source of social behaviour'.

~Hodge rr Tripp Hodge and Tripp were Interested Before the children (aged 8-9) were told what the Interviews were Hodge and Tripp argued that their study showed that it Reporled In a book called Children and(1986) - In the way research Is conducted. 10 be about, they were asked 10 give their opInions on a cartoon called Is not always possible to lake what children say at face 7elevisfon. The findings In the research havean Australian Are children affected by the Fangface. This had received some crillcism In Australia lor its mild value. What children report may change according to been discussed widely amongst otherstudy wider ways in which Issues are violence. Alilhe children expressed enjoyment of the programme and Ihe context. Their study threw Ilght on the whole researchers but have not made a big Impact on

dlscuued? showed a good understanding of how the programme worked. The concept of research and has Influenced the ways In .the debate as presented in the national press.same groups of children were then shown the cartoon again with an which research f.indings should be Interpreted.'Adult Only' warning In front of Jl. The second Interviews levealed thatthe children were very worried that It was a programme that could -harm children. They changed w~at they had originally said about theprogramme because of the 'Adult Only' warning.

rIDTim Newbum Are there differences In viewing Questionnaires about vieWing habits with groups of young offenders Offenders and non-offenders .watched approximately This research was funded initially by a consortiumand Ann Hagell habits between young offenders (78 In total), and with 500 non-offenders In schools. Questionnaires equal amounts 01 televlsion.:ln both groups over 40'lb 01 regulators: the BBFe. the Broadcasting .:(1994)-11 and non'offenders? were followed by interviews In some cases.. Most were. boys. Most revealed that they preferred films awarded a higher . Standards Council and the ITe. The researchersBritish Study were Interviewed in either the young offenders' Inslllution or at c1assillcallon I.e. '18' filmS-The research conduded lhat have since reported that II was very difllcultto gelInto Young home, If non-offenders. there was lillie difference In what they watched. As a Journalisls to write about the findings objectivelyOffendels and result they argue that these findings need to be developed as this'research did not state causes. The researchersthe Media further inlo an examination not of what offenders watch but maIntain they had something very Interesting to

how they watch and how they understand what they see. show: that the slgnificanl faclor In Ihe effect ofscreen violence on behaviour is not so much aboutwhat people watch but how they Interprellt.

[E The National Does violence on television The aim was to eKamlne the extent and range of violence on us the researchers concluded that the volume 01 violence ThiS study was reported Widely In academicTelevisIon contribute to society's Ills? television. In this three year study over 2700 hours of television were on television must have an Influence. SuI the researchers journals and at conferences. II was a publiclyVIolence Study examined for violent content. The researchers noted thai 57% of noted lhatthe violence will have different effects on funded study, by the Department of Health In the- Edited by network programmes hay!! vIolence In them; 33% have at least 9 acls different groups of people·· children already predisposed us and the researchers outlined their alms asDonnersteln of.vlolence; 2S'lb of violence Involves the use of guns and in H% 01 to aggression are more likely \li be allected. The mass being about encouraging more responsiblelind Danlelllnz cases the perpetrators go unpunished. media will maintain, re-enforce and strengthen the televisIon programming and Viewing.(US) (1994- aggressive disposition 01 certarn individuals.1997\

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"Social Class" questionnaire

About you

What does the term "class" mean to you?

List the connotations you associate with the following terms:

1. Underclass

2. Chav

3. Middle class

4. Upper class

5. Posh

6. Lower class

7. Aspirant middle class

8. Working class

9. Social mobility

How would you define your own social class?

How would you define your parents social class and why?

How would you define your grand-parents social class and why?

Explain whether you have decided to go to university and why you feel itmay/may not be important to you?


What are your parent's occupations?

What are your grand-parent's occupations?

What would you like to do as an occupation?

Why is this occupation important to you?

What interests you about your chosen occupation?

How would you describe the area in which you live in terms of "class", andwhy?


David GauntlettFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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David Gau~tlett (b. March 15, 1971) is a social scientist specialising in the study ofcontemporary media audiences, and the role ofmedia in shaping self-identity. He tookhis PhD and then 'taught at the University ofLeeds, UK, from 1993 to 2001. He wasappointed Professor ofMedia and Audiences at Bournemouth University, UK., at theage of31, in 2001.

His critique ofmedia 'effects' studies sparked controversy in 1995 (see book, article),and since then Gauntlett has published a number ofbooks on the role ofpopular .media in people's lives.

'Ten things wrong with the "effects model'"

This article was published (as 'Ten things wrong with the "effects model"? in RogerDickinson, Ramaswani Harindranath & Olga Linne, eds (1998), Approaches toAudiences - A Reader, published by Amold, London.

The article is by © David Gauntletl, 1998, Not to be republished withoutpermission,May be used/or educationalpurposes, provided that the author and source areacknowledged.

About this article:

This essay provides an overview and restatement ofwhat I was trying to say inMoving Experiences. The book examines all ofthe studies in detail, and generallyconcludes that the research has failed to show that the media has any kind ofdirect orpredictable effects on people. This essay takes a slightly different approach, settingout ten reasons why 'effects research' as we have seen it so far seems to befundamentally flawed and is often surprisingly poor. This leads to a slightly different(implicit) conclusion, that media influences are something that we still know verylittle about, because the research hasn't been very good or imaginative... and so,therefore, it's still an open question. At the same time, it remains true that no researchis going to find direct or predictable effects. Viewers wondering what otherapproaches to media influences there might be, may want to look at Video Critical,which demonstrates a new audience research method using video production, anddiscusses other altemative approaches.

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It has become something of a cliche to observe that despite many decades of researchand hundreds of studies, the connections between people's consumption of the massmedia and their subsequent behaviour have remained persistently elusive. Indeed,researchers have enjoyed an unusual degree ofpatience from both their scholarly andmore public audiences. But the time comes when we must take a step back from thismurky lack of consensus and ask - why? Why are there no clear answers on mediaeffects?

There is, as I see it, a choice of two conclusions which can be drawn from anydetailed analysis ofthe research. The fIrst is that if, after over sixty years of aconsiderable amount of research effort, direct effects ofmedia upon behaviour havenot been clearly identifIed, then we should conclude that they are simply not there tobe found. Since I have argued this case, broadly speaking, elsewhere (Gauntlett,I 995a), I will here explore the second possibility: that the media effects .research hasquite consistently taken the wrong approach to the mass media, its audiences, andsociety in general. This misdirection has taken a number oHorms; for the purposes ofthis chapter, I will impose an unwarranted coherence upon the claims of all those whoargue or purport to have found that the mass media will commonly have direct andreasonably predictable effects upon the behaviour of their fellow human beings,calling this body of thought, simply, the 'effects model'. Rather than taking apart eachstudy individually, I will consider the mountain of studies - and the associated claimsabout media effects made by commentators - as a whole, and outline ten fundamentalflaws in their approach.

1. The effects model tackles social problems 'backwards'

To explain the problem ofviolence in society, researchers should begin with thatsocial violence and seek to explain it with reference, quite obviously, to those whoengage in it: their identity, background, character and so on. The.!media effects'approach, in this sense, comes at the problem backwards, by starting with the mediaand then trying to lasso connections from there on to social beings, rather than theother way around.

This is an iniportant distinction. Criminologists, in their professional attempts toexplain crime and violence, consistently tum for explanations not to the mass mediabut to social factors such as poverty, unemployment, housing, and the behaviour offamily and peers. In a study which did start at what-! would recognise as the correctend - by interviewing 78 violent teenage offenders and then tracing their behaviourback towards media usage; in comparison with a group of over 500 'ordinary' schoolpupils of the same age - Hagell & Newburn (1994) found only that the youngoffenders watched less television and video than their counterparts, had less access tothe technology in the fIrst place, had no particular interest in specifIcally violeI,ltprogrammes, and either enjoyed the same material as non-offending teenagers or weresimply uninterested. This point was demonstrated very clearly when the offenderswere asked, 'If you had the chance to be someone who appears on television, whowould you choose to be?':

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'The offenders felt particularly uncomfortable with this question and appeared to havedifficulty in understanding why one might want to be such a person... In severalinterviews, the offenders had already stated that they watched little television, couldnot remember their favourite programmes and, consequently, could not think ofanyone to be. In these cases, their obvious failure to identify with any televisioncharacters seemed to be part of a general lack of engagement with television' (p. 30).

Thus we can see that studies which take the perpetrators of actual violence as theirfirst point of reference, rather than the media, come to rather different conclusions(ano. there is certainly a need for more such research). The point that effects studiestake the media as their starting point, however, should not be taken to suggest thatthey involve sensitive examinations ofthe mass media. As will be noted below, thestudies have typically taken a stereotyped, almost parodic view ofmedia content.

In more general terms, the 'backwards' approach involves the mistake of looking atindividuals, rather than society, in relation to the mass media. The narrowlyindividualistic approach of some psychologists leads them to argue that, because oftheir belief that particular individuals at certain times in specific circumstances maybe negatively affected by one bit of media, the removal of such media from societywould be a positive step. This approach is rather like arguing that the solution to thenumber of road traffic accidents in Britain would be to lock away one famously poordriver from Comw;ul; that is, a blinkered approach which tackles a real problem fromthe wrong end, involves cosmetic rather than relevant changes, and fails to look in anyway at the 'bigger picture'.

2. The effects model treats children as inadequate

The individualism of the psychological discipline has also had a significant impact onthe way in which children are regarded in effects research. Whilst sociology in recentdecades has typically regarded childhood as a social construction, demarcated byattitudes, traditions and rituals which vary between different societies and differenttime periods (Aries, 1962; Jenks, 1982, 1996), the psychology of childhood developmental psychology - has remained more tied to the idea of a universalindividual who must develop through particular stages before reaching adult maturity,as established by Piaget (e.g. 1926, 1929). The developmental stages are arranged as ahierarchy, from incompetent childhood through to rational, logical adulthood, andprogression through these stages is characterised by an 'achievement ethic' (Jenks,1996, p. 24).

In psychology, then, children are often considered not so much in terms ofwhat theycan do, as what they (apparently) cannot. Negatively defined as non-adults, theresearch subjects are regarded as the 'other', a strange breed whose failure to matchgenerally middle-class adult norms must be charted and discussed. Most laboratorystudies of children and the media presume, for example, that their findings apply onlyto children, but fail to run parallel studies with adult groups to confirm this. We mightspeculate that this is because if adults were found to respond to laboratory presstU'es inthe same way as children, the 'common sense' validity of the experiments would beundermined.

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In her valuable examination of the way in which academic studies have constructedand maintained a particular perspective on childhood, Christine Griffin (1993) hasrecorded the ways in which studies produced by psychologists, in particular, havetended to 'blame the victim', to represent social problems as the consequence of thedeficiencies or inadequacies of young people, and to 'psychologize inequalities,obscuring structural relations of domination behind a focus on individual "deficient"working-class young people and/or young people of colour, their families or culturalbackgrounds' (p. 199). Problems such as unemployment and the failure of educationsystems are thereby traced to individual psychology traits. The same kinds ofapproach are readily observed in media effects studies, the production of which hasundoubtedly been dominated by psychologically-oriented researchers, who - whilst,one imagines, having nothing other than benevolent intentions - have carefullyexposed the full range of ways mwhich young media users can be seen as the ineptvictims ofproducts which, whilst obviously puerile and transparent to adults, can trickchildren into all kinds of ill-advised behaviour.

This situation is clearly exposed by research which seeks to establish what childrencan and do understand about and from the mass media. Such projects have shown thatchildren can talk intelligently and indeed cynically about the mass media(Buckingham, 1993, 1996), and that children as young as seven can make thoughtful,critical and 'media literate' video productions themselves (Gauntlett, 1997).

3. Assumptions within the effects model are characterised by barely-concealedconservative ideology

The systematic derision of children's resistant capacities can be seen as part of abroader conservative project to position the more contemporary and challengingaspects of the mass media, rather than other social factors, as the major threat to socialstability today. American effects studies, in particular, tend to assume a level oftelevision violence which - as Barrie Gunter shows in this volume - is simply notapplicable in other countries such as Britain. George Gerbner's view, for example, that'We are awash in a tide ofviolent representations unlike any the world has ever seen...drenching every home with graphic scenes of expertly choreographed brutality' (1994,p. 133), both reflects his hyperbolic view of the media in America and the extent towhich findings cannot be simplistically transferred across the Atlantic. Whilst it iscertainly possible that gratuitous depictions of violence might reach a level inAmerican screen media which could be seen as unpleasant and unnecessary, it cannotalways be assumed that violence is shown for 'bad' reasons or in an uncritical light.Even ~e most obviously 'gratuitous' acts of violence, such as those committed byBeavis and Butt-Head in their eponymous MTV series, can be interpreted asrationally resistant reactions to an oppressive world which has little to offer them (seeGauntlett, 1997).

The condemnation of generalised screen 'violence' by conservative critics, supportedby the 'findings' of the effects studies - if we disregard their precarious foundations can often be traced to concerns such as 'disrespect for authority' and 'anti-patrioticsentiments' (most conspicuously in Michael Medved's well-received Hollywood vs.America: Popular Culture and the War on Traditional Values (1992)). Programmeswhich do not necessarily contain any greater quantity of violent, sexual or othercontroversial depictions than others, can be seen to be objected to because they take a

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more challenging socio-political stance (Barker, 1984, 1989, 1993). This wasillustrated by a study of over 2,200 complaints about British TV and radio which weresent to the Broadcasting Standards Council over an 18 month period from July 1993to December 1994 (Gauntlett, 1995c). This showed that a relatively narrow range ofmost complained-of programmes were taken by complainants to characterise a muchbroader decline in the morals ofboth broadcasting in particular and the nation ingeneral.

This view of a section of the public is clearly reflected in a large number ofthe effectsstudies which presume that 'antisocial' behaviour is an objective category which canbe observed in numerous programmes and which will negatively affect those childrenwho see it portrayed. This dark yiew is constructed with the support of contentanalysis studies which appear almost designed to incriminate the media. Even today,expensive and avowedly 'scientific' content analyses such as the well-publicised USNational Television Violence Study (Mediascope, 1996; run by the Universities ofCalifornia, North Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin), for example, include odd tests suchas whether violent acts are punished within the same scene - a strange requirement fordramas - making it easier to support views such as that 'there are substantial risks ofharmful effects from viewing violence throughout the television environment' (p. ix).[Footnote: Examination ofprogrammes in full, sensibly also included in this study,found that 'punishments occur by the end of the program (62%) more often than notfor bad characters', however (Mediascope, 1996, p. 15). Despite this finding, and thelikelihood that a number ofthe remaining 38% would be punished in subsequentprogrammes, much is made ofthe finding that 'violence goes unpunished (73%) inalmost three out of four scenes' (point repeated on p. x, p. 15, p. 25; my emphasis)].This study also reflects the continuing willingness of researchers to impute effectsfrom a count-up of content.

4. The effects model inadequately defmes its own objects of study

The flaws numbered four to six in this list are more straightforwardly methodological,although they are connected to the previous and subsequent points. The first of theseis that effects studies have generally taken for granted the defmitions ofmediamaterial, such as 'antisocial' and 'prosocial' programming, as well as characterisationsof behaviour in the real world, such as 'antisocial' and 'prosocial' action. The point hasalready been made that these can be ideological value judgements; throwing down abook in disgust, smashing a nuclear missile, or - to use a: Beavis and Butt-Headexample - sabotaging activities at one's burger bar workplace, will always beinterpreted in effects studies-as 'antisocial', not 'prosocial'.

Furthermore, actions such as verbal aggression or hitting an inanimate object arerecorded as acts ofviolence, just as TV murders are, leading to terrifically (andirretrievably) murky data. It is usually impossible to discern whether very minor orextremely serious acts of 'violence' depicted in the media are being said to have led toquite severe or merely trivial acts in the real world. More significant, perhaps, is thefact that this is rarely seen as a problem: in the media effects field, dodgy 'fmdings'are accepted with an uncommon hospitality.

5. The effects model is often based on artificial studies

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Since careful sociological studies of media effects require amounts of time and moneywhich limit their abundance, they are heavily outnumbered by simpler studies whichare usually characterised by elements of artificiality. Such studies typically take placein a laboratory, or in a 'natural' setting such as a classroom but where a researcher hasconspicuously shown up and instigated activities, neither ofwhich are typicalenvironments. Instead of a full and naturally-viewed television diet, research subjectsare likely to be shown selected or specially-recorded clips which lack the narrativemeaning inherent in everyday TV productions. They may then be observed insimulations of real life presented to them as a game, in relation to inanimate objectssuch as Bandura's famous 'bobo' doll, or as they respond to questionnaires, all ofwhich are unlike interpersonal interaction, cannot be equated with it, and are likely tobe associated with the previous viewing experience in the mind of the subject,rendering the study invalid. .

Such studies also rely on the idea that subjects will not alter their behaviour or statedattitudes as a response to being observed or questioned. This naive beliefhas beenshown to be false by researchers such as Borden (1975) who have demonstrated thatthe presence, appearance and gender of an observer can radically affect children'sbehaviour.

6. The effects model is often based on studies with misapplied methodology

Many of the studies which do not rely on an experimental method, and so may evadethe flaws mentioned in the previous section, fall down instead by applying amethodological procedure wrongly, or by drawing inappropriate conclusions fromparticular methods. The widely-cited longitudinal panel study by Huesmann, Eron andcolleagues (Lefkowitz, Eron, Walder & Huesmann, 1972, 1977), for example, hasbeen less famously slated for failing to keep to the procedures, such as assessingaggressivity or TV viewing with the same measures at different points in time, whichare necessary for their statistical findings to have any validity (Chaffee, 1972; Kenny,1972). [Footnote: A longitudinal panel study is one in which the same group ofpeople(the panel) are surveyed and/or observed at a number ofpoints over a period of time].The same researchers have also failed to adequately account for why the findings ofthis study and those of another of their own studies (Huesmann, Lagerspetz & Eron,1984) absolutely contradict each other, with the former concluding that the media hasa marginal effect on boys but no effect on girls, and the latter arguing the exactopposite (no effect on boys, but a small effect for girls). They also seem to ignore thatfact that their own follow-up of their original set of subjects 22 years later suggestedthat a number of biological, developmental and environmental factors contributed tolevels of aggression, whilst the mass media was not even given a mention (Huesmann,Eron, Lefkowitz & Walder, 1984). These astounding inconsistencies, unapologeticallypresented by perhaps the best-known researchers in this area, must be cause forconsiderable unease about the effects model. More careful use of the same methods,such as in the three-year panel study involving over 3,000 young people conducted byMilavsky, Kessler, Stipp & Rubens (1982a, 1982b), has only indicated that significantmedia effects are not to be found.

Another misuse ofmethod occurs when studies which are simply unable to show 'thatone thing causes another are treated as if they have done so. Correlation studies aretypically used for this purpose. Their finding that a particular personality type is also

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the kind ofperson who enjoys a certain kind ofmedia, is quite unable to show that thelatter causes the former, although psychologists such as Van Evra (1990) havecasually assumed that this is probably the case. There is a logical coherence to theidea that children whose behaviour is antisocial and disruptional will also have agreater interest in the more violent and noisy television programmes, whereas the ideathat the behaviour is a product ofthese programmes lacks both this rationalconsistency, and the support of the studies.

7. The effects model is selective in its criticisms of media depictions ofviolence

In addition to the point that 'antisocial' acts are ideologically defined in effects studies(as noted in section three above), we can also note that the media depictions of'violence' which the effects model typically condemns are limited to fictionalproductions. The acts of violence which appear on a daily basis on news and seriousfactual programmes are seen as somehow exempt. The point here is not thatdepictions ofviolence in the news should necessarily be condemned in just the same,blinkered way, but rather to draw attention to another philosophical inconsistencywhich the model cannot account for. Ifthe antisocial acts shown in drama series andfilms are expected to have an effect on the behaviour of viewers, even though suchacts are almost always ultimately punished or have other negative consequences forthe perpetrator, there is no obvious reason why the antisocial activities which arealways in the news, and which frequently do not have such apparent consequences fortheir agents, should not have similar effects.

8. The effects model assumes superiority to the masses

Surveys typically show that whilst a certain proportion of the public feel that themedia may cause other people to engage in antisocial behaviour, almost no-one eversays that they have been affected in that way themselves. This view is taken toextremes by researchers and campaigners whose work brings them into regularcontact with the supposedly corrupting material, but who are unconcerned for theirown well-being as they implicitly 'know' that the effects will only be on 'other people'.Insofar as these others are defined as children or 'unstable' individuals, their approachmay seem not unreasonable; it is fair enough that such questions should be explored.Nonetheless, the idea that it is unruly 'others' who will be affected - the uneducated?the working class? - remains at the heart of the effects paradigm, and is reflected in itstexts (as well, presumably, as in the researchers' overenthusiastic interpretation ofweak or flawed data, as discussed above).

George Gerbner and his colleagues, for example, write about 'heavy' televisionviewers as if this media consumption has necessarily had the opposite effect on theweightiness of their brains. Such people are assumed to have no selectivity or criticalskills, and their habits are explicitly contrasted with preferred activities: 'Most viewerswatch by the clock and either do not know what they will watch when they turn on theset, or follow established routines rather than choose each program as they wouldchoose a book, a movie or an article' (Gerbner, Gross, Morgan & Signorielli, 1986,p.19). This view, which knowingly makes inappropriate comparisons by ignoring theserial nature ofmany TV programmes, and which is unable to account for thewidespread use of TV guides and VCRs with which audiences plan and arrange theirviewing, reveals the kind of elitism and snobbishness which often seems to underpin

J 6

such research. The point here is not that the content of the mass media must not becriticised, but rather that the mass audience themselves are not well served by studieswhich are willing to treat them as potential savages or actual fools.

9. The effects model makes no attempt to understand meanings of the media

A further fundamental flaw, hinted at in points three and four above, is that the effectsmodel necessarily rests on a base of reductive assumptions and unjustified stereotypesregarding media content. To assert that, say, 'media violence' will bring negativeconsequences is nbt only to presume that depictions of violence in the media willalways be promoting antisocial behaviour, and that such a category exists and makessense, as noted above, but also assumes that the medium holds a singular messagewhich will be carried unproblematically to the audience. The effects model thereforeperforms the double deception of presuming (a) that the media presents a singular andclear-cut 'message', and (b) that the proponents of the effects model are in a positionto identify what that message is.

The meanings ofmedia content are ignored in the simple sense that assumptions aremade based on the appearance of elements removed from their context (for example,woman hitting man equals violence equals bad), and in the more sophisticated sensethat even in context the meanings may be different for different viewers (womanhitting man equals an unpleasant act of aggression, or appropriate self-defence, or atriumphant act of revenge, or a refreshing change, or is simply uninteresting, or any ofmany further alternative readings). In-depth qualitative studies have unsurprisinglygiven support to the view that media audiences routinely arrive at their own, oftenheterogeneous, interpretations of everyday media texts (e.g. Buckingham, 1993, 1996;Hill, 1997; Schlesinger, Dobash, Dobash & Weaver, 1992; Gray, 1992; Palmer,1986). Since the effects model rides roughshod over both the meanings that actionshave for characters in dramas and the meanings which those depicted acts may havefor the audience members, it can retain little credibility with those who considerpopular entertainment to be more than just a set of very basic propaganda messagesflashed at the audience in the simplest possible terms.

10. The effects model is not grounded in theory

Finally, and underlying many of the points made above, is the fundamental problemthat the entire argument of the 'effects model' is substantiated with no theoreticalreasoning beyond the bald assertions that particular kinds of effects will be producedby the media. The basic question ofwhy the media should induce people to imitate itscontent has never been adequately tackled, beyond the simple idea that particularactions are 'glamorised'. (Obviously, antisocial actions are shown really positively soinfrequently that this is an inadequate explanation). Similarly, the question of howmerely seeing an activity in the media would be translated into an actual motivewhich would prompt an individual to behave in a particular way is just as unresolved.The lack of firm theory has led to the effects model being based in the variety ofassumptions outlined above - that the media (rather than people) is the unproblematicstarting-point for research; that children will be unable to 'cope' with the media; thatthe categories of 'violence' or 'antisocial behaviour' are clear and self-evident; that themodel's predictions can be verified by scientific research; that screen fictions are ofconcern, whilst news pictures are not; that researchers have the unique capacity to

Ij

observe and classify social behaviour and its meanings, but that those researchersneed not attend to the various possible meanings which media content may have forthe audience. Each of these very substantial problems has its roots in the failure ofmedia effects commentators to found their model in any coherent theory.

So what future for research on media influences?

The effects model, we have seen, has remarkably little going for it as an explanationofhuman behaviour, or of the media in society. Whilst any challenging or apparentlyillogical theory or model reserves the right to demonstrate its validity throughempirical data, the effects model has failed also in that respect. Its continued survivalis indefensible and unfortunate. However, the failure of this particular model does notmean that the impact ofthe mass media can no longer be considered or investigated.

The studies by Greg Philo and Glasgow University Media Group colleagues, forexample, have used often imaginative methods to explore the influence of mediapresentations upon perceptions and interpretations offactual matters (e.g. Philo, 1990;Philo, ed., 1996). I have realised rather late that my own study (Gauntlett, 1997) inwhich children made videos about the environment, which were used as a way ofunderstanding the discourses and perspectives on environmentalism which thechildren had acquired from the media, can be seen as falling broadly within thistradition. The strength of this work is that it operates on a terrain different from thatoccupied by the effects model; even at the most obvious level, it is about influencesand perceptions, rather than effects and behaviour. However, whilst such studies mayprovide valuable reflections on the relationship between mass media and audiences,they cannot - for the same reason - directly challenge claims made from within the'effects model' paradigm (as Miller & Philo (1996) have misguidedly supposed). Thisis not a weakness of these studies, of course; the effects paradigm should be left tobury itself whilst prudent media researchers move on to explore these other areas.

Any paradigm which is able to avoid the flaws and assumptions which haveinevitably and quite rightly ruined the effects model is likely to have someadvantages. With the rise of qualitative studies which actually listen to mediaaudiences, we are seeing the advancement of a more forward-thinking, sensible andcompassionate view of those who enjoy the mass media. After decades of stunted andrather irresponsible talk about media 'effects', the emphasis is hopefully changingtowards a more sensitive but rational approach to media scholarship.

Gerbner, George; Gross, Larry; Morgan, Michael, & Signori!

References

Gauntlett, David (1995a), Moving Experiences: UnderstandTelevision's Influences and Effects, John Libbey, London.

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Barker, Martin (1993), 'Sex Violence and Videotape', in SiglSound, vol. 3, no. 5 (New series; May 1993), pp. 10-12.

Aries, Phillippe (1962), Centuries of Childhood, translated I:Baldick, Jonathan Cape, London.

Barker, Martin, ed. (1984), The Video Nasties: Freedom aniCensorship in the Media, Pluto, London.

Buckingham, David (1996), Moving Images: UnderstandingEmotional Responses to Television, Manchester University FManchester.

Buckingham, David (1993), Children Talking Television: TheTelevision Literacy, The Falmer Press, London.

Borden, Richard J. (1975), 'Witnessed Aggression: InfluencObserver's Sex and Values on Aggressive Responding', in J(Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 567-5

Barker, Martin (1989), Comics: Ideology, Power and the CrManchester University Press, Manchester.

Gauntlett, David (1995b), '''Full of very different people alltogether": Understanding community and environment thrcclassroom video project', in Primary Teaching Studies, vol.pp. 8-13.

Gau ntlett, David (1997), Video Critical: Children, the EnvircMedia Power, John Libbey Media, Luton.

Gauntlett, David (1995c), A Profile of Complainants and thEComplaints, BSC Research Working Paper No. 10, BroadcasStandards Council, London.

http://www.theory.org.uk/david/effects.htm

Jenks, Chris (1996), Childhood, Routledge, London.

Jenks, Chris (1982), 'Introduction: Constituting the Child', iChris, ed., The Sociology of Childhood, Batsford, London.

Mediascope, Inc. (1996), National Television Violence Stud)Summary 1994-95, Mediascope, California.

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Hill, Annette (1997), Shocking Entertainment: Viewer Resp,Violent Movies, John Libbey Media, Luton.

Hagell, Ann, & Newburn, Tim (1994), Young Offenders andViewing Habits and Preferences, Policy Studies Institute, Lo

Griffin, Christine (1993), Representations of Youth: The StLand Adolescence in Britain and America, Polity Press, Camb

Gray, Ann (1992), Video Playtime: The Gendering of a LeislTechnology, Routledge, London,

Gerbner, George (1994), 'The Politics of Media Violence: ScReflections', in Linne, Olga, & Hamelink, Cees J., eds, MassCommunication Research: On Problems and Policies: The Athe Right Questions, Ablex Publishing, Norwood, New Jerse'

(1986), 'Living with Television: The Dynamics of the CultivcProcess', in Bryant, Jennings, & Zillmann, Dolf, eds, Perspe,Media Effects, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, New

Huesmann, L. Rowell; Eron, Leonard D.; Lefkowitz, MonroeWalder, Leopold 0, (1984), 'Stability of Aggression Over TilGenerations', in Developmental Psychology, vol. 20, no. 6,1134.

Lefkowitz, Monroe M.; Eron, Leonard D.; Walder, Leopold CHuesmann, L. Rowell (1972), 'Television Violence and ChildAggression: A Followup Study', in Comstock, George A., & IEli A., eds, Television and Social Behavior: Reports and Pa~

Volume III: Television and Adolescent Aggressiveness, NatiInstitute of Mental Health, Maryland.

Milavsky, J. Ronald; Kessler, Ronald c.; Stipp, Horst H., & IWilliam S. (1982a), Television and Aggression: A Panel Stu,Academic Press, New York.

Medved, Michael (1992), Hollywood vs. America: Popular Cthe War on Traditional Values, HarperCollins, London.

Lefkowitz, Monroe M.; Eron, Leonard D.; Walder, Leopold CHuesmann, L. Rowell (1977), Growing Up To Be Violent.' A .Study of the Development of Aggression, Pergamon Press,

Milavsky, J. Ronald; Kessler, Ronald; Stipp, Horst, & RubenS. (1982b), 'Television and Aggression: Results of a Panel ~

Pearl, DaVid; Bouthilet, Lorraine, & Lazar, Joyce, eds, TelevBehavior: Ten Years of Scientific Progress and ImplicationsEighties, Volume 2: Technical Reviews, National Institute 01

David Gauntlett - Ten things wrong with the media 'effects' model


Philo, Greg, ed. (1996), Media and Mental Distress, Longmc

Piaget, Jean (1929), The Child's Conception of the World, RLondon.

Van Evra, Judith (1990), Television and Child Development.Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, New' Jersey.

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Schlesinger, Philip; Dobash, R. Emerson; Dobash, Russell PWeaver, C. Kay (1992), Women Viewing Violence, British FiPublishing, London.

Piaget, Jean (1926), The Language and Thought of the Chi!~race & Company, New York.

Philo, Greg (1990), Seeing and Believing: The Influence ofRoutledge, London.

Palmer, Patricia (1986), The Lively Audience: A Study of ctAround the TV Set, Allen & Unwin, Sydney.

Miller, David, & Philo, Greg (1996), 'The Media Do InfluencESight and Sound, vol. 6, no. 12 (December 1996), pp. 18-2

Health, Maryland.


David Gauntlett - Ten things wrong with the media 'effects' model

www.medienpaed.coml04-1/gauntlell04-l.pdf

Using Creative Visual Research Methods to Understand Media

Audiences

This article ilttroduces an emerging area of qualitative media <audience'research. ill which individuals are asked to produce media or visualmaterial themselves. as a way of e.JCploring their relatiollShip with particular issues or dimellSions of media. The process of making a creative visualartefact _ as well as the artefact itself (which may be,jor e.JCample. a video,drawing. collage, or imagined magazine cover) - offers a reflective entrypoint into an e.JCploration of individuals» relatiollShips with media culture.This article sets out some of the origins, rationale and philosophy

underlying this methodological approach; briefly discusses two e.JCQmplestudies (Olle in which children made videos to cOlISider their reiatiollShipwith the environment, and one in which young people drew pictures ofcelebrities as part ofan e.JCamination of their aspirations and identificatiollSwith stars); and finally considers some emerging issues for further

development of this method.

I MedienPlidagogikmedienpaed.com

David Gauntlett28.3.2005

IntroductionResearch into the impact of mass media on its audiences can besimplistically grouped into two traditional strands. One strand has used arange of methods in a bid to <set up> individuals so that the researchers canpoint to some aspect of their behaviour or response which can berepresented as a media <effect>. The other strand has sought to avoid thiscrude and patronising approach, by speaking to individuals about theirmedia consumption instelld. Both approaches are somewhat unsatisfactory,since they rely on interpretations of instant responses rather than morereflective self-expressions, and they fail to give individuals the opportunityto express themselves creatively, or to significantly affect the research

agenda.This article discusses a, new approach to qualitative audience research,based around methods in which participants are asked to create media orartistic artefacts themselves. The process of making a creative visualartefact- as well as the artefact itself (which may be, for example, a video,drawing, collage, or imagined magazine cover) - offers a different way into

an exploration of individuals> relationships with media culture.The Centre for Creative Media Research at Boumemouth Media School,UK, has becn established to provide a hub for work in this emerging area(built in particular around the ArtLab website [www.artlab,org.ukl, eventssuch as the Symposium at Tate Britain in London which we organised inMay 2004 [www.artlab.org.ukltate.htm]. and the forthcoming book The

New Creative Audience Studies). This article aims:_ to set out some of the origins, rationale and philosophy underlying this

methodological approach;_ to briefly discuss two example studies;_ and to consider some emerging elements for further development of this

method.

..-......__.__ --...,c-,C

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It is commonplace in media studies to observe that (in developed, Westernsocieties at least) we live in a world where individuals are bombarded witha large quantity and range of images and messages from television, radio,print, the internet, other forms of media, and the advertising and corporatematerial that surrounds us. This material, as well as being very ubiquitous,is also usually very visual, or a complex mix of audio and visual material.It is also commonplace in media studies, howev~r. to explore the questionof people's responses to this material through language alone: using

Keywords:r'••. ~ __... ..__. M_.__.•__._. ·__·•· ·_

, \

\ Audiences. methodology, visual culture, qualitative re.search, c.reativity

i

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methods such as interviews or focus groups, researchers typically expectmedia consumers to provide more-or-less instant accounts, in words, oftheir feelings about these complex visual or audio-visual experiences.There is little reason to think that this would be an easy or straightforwardtask for most people. It is difficult to generate, on demand, a verbal account

of a complex audio-visual experience'.Therefore, the approaches which this paper proposes offer a different wayinto these issues. By operating on the visual plane, these visual/creativemethods mirror the visual nature of much contemporary media - so thatthere is a <match> between the research process which operates (or at leastbegins) on the visual plane, and the research area - people's relationshipwith contemporary culture - which also operates (or at least begins) on the

visual plane.When participants are asked to make a creative artefact, this brings about aconsiderable change in the pace of statement-generation within the researchprocess. Language-based methods are relatively time-pressured: if I askyou a question, it would seem strange if you didn't begin to provide mewith an answer within a few seconds. Creative tasks, on the other hand, areunderstood to take longer, and lead to a more reflective process, where itseems <natural> to take time to think about what is to be produced, and howthis can be achieved; and furthennore, during the time it takes to make thework, the participant will have spent further time - creative time - thinkingabout the research issue and their response to it, so that by the end of theprocess, even if we do ultimately resort to language, they will havedeveloped a set of responses which may be quite different to what theirinitial <gut reaction> may have been. (This approach is not necessarily<better>: asking people to verbally provide their spontaneous reactions tocertain research questions can be valuable in certain circumstances, but bydefinition such responses will not be the most reflective or carefullyconsidered). Moreover, the physical process of making something drawing, for example - involves the body in a physical engagement withthought which, again, may affect personal response: some artists wouldsuggest, for instance, that the physical effort of making a creative piecemeans that the engagement with it begins in the mind but comes through

, There is not space here to add to the extensive previous discussions of the limitationsof the established approaches (but see, for example, Moores, 1993; Ang, t996;Gauntlett & Hill, 1999; Ruddock, 2001). This article is instead an attempt to begin a

consideration of alternative and complementary methods.

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the body, and that this bodily engagement is a significant part of thethinking-through of the piece (see, for example, Kuh, 2000, and Palmer,

2004).This approach recognizes the creativity of audiences. It is obviously quitedifferent to those studies (which, indeed, it was developed in opposition to_ see GauntJett, 1995, 1997,2001) which offer participants a limited rangeof possible ways to express their response. Such response-limited studiesinclude, for example, surveys where respondents have to concur with oneof a pre-set range of views, or <effects> studies where the <subjects> havetheir behaviour categorised, within a pre-set range, by observers. Bycontrast, participants in visual/creative studies can offer a wide range ofresponses, and ideally should be able to significantly change the researchers' agenda or frames of reference. (Of course, as with any kind ofresearch, such studies can be done badly, or unimaginatively, or used in away which ultimately categorises participants in limited ways; but that

should not be the intention).Furthennore, it is contended that setting a task which invites participants toengage in a visual creative activity (making a media or artistic artefact) - asopposed to a language activity (the traditional spoken or written response)_ leads to the brain being used in a different way. A full understanding ofneuroscience is not necessary for this point to be made. Recent introductions to the latest scientific findings regarding the human brain and how itworks, such as Winston (2003) and Greenfield (2000), reflect that evenspecialist scientists themselves do not have a clear understanding of howthe brain works. However it is clear that earlier <modular> models (whichsuggested one comer of the brain dealt exclusively with language, forexample, and another dealt wholly with movement) were not quite right, asdifferent areas of the brain appear to work together. Nevertheless, differentbrain patterns, and different area networks, are associated with differenttypes of activity, and so visual/creative studies will use some parts of thebrain, and some kinds of brain activity, which are different to studies whichask participants to generate language/speech. Combined with the morereflective process, this could"': possibly, at least -lead to a different quality

of data.Finally, this kind of approach tends not to treat people as <audience> ofparticular things. A standard approach in media studies is to see people asthe <audience> of a particular individual media product - a particular soapopera, or a particular magazine, for ell:ample. This kind of approach, by

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contrast, prefers to recognise that most individuals are typically surroundedby a very broad range of media which they engage with on various levels,and involving different dimensions of pleasure, intellectual connection,distaste, voyeurism, apathy, enthusiasm, desire, and other feelings. It seemsbest, then, not to single out specific branded <bits> of the media forexamination, but rather to look at the impact of different broader elements,spheres, or styles.

Making visual thingsWe know that humans have been engaged in artistic expression for a verylong time. The drawings in the Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc cave in southernFrance, for example, have been found to be at least 31,000 years old(Lewis-Williams, 2002; Clottes & Feruglio, 2004). To get back to thisperiod in a hypothetical time machine, you would have to travel back to thefall of the Roman Empire, and then travel a further twenty times as far backinto history. It is worth pausing to consider this long-standing humaninterest in the creation of imagery.Friedrich Nietzsche suggested that human beings, since ancient times, havefelt the need to make marks to represent their lives and experiences notsimply as a reflection of private dreams, or to communicate instrumentalfacts about survival, but as a kind of necessary celebration of existence: an«impulse which calls art into being, as the complement and consummationof existence, seducing one to a continuation of life» ([1872] 1967: 43). Wecan see that this principle could apply to any number of creative worksfrom any period - linking, say, a Chauvet cave sketch of running horses,with a Vermeer painting of a woman reading a letter, with a Hollywoodromantic comedy.For many centuries the purpose of art was generally seen as being theattempt to reflect the beauty of nature - stemming back to Aristotle'snotion (c. 384-322 BC) that the purpose of art should be the imitation ofnature (mimesis). This was meant in a broad sense - art simply had to offer,as Richard Eldridge puts it, the «presentation of a subject matter as a focusfor thought, fused to perceptual experience of the work» (2003: 29). Art didnot have to be a simple <copy> of what we see in the world, then; music, forexample, fitted very well into this definition of imitation. Furthermore, inPoetics, Aristotle argued that art arises because «representation is natural tohuman beings from childhood», and because «everyone delights inrepresentations» and we like to learn from them (2004: 4). He also stated

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that the function of art is «not to relate things that have happened, butthings that may happen, i.e. that are possible in accordance with probabilityor necessity» (p. 12), thereby suggesting that art is about possibilities, andperhaps a thinking-through of ideas about ways of living.These ideas about art, then, were often complex and sophisticated, but didnot place special emphasis on the psychology of the artist themselves. TheRomantic era, from the second half of the 18th century, embraced the ideat~at art was primarily the self-expression of the artist (feelings, emotionand experience). The groundwork had been laid by George Berkeley, whoin An Essay Towards A New Theory of Vision (1709) established the ideathat we can only have mental representations of things, and not fully<know> a thing in itself. An artwork, then, could not be about the world, butabout a person's experience of the world - giving much useful fuel toRomantic critics who were happy to celebrate artistic expression, and themind's creative power, as superior to the <accurate> but unfermented viewof the world produced by a camera obscura.«In the light of this», as Julian Bell explains, «eighteenth-century artistictheory turned from how the painting related to the world towards how thepainting related to the painter» (1999: 56). The artist David Hockney,whose work includes a range of experiments with representation - inparticular rejecting the conventional Western approach to perspective says that artistic depiction «is not an attempt to re-create something, but anaccount of seeing it». Hockney cites Cezanne as a painter who made thisespecially apparent: «He wasn't concerned with apples, but with hisperception of apples. That's clear from his work» (Hockney & Joyce, 2002:58). A similar point is made by Arthur C. Danto in The Transfiguration ofthe Commonplace (1981): «It is as if a work of art were like anexternalisation of the artist's consciousness, as if we could see his way ofseeing and not merely what he saw» (p. 164).In an attempt to provide an even broader account of creative production,Richard Eldridge suggests that the motive of all creators and artists is «Toexpress, and in expressing to clarify, inner emotions and attitudes - theirown and others» - in relation to the common materials of outer life»(2003: 100). This useful phrase highlights the working-through of feelingsand ideas, and the way in which creative activity is itself where thethinking-through and the self-expression takes place, as well as being aprocess which creates an artefact which represents the outcome of thosethinking and feeling processes.

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Indeed, many key thinkers on the meaning of art have similarly seen artisticmaking as an act which reflects, and works through, human experience. Inhis Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics, originally delivered in the 1820s,Hegel describes the making of artworks as a universal human need toconsider one's own existence:

The universal and absolute need out of which art, on its formal side,arises has its source in the fact that man is a thinking consciousness,i.e. that he draws out of himself, and makes explicit for himself, thatwhich he is ... The things of nature are only immediate and single, butman as mind reduplicates himself, inasmuch as prima facie he is likethe things of nature, but in the second place just as really is forhimself, perceives himself, has ideas of himself, thinks himself, andonly thus is active self-realizedness (2004: 35).

Making <external things> upon which a person inevitably <impresses theseal of his inner being> gives that person the opportunity to reflect upontheir selfhood; <the inner and outer world> is projected into <an object inwhich he recognises his own self> (p. 36). Hegel's implication thatsomething made by a person will necessarily express something about itscreator interestingly predates Freud's suggestion, which would emergealmost 100 years later and in a quite different tradition, that artworks along with dreams, slips of the tongue, and any other product of the brain will reflect aspects of conscious or unconscious personality.Novelist Leo Tolstoy also felt that art communicated selfhood, but hismodel anticipates more deliberate action. In 18%, he wrote: «Art is ahuman activity [in which] one man consciously by means of certain signs,hands onto others feelings he has lived through, and that others are infectedby those feelings and also experience them» (l%0: 51). AlthoughTolstoy's transmission model - where feelings are implanted into a workby its creator and then <infect> its audiences - seems rather simplistic, hispoint is that art should primarily be about the communication of genuinelyfelt emotions. On this basis, he rejected numerous higWy-regarded worksof art, including many of his own, as decadent and <counterfeit>, becausethey were based on spectacle and an attempt to capture beauty or sentiment,rather than stemming from truly-felt emotions. Only works with thisauthentic base in feeling (whatever its character - joy or despair, love orhate) would be able to evoke a matching experience of such feelings in theaudience.

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In the twentieth century, John Dewey, in Art as Experience ([193411980),argued that looking at artworks - or at least, particular works of art that aremeaningful to us - <elicits and accentuates> the experience of wholenessand connection with the wider universe beyond ourselves (p. 195). Deweydoes not mean famous <111asterpieces> in particular (although those arelikely to have become celebrated because of these properties, at least inpart); for Dewey, art is part of everyday experience. «The understanding ofart and of its role in civilization is not furthered by setting out with eulogiesof it nor by occupying ourselves exclusively at the outset with great worksof art recognized as such» (p. 10). Dewey suggests that understanding anartistic experience is like understanding how a flower grows - rather thansimply noticing that it is pretty - and therefore involves an understandingof <the soil, air, and light» which have contributed to the aetiology of thework and which will be reflected in it (p. 12). This means that, just as weassociate a botanist with the study of flowers, we could expect to associatea sociologist with the exploration of artworks.Dewey suggests that art can introduce us «into a world beyond this worldwhich is nevertheless the deeper reality of the world in which we live inour ordinary experiences». This may sound quasi-religious, but Dewey'sconcerns are pragmatic: «I can see no psychological ground for suchproperties of an experience, save that, somehow, the work of art operates todeepen and to raise to great clarity that sense of an enveloping undefinedwhole that accompanies every normal experience». This brings «apeculiarly satisfying sense of unity in itself and with ourselves» (p. 195).Therefore, simply put, making or looking at a work of art encouragesreflection upon ourselves and our place in the world.These theories all suggest, albeit with different emphases and nuances, thatcreativity and artistic production is driven by a desire to communicatefeelings and ideas; and that such works will almost inevitably tell ussomething about their creator. In particular, artistic works are a thinkingthrough and reflection of social and psychological experience.

Interpreting visual material produced by research participantsWhen creative or artistic works are produced not as an exercise in<spontaneous> self-expression, but rather because a researcher hasrequested that they be made, questions about the interpretation of suchwork seem especially poignant. In studies where participants have beenasked to produce material such as a drawing, collage, photographs or a

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video, the problem of how this imagery can be used in a way which doesnot rely too much on the researcher's own subjective interpretation can

seem to be a serious hurdle.One response to this dilemma is to observe that researchers always have ajob of interpretation to do; whether their data is a set of images, or a set ofverbal statements generated in an interview or focus group, the researchercan only do their best to interpret this material. By reminding us that themeanings of language-based data are far from self-evident or selfexplanatory, this point - which I have made myself in the past - is useful.However, it ducks the main problem: franldy, if we are looking at visualmaterial in the hope of ascertaining how the artist/producer feels aboutsomething, this is more difficult than if we are faced with a verbalstatement where a person says how they feel about something. Interpretingthe latter is not necessarily straightforward either, but the researcher hassomething clear, intentional, and verifiable, to go on.An example will make this obvious point even more clear. Compare twopieces of data provided by a participant called Sarah:_ Item A: A drawing of Tony Blair, where he appears to be frowning, and

pointing._ Item B: The verbal statement «I think Tony Blair is terrible, he's very

arrogant and he's doing a bad job».

If we only had Item B to analyse, we would not feel uncomfortableasserting that Sarah believes that Tony Blair is <terrible>, <very arrogant>and <doing a bad job>, because she has said so in those very words and wehave little reason to think she is being untruthful. Furthermore, the meaningof these words is widely understood, and so we could go beyond quotingthose particular words and generate other adjectives which we could alsobe confident about: it would be OK to say, for example, that Sarah isdisappointed by Blair's performance; she feels he is too single-minded and

is failing to listen to others.If, on the other hand, we only had Item A to analyse, we could be muchless certain. Perhaps the drawing shows that Sarah finds Blair disagreeable,as seen in his dictatorial pointing and in the frown with which he dismissesother people's views; or perhaps she feels that Blair, a decisive leader,deals assertively with each day's challenges. Or something else.In an attempt to find or develop a methodology of interpretation, I studied alot of texts from the field of art therapy, since art therapists have for

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decades been eliciting artworks from patients in a bid to understand thembetter (for example, Betensky, 1973; Di Leo, 1973, 1983; Klepsch &Logie, 1982; Koppitz, 1984; Malchiodi, 1998a, 1998b; Matthews, 1998;Oster & Montgomery, 1996; Silver, 2001; Thomas & Silk, 1990). Ofcourse, art therapy is a diverse field with different approaches and practices. Some have always used the art as a loose kind of starting-point fortherapeutic explorations. Some believe that the psychoanalytic approach toreading dreams (first outlined in Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams,1900), in which images are read as metaphors, can be applied to children'sartworks (Diem-Wille, 2001, and Furth, 2002, are recent exponents of thisapproach). Another body of art therapists, for much of the twentiethcentury, had sought to use art as a direct diagnostic tool. Specific tests weredeveloped, such as the <House-Tree-Person> test (Buck, 1948, 1964) where the patient would be asked to draw a house, a tree and a person, andthen the clinician would use diagnostic charts to <identify> psychologicalproblems based on aspects of the drawings. Unsurprisingly, in the past twoor three decades this seemingly deterministic and simplistic kind ofapproach came to be less popular (Thomas & Silk, 1990; Malchiodi,1998b). Today, it is m.ore common for art therapists to encourage theirclients to produce drawings (or other artwork), but then talk with themabout the artwork. Instead of the therapist interpreting the image, theperson themselves interprets their work - which makes much more sense.In the traditional approach, the <expert> would impose their interpretationof the work. Such an imposition is a methodological problem and also, intherapeutic terms, devalues the knowledge and experience of the client. As

art therapist Cathy Malchiodi writes:

In my own work with children's drawings from a phenomenologicalapproach, the first step involves taking a stance of <not knowing>. Thisis si'milar to the philosophy described by social constructivist theoristswho see the therapist's role in work with people as one of co-creator,rather than expert advisor. By seeing the client as the expert on his orher own experiences, an openness to new information and discoveriesnaturally evolves for the therapist. Although art expressions may sharesome commonalities in form, content, and style, taking a stance of notknowing allows the child's experiences of creating and making artexpressions to be respected as individual and to have a variety of

meanings (l998b: 36).

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From recent developments in art therapy, then, I learnt the answer to theproblem of how you interpret an artistic or creative work: you get the artist

to interpret it themselves. Therefore, to return to the above example, wewould ask Sarah to do a drawing of Tony Blair and then, after she has spentperhaps 10 minutes thinking and 30 minutes drawing, we would discussdifferent dimensions of the drawing with her, asking what different

suggestive parts of it might mean, which would probably stimulate afocused and thoughtful discussion of her feelings about the politician.

Why bother with words at all?:The place of language in visual cultureCan we simply do away with words altogether? It seems not. Almost all

formal academic communication takes place in language, and for goodreasons: our clearest thoughts take the form of language, even when they

are <only> in the mind and have not been expressed. In his book VisualThinking, Rudolph Arnheim (1969) argues that thought operates primarily

on the visual plane:

Purely verbal thinking [without reference to non-language impressions

and images] is the prototype of thoughtless thinking, the automaticrecourse to connections retrieved from storage. It is useful but sterile.What makes language so valuable for thinking, then, cannot bethinking in words. It must be the help that words lend to thinkingwhile it operates in a more appropriate medium, such as visual

imagery (p. 231-232).Arnheim argues that the kind of thinking which can be done in words

alone - the logical form of thinking that computers can imitate - isfine but very limited. He suggests that humans routinely form

thoughts and make judgements based on perceptions, impressions,feelings, and visual material which cannot be reduced to words which are beyond words. Arnheim admits that language can then behelpful, bringing order: «It supplies a clear-cut, distinct sign for each

type and thereby encourages perceptual imagery to stabilise theinventory of visual concepts» (p. 236). This idea of language bringing

stability to the visual is fruitful. Arnheim himself, with his ownmission to promote the visual as being at the heart of thinking, is notso impressed: «The function of language is essentially conservative

and stabilising, and therefore it also tends, negatively, to makecognition static and immobile», he notes (p. 244).

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Nevertheless, language helps enormously with reliable communication. We

can readily propose ways in which images alone can <communicate>, ofcourse, and it is easy to assert that images can express <so much more> thanlanguage. Such a view is always nice, and often true. But it is interesting to

note what happens in Julian Bell's excellent book What is Painting?(1999), when, after many pages of writing about painting as the expressionof ideas and emotions, he seems to get fed up with it all, suddenly

shattering the prior assumptions of his own text with this passage:

But let us be brutal: expression is a joke. Your painting expresses - for

you; but it does not' communicate to me. You had something in mind,

something you wanted to <bring out>; but looking at what you havedone, I have no certainty that I know what it was. Your colours do not

say anything to me in particular; they are stuff to look at, but looking

is not the same as catching meanings ... [A work] has <meaning>,insofar as we open our eyes to it and allow them to wander and gaze

in fascination; but that <meaning> is not an idea or an emotion, not aspecific, unequivocal message. What we see is what we get: a product,not a process, lies on the wall.

But we are not happy to accept this. We yearn for expression to becommunication, for every wandering mark to find its home. As aresult, alongside this two-eenturies-old growth of the painting ofpersonal expression, a massive institution of explanation has grown upto control and stabilise the market» (p. 170)'.

It is interesting to note that Bell, like Arnheim, says that words aredeployed to <stabilise> the meaning of images. In terms of academicresearch, or more specifically research about the ways in which individualsrelate to media material, it would be difficult to ditch words altogether.

The feminist critique of traditional research methodsIt should also be mentioned that the methodological approach proposed in

this paper has been influenced by the feminist critique of traditional

, Bell admits that his own book is part of that industry of writing words about pictures.«But the book is trying to point the way through the institution's dim interior, towardsthe exit. To steer a path through the maze of words, towards the complex, but largelywordless pleasures of looking - that is the broad intention of this text, because itcomes from a painter, someone committed to producing objects specifically forviewing» (1999: 171).

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research (see for example Roberts, 1990; Reinharz, 1992; Hesse-Biber &Yaiser, 2003; Letherby, 2003). This is not simply in the sense of preferringqualitative to quantitative methods; and, in terms of its impact here, haslittle to do with gender issues. Rather, we note that feminists have criticisedboth qualitative and quantitative researchers for their tendency to useparticipants as mere suppliers of data. Traditionally, a researcher merelyencounters <subjects> and takes <data> away, without giving anything backto the people involved. Participants are not involved in the process, are notconsulted about the style or content of the process - apart from in themoment(s) in which they supply data - and do not usually get anopportunity to shape the agenda of the research. The process usuallyinvolves little real interaction, or dialogue. The creative/visual methods donot inherently or necessarily avoid this, but they provide moreopportunities for participants to shape the content of the enquiry, to bring inissues and questions which the researcher may not have considered, and toexpress themselves outside of boundaries set by the researcher. (It is in thearea of interpretation and analysis, as noted above, where the researcherregains the power to diminish and misunderstand the contribution of theparticipants; this is why the participants should be enabled to set the agendahere too, interpreting their own work rather than having an interpretationimposed upon them).

History of the approachUnsurprisingly, the idea of asking people to produce visual material withinresearch is not new (although it seems that using it in media audienceresearch, as outlined in this paper, is quite new). The book Image-BasedResearch, edited by Jon Prosser (1998), offers a range of interestingchapters on the growth of visually-oriented methods in social research.Many of them are about sociological uses of photography. DouglasHarper's «An Argument for Visual Sociology» (1998) is a goodintroduction to visual sociology, but much of it is about (documentary)photography - photographic records of life - rather than using imagecreation within a new research process. Similarly, Prosser & Schwartz(1998) discuss whether photographs can be trusted as authenticrepres.entations of social life. (Of course, such questions are not significantif we are discussing visual material which is seen as a record of selfexpression, rather than as a record of exterior realities).Art and drawings are considered in some chapters of Image-Based

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Research, though, most notably in the chapter by Noreen M. Whetton &

Jennifer McWhirter. Back in 1972, Whetton developed the <Draw andWrite Technique», as part of a project which established that althoughchildren aged 7-8 may not be able to communicate certain emotionsthrough words (whether written or spoken), they could feel them andunderstand them in others. This was revealed through the children'sdrawings, and their subsequent faltering speech about the emotionsdepicted in the drawings:

It became apparent that the children experienced and empathized witha wide range of emotions including anger, frustration, despair,remorse, guilt, embarrassment and relief as well as delight, enjoyment,excitement. The children differed only from adults in that they did nothave the vocabulary to express themselves» (Whetton & McWhirter,1998: 273).

Since then, Whetton, with colleagues, has used children's drawings toexplore various aspects of their world, such as a study looking at how theydrew a story involving drug dealers (Williams, Whetton and Moon, 1989a),a study exploring how children picture the insides of their bodies(Williams, Whetton and Moon, 1989b), and a study revealing children'sinterpretations of dental health campaigns (Whetton & McWhirter, 1998).In media audience research which did use some visual material and askedparticipants to do a creative (writing) task, members of the Glasgow MediaGroup asked participants to write their own news headlines or reports toaccompany actual news photographs or headlines which they were given,or sometimes asked to write scripts to accompany other material (see forexample Kitzinger, 1990, 1993; Philo, 1990, 1996; Miller, 1994). Thesestudies aimed to show how the public have been influenced by (or, at least,have remembered the discourses of) media coverage of particular topics.More recently, new media researchers have looked at websites produced byfans, activists, and other <ordinary people> using the internet to expressthemselves, exploring these as a kind of unsolicited data, non-mainstreamvisual and textual constructions which can tell us something about people'srelationship with mainstream media and mainstream politics (see, forexample, chapters in Gauntlett & Horsley, eds, 2004).And I have recently, belatedly, become aware of the work of Horst Niesytoand his colleagues at the University of Ludwigsburg, Germany. Niesyto has

. been working on the idea of using visual and audio-visual productions

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within qualitative research since the 1980s, mostly in German and inGerman-language publications (with English-language articles appearingsince the late 1990s). His thoughtful discussions (such as «Youth Researchon Video Self-productions: Reflections on a Social-aesthetic Approach,.,2000) focus on the ways in which media materials are thoroughlyintegrated into the everyday experiences of young people, and are part oftheir construction of their social worlds. The method developed by Niesytosince the mid-1980s - projects in which «young people had the chance toexpress personal images of experience in self-produced video films» (p.137) - is based on a philosophy which has much in common with thatwhich I thought I had been originating (!), separately, since the mid-l990s.Niesyto writes:

In view of media's increasing influence on'everyday communication, Iput forward the following thesis: If somebody - in nowadays mediasociety - wants to learn something about youth's ideas, feelings, andtheir ways of experiencing the world, he or she should give them achance to express themselves also by means of their own self-mademedia products! (p. 137).

More recently the methods have become more complex'; see, for example,the article by Peter Holzwarth & Bjorn Maurer (2003) which details theinternational collaborative project, Children in Communication aboutMigration (known as CHICAM - see www.chicam.net). in which youngpeople used collage (with cut-up magazines), disposable cameras, variousvideoed activities, arrangements of photographs with music, and specificphoto tasks (such as a photo essay on likes and dislikes, or on nationalsymbols), as well as video productions, which were shared and discussedinternationally via the internet. Holzwarth & Maurer suggest:

In an era when audio-visual media play an increasingly influential role

, In 2000 there was a conference in Germany, 'Eigenproduktionen mit Medien alsGegenstand der Kindheits- und Jugendforschung' [' Self-productions with media as asubject of childhood and youth research'), in which German researchers presentedseveral studies inclUding video, graffiti, audio and computer-based media productions(see Niesyto, 2001). There was also the international project 'VideoCulture' (19972000, coordinated by Horst Niesyto), which explored the potential of images andmusic in the context of intercultural communication (see Journal of EducationalMedia, Special Issue: The VideoCulture Project, Vol. 26, No.3 (October 2001);Niesyto, 2003; www.ph-Iudwigsburg.delmedien Ilforsch).

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in children's and adolescent's perceptions, it is important that researchers not rely on verbal approaches alone, but also give youngpeople the opportunity to express themselves in contemporary mediaforms. Audio-visual data should not be considered an alternative toverbal data but rather a source of data with a different quality» (p.127).

They conclude that:

Using their own media productions as communication links makes iteasier for children to talk about their world and living environment[... J these works provide openings into the children's world whichlanguage barriers would otherwise render inaccessible (p. 136).

CHICAM is co-ordinated by David Buckingham, whose work onchildren's media literacy in the 1990s was undoubtedly an influence uponthis emerging sphere of work (for example, Buckingham & Sefton-Green,1994). Most recently, Buckingham & Bragg's study of young people'sresponses to media portrayals of sex and personal relationships (2004) gaveteenage participants a blank notebook and asked them to keep a <diary> or<scrapbook>, containing personal reflections upon such material seen in themedia, with intriguing results .It is hoped that, as researchers become aware of the similarities betweenprojects being developed in different countries, we can start to cometogether more, share ideas and collaborate.

Examples of the method in actionOur own examples of the visual/creative approach in action can be found atthe website of the Centre for Creative Media Research, at <www.artlab.org.uk>. Some are more developed than others, ranging from a publishedbook-length monograph to smaller pilot studies, as well as activities wherethe approach is used with an emphasis more on teaching, or art workshops,rather than for research. Here we will consider two examples of researchprojects, one involving video production, the other involving drawing,

Video CriticalIn this study, published as the book Video Critical: Children, theEnvironment and Media Power (Gauntlett, 1997), the researcher workedwith seven groups of children aged 7-11 to make videos about <theenvironment>. The participants were from Leeds, UK, and attended mostly

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inner-city schools characterised by a diverse ethnic mix and relatively poorsocio-economic backgrounds.The study grew out of a need to assess the impact of the environmentalmessages which had been appearing in a range of media consumed bychildren in the early to mid I990s. Having established that traditional<effects> research was unable to offer valuable models for assessing theinfluence of the media (Gauntlett, 1995,2001), this study sought to take adistinctly different - or even <opposite> - approach. Where traditional<effects> research is interested in participants' responses on a pre-selectedaxis, recorded quantitatively (for example, how many times they hit a dollor press a button), the Video Critical research was interested inparticipants' responses, whatever they may be (for example, the childrencould choose what to put into their film, how to film it, what messages toinclude or narrative to follow). Where <effects> research sees children aspassive receivers of media messages, this research was interested inparticipants as creative and thoughtful individuals. In particular, <effects>research would not offer young people the opportunity to demonstrate anyintelligent or critical responses, whereas this research presented participantswith a platform to demonstrate their abilities.The <data> for analysis in such a study is not simply the videos that areproduced, but rather also - perhaps more importantly - includes theresearcher's ethnographic observations of the entire production process,from first thoughts and discussions, through planning and various filmingsessions, and responses to material in progress, through to completion.The study was able to demonstrate a high level of media literacy in eventhe youngest participants. In their few years of experience as mediaconsumers, the children had learned elements of genre and presentation, aswell as acquiring a lively awareness of the way in which things could berepresented, and misrepresented, on camera. The children's familiarity withthe constructedness of the media, their ability to imagine the final editedtext even as they recorded elements of it out of sequence, and the sheerspeed with which they picked up how to operate the equipment and begancreative activity, all confirmed that an (open research method whichallowed children to express themselves would lead to a much more positivepicture of young media consumers than the <closed>, inherently negativemethods used by <effects> researchers.In terms of environmental issues, the study was able to show that thechildren felt quite a high level of concern about environmental issues,

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particularly pollution and the need for green, open spaces. The childrenrelated to environmental issues most closely at the local level, althoughsome global extrapolations were made. However, the children did not focuson global issues primarily in their videos, and the published study(Gauntlett, 1997) discusses the idea that the absence of a global or <macro>focus in the environmental media coverage consumed by children led totheir understanding of the whole issue being (bent> towards theindividualistic,localleve'.The time spent observing the planning and production of each video, over aperiod of weeks, revealed that the impressions generated in the groupinterview in the first week of the study (equivalent to the focus groupwhich is often the only information-gathering element of other qualitativestudies) were often inaccurate, with some being distinctly misleading.Children who had seemed indifferent to. the environment in conversationwere found to have quite strong views on some issues - particularly whererelated to the quality of their own lives - whilst others who had emergedfrom the initial discussion as keen environmentalists were found to berather less committed where significant amounts of actual effort would berequired. Over time, it generally became clear that the children were morefamiliar with environmentalist values and discourses than had been initiallyapparent; but also that environmental concern was not singular orstraightforward, as conflicts were observed between the idealistic desire tobe environmentally friendly on the one hand, and the more pragmatic orhedonistic pull of enjoying themselves and <not bothering> on the other. Bythe end of each project, one could see that the initial group interviews hadrepresented a kind of <brain dump> of potential interests and concerns,which in subsequent weeks were sifted and filtered to reveal the moregenuinely-felt opinions.The video-making process gave children a voice, not only to provideconsidered answers, but to set their own questions. They were even able touse the persuasive vehicles of humour and satire to make their points. Suchfindings contrasted pleasingly with the findings of <effects> studies, whichtypically positioned young participants as likely victims of the media,-andseemed most happy to find any partial evidence which would confirm thisview. By contrast, this study was able to show that children are far frombeing simply passive or reactive in relation to the mass media. The contentof television programmes and other media goes through complex processesof critical interpretation and integration with existing knowledge and

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understandings, and so cannot have direct or predictable <effects> onattitudes or behaviour. Children are generally sharp and cynical readers ofthe mass media - as they are able to demonstrate when given the opportunity to be writers of such media. (For more about this study, see onlinepresentation with photographs at www.artlab.org.uklvideocritical).

Drawing CelebrityThis study, conducted 2003-04, explored the idea of asking participants todo drawings as the way of getting into participants' responses to mediamaterial. The research sought to explore how young people think aboutcelebrities, and whether <celebrity culture> (seen as being especiallydominant at this time in the UK) was having an impact on their aspirationsor lifestyle values. The work also considers changing perceptions of genderidentities.The study involved 100 <Year 10> students (aged 14-15) in the south ofEngland. Participants were asked: «Draw a star, celebrity or famous personwho you would like to be. H there's nobody you'd like to be, at all, thenchoose someone who you think is good or cool». They were also asked to«put them in a particular setting and/or doing something», and werereassured that their drawing skills were of no concern.See fig. I for examples of some of the images. Clearly, it would be difficultto interpret such pictures in isolation - and indeed, as discussed above, I donot feel that one can justify a researcher imposing their, or any other,<external> interpretation (since we could never agree why one interpretationwas correct and another one was not), and therefore the solution has to bethat the artist interprets their work themselves.Therefore, after spending 30-40 minutes on the drawing, participants werethen asked to complete a single-sheet questionnaire, the most importantpart of which was the open question «Do you think it would be good to belike this person ... and if so, why?». (It would have been better to conductinterviews, so that aspects of each drawing, and specific points expressed inanswers, could be explored; but time constraints - in terms of how muchdisruption school teachers would allow - meant that a written response wasoften the only practical solution). Answers to this question included, forexample:• Female who had drawn actress Julia Roberts: «Yes, because she's rich,

famous, pretty and is a fantastic actress. I like all the film's she's in. Shedeals well when the public criticises her. She's really talented and

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secure».• Male who had drawn rugby star Johnny Wilkinson: «Yes because he's

the best in the world. He has lots and lots of money. He plays rugby(better than football)>>.

• Female who had drawn pop star and actress J-Lo: «Have lots of money».Very famous. Can have anything she wants. Loved by lots of people.

• Male who had drawn singer Bob Marley: «Yes, because he was out ofthis world (if you get what I mean). He wrote a lot of good songs, had alot of wives and solved a lot of political problems in Jamaica».

In a relatively small number of cases (16 per cent) the artists had decidedthat they did not actually want to be that person after all, or had mixedfeelings. For example:• Male who had drawn football star David Beckham: «No, because even

though he is really rich and famous, he's always in the papers. I wouldn'tbe able to cope with all the media coverage he gets. It would be good toplay for Real Madrid and be that rich but not so famous».

• Female who had drawn Friends actress Jennifer Aniston: «Maybe.Because it would be nice to be married to Brad Pitl. Being famous wouldbe nice but maybe a bit annoying. She is very attractive».

• Male who had drawn singer-songwriter Badly Drawn Boy: «Some partswould be good, like having lots of money and having singing talent.Also having the lazy lifestyle would be good. But the fans and fame Iwould not appreciate».

A second question, «What setting did you draw them in, and what are theydoing in your drawing? And why do you think you drew them like this?»usually only elicited descriptive responses, although occasionally they werea little more revealing. For example:• Female who had drawn pop star Christina Aguilera: «I drew her singing

at the Europe Music Awards. I drew her in this setting as I would love tosing live in a stadium in front of all those people and have them all loveyou».

• Male who had drawn Virgin entrepreneur Richard Branson: «Richard isposing in front of his planes, trains and his shops and phone services. Idrew him like this because it shows what a good business man he is».

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• Female who had drawn Friends actress Jennifer Aniston: «She is shopping and is by her big house. I drew her like this because she is able togo shopping and spend a lot of money and can spend her money withoutwondering if they can actually afford to spend that amount of money.

Arguably the most interesting written responses were given in response to athird, more <closed> question, which said: «Can you think of three wordswhich might be used to describe this person, and which also describe howyou would like people to think of you?». Although apparently offering lessscope for rich qualitative responses, this question drew consistentlyinteresting, thoughtful answers. David Beckham, for example, wasdescribed by one young man as <happy>, <a family man> and having <lots offriends>. This choice of three phrases interestingly leaves out football skills,and positions Beckham as a father and family man. Other responses frommales included:• Bob Marley - Sound; Funny; Warm• Roger from Less Than Jake - Cool; Modest; Friendly• Orlando Bloom - Talented; Cool; Good looking• Matthew Perry - Funny; Original, unique; Interesting• Bruce Lee - Focused; Mellow; Supple

Coming from male teenagers, responses such as these - which areemotionally reflective rather than <macho> - suggest either that youngmasculinities are changing (Frosh, Phoenix & Pattman, 2001; Gauntlett,2002), or that the drawing process gives research participants time todevelop more nuanced thoughts about the subject-matter. (In fact, I believeboth of these to be the case). Studies of gendered self-presentation havefound that the school context still typically requires young males to create aperformarice of masculi!1ity within very particular boundaries. In terms ofmedia research specifically, David Buckingham (1993) discusses how hisefforts to discuss television with groups of boys aged between seven andtwelve, in English schools, 'encountered serious difficulties becausemasculinity was actively <policed> by the boys themselves. Although theywere able to have relatively complex discussions about sexism in cartoons,the boys kept each others' masculinities in check, so that any boy whobegan to step out of line - by expressing a more <feminine> view, or evenby suggesting that they liked a female character - would quickly be<corrected> or made fun of, so that their self-presentation was hastily

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pushed back into the more traditional masculine mode.The drawing exercise does not necessarily get around this problem indeed, drawing may be a more self-conscious activity than speech - but itseems that once young males have decided to participate in the activity,they are then perhaps a little more willing to engage seriously withassociated issues. Rather than being a study which leads to confidentassertions of findings, this study was useful in developing ideas about theuse of drawings in research - some of which are discussed a little more in<A few more thoughts), below.

Other studiesFurther projects which have made use of this approach include:- Designs 011 Masculinity - PhD project by Ross Horsley (2001-M), in

which young men aged 16-30 (some in school or college, some workingmen, some in prison) are asked to design a men's magazine «which youwould like to read, but which you also think would appeal to men ingeneral». Horsley's findings suggest an equation between the process ofconstructing a magazine and the process of constructing one's owngender identity. Some information at www.artlab.org.uk, and see thedeveloping website at www.readinginto.comlmagazines.

- The Passport of Me - Art and identity project in collaboration with PeterBonnell at Royal College of Art (2004). Young people were given ablank passport, art materials and polaroid camera, and asked to create adocument recording aspects of themselves (tying in with the exhibitionabout documentation, This Much is Certain). See (www.artlab.org.uk/passport.htm> .

Some other recent studies and activities are mentioned in «Popular Mediaand Self-Identity: New approaches» at www.artlab.org.uklinaugural.htmand a few earlier ones appear at www.artlab.org.uklprojects.htm.

A few more thoughts on visual methodologiesFollowing on from my most recent research experience - the study outlinedabove in which teenagers were asked to do drawings of celebrities - Iwould like to mention a few aspects of this approach which are worththinking about.

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Avoidillg linearityA valuable aspect of static imagery, used in research - such as drawings orcollages, for example, but not video in this instance - is its lack of linearity.When we seek verbal or written responses from research participants, thatdata has to necessarily be sorted into an order. As Rudolph Amheim notesin Visual Thinking (1969):

Intellectual thinking [as expressed in language, and as opposed tovisual thinking] strings perceptual concepts in linear succession ...Intellectual thinking dismantles the simultaneity of spatial structure. Italso transforms all linear relations into one-directional successions the sort of event we represent by an arrow (p. 246).

When visualising a concept or a problem, we might picture a number ofthings at once, and perhaps see them as interconnected, but language forcesus to put these into an order, one first and then the others, with the formeroften seeming to act upon or influence the latter. As Amheim put it later, inhis New Essays on the Psychology ofArt (1986):

Propositional language, which consists of linear chains ofstandardized units, has come about as a product of the intellect; butwhile language suits the needs of the intellect perfeclly, it has adesperate time dealing with field processes, with images, withphysical and social constellations, with the weather or a humanpersonality, with works of art, poetry, and music (p. 20-21).

Pictures obviously offer us the opportunity to reveal «everything in onego», without the material being forced into an order or a hierarchy. Often itis useful to have some explanation in words, after the initial (and central)impact of the imagery; but the primacy of the image can be retained. Theexample of the <mind map> of Beethoven's ninth symphony prepared byBenjamin Zander, ~onductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra,illustrates this nicely (see www.artlab.org.uklinaugural.htm). Mter muchresearch and immersion in the symphony and the world of its composer,Zander created his visual guide to the piece, which is then presented to theorchestra. Although some of the meaning of this mind map will betranslated into language, as the orchestra discusses it with Zander, thevisualisation itself remains the primary reference point. Similarly, when aresearch participant creates a static artwork, their work offers a

. simultaneous range of themes and interpretations which may be explored.

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Picntres as propositions. and as reflections ofmental conceptsNicholas Mirzoeff, whilst defining visual culture, notes that «visual culturedoes not depend on pictures themselves but the modem tendency to pictureor visualize existence» (1999: 5). If modem living is primarily anexperience of the visual, then getting this imagery <from) the mind, and<into) the realm of analysable research material would be a central goal forresearchers. Art and drawing would seem to be the most direct way to dothis. Of course, it is not direct at all: individuals have different levels ofartistic skill, and on top of that, have different levels of confidence - ormore usuaUy lack of confidence - in those skiUs. Furthermore, as GertraudDiem-Wille reminds us, in psychoanalytic terms, artworks will always be<compromise formations> - <compromises between the instinctual wish andall forces that oppose instinctual gratification» (2001: 120). In other words,even when artworks are intended to be expressive of something particular,they are always compromises between a revelation of something, and thesocial and psychological forces that prevent the artist from simply showingit.Even the idea of putting a mental <picture' onto paper is far fromstraightforward, since the image we have of something in the mind is notusually fully-formed, like a photograph, but is more likely to be fracturedand impressionistic. Virginia Woolf described consciousness in this way:

Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. Themind receives a myriad impressions - trivial, fantastic, evanescent, orengraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, anincessant shower of innumerable atoms ... ([1919] 2003: 69).

This continuous <shower> of new material could be said to run down thevalleys of the brain and enter the <stream> described by psychiatristAnthony Storr:

Although we may describe what goes on in our own minds ascontinuous, the <stream of consciousness>, we cannot actually perceivethis. It is more like a stream of unconsciousness, with elements we callconscious floating like occasional twigs on the surface of the stream.When something occurs to us, a new thought, a linking of perceptions,an idea, we take pains to isolate it, to make it actual by putting it intowords, writing it down, stopping the <flow> of mental activity for thetime being as we might reach out and grab one of the twigs floatingpast. (1992: 169).

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When not translated into words, elements in the stream may be revealed tous as what Amheim (1969: 108), after Titchener (1926: 13), caUs <visualhints« and <flashes'). Philosopher Susanne Langer (1942) notes that certainperceived images may be deliberately stored, in a way parallel to Storr'sgrabbing of twigs, in a process where the raw perceived moving image datais <projected) ... into a new dimension, the more or less stable form we calla picture' which has «a unity and lasting identity that makes it an object ofthe mind's possession rather than sensation» (p. 66). Nevertheless, ofcourse these mentally stored perceptions are not the kind of recollectionwhich might easily be mistaken for <actual> pereeption; rather, Langer saysthey «have all the characteristics of symbols», and therefore that we «attendto them only in their eapacity of meaning things» since they are «symbolswhereby those things are conceived, remembered, considered» (ibid).Langer, who felt that language is «a poor medium for expressing ouremotional nature» (p. 100), sought to systematise the interpretation ofsymbols, with a debateable degree of success; but here we can simply takethe point that humans store particular symbolic images - or at least, visualnotes - for particular meaningful reasons. Turning this visual concept (inthe mind) into a simple two-dimensional drawn image (in the physicalworld), is not likely to be simple.Nevertheless, a person typically makes an effort and is able to put downsomething; something we can look at and consider. Here another pointmade by Amheim seems provocative:

Every picture is a statement. The picture does not present the objectitself but a set of propositions about the object; or, if you prefer, itpresents the object as a set of propositions (1969: 308).

If we apply this to the example of the celebrity-drawing study outlinedabove, it would suggest that we could examine each artwork as being a setof propositions ibout that admired celebrity. To avoid imposing a reading,once again, this would need to be explored as part of a dialogue with theartist; the researcher could ask the participant to suggest what thesepropositions might be, and could offer some for discussion, ultimatelyperhaps agreeing on a list of such statements.

Further possibilitiesInstead of asking participants to produce just one image, it may be morefruitful to ask them to produce as many as they like - partly so that a

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• MedlenPiidagogik_

thought can be refined and presented in different ways, and partly becausewe often have a range of thoughts about any particular topic'. This wouldalso mean that the participant could talk the researcher through each imageand construct an account, or a narrative, of the connections and differencesbetween the different images in the overall set.Furthermore, future developments of this kind of work might allowparticipants more choice and variety in the ways in which they are enabledto express themselves. Instead of the researcher saying «Here's the videocamera», or «Here's the pens», participants could be allowed to select theirown forms as well as styles.

ConclusionAs was outlined at the start of this paper, this approach, in whichparticipants are asked to provide a visual, creative response to a certainquestion or issue in media studies:

Is different to most methods in audience/social research, which requireparticipants to produce illStant descriptions of their views, opinions orresponses, in language;Is a different way into a research question: inviting participants to createthings as part of the research process;

- Operates on the visual plane, to a substantial degree (as does most mediaand popular culture);Involves a reflective process, taking time;Recognises the creativity of <audiences>, and engages the brain in adifferent way;Generally avoids treating individuals as mere ,audience> of particularproducts.

, The idea that we might need more than one image comes, once again, from RUdolphArnheim: <1 mentioned earlier that drawings, paintings, and other similar devicesserve not simply to translate finished thoughts into visible models but are also an aidin the process of working out solutions of problems. Of this, one receives littleevidence from studies that yield only one drawing for each task. Therefore, in theexperiments of Miss Caplan [a student of Arnheim who had asked fellow students todo drawings of concepts), subjects were encouraged to «use as many pieces of paperas you need: a new piece for each new idea; a new piece each time you want tocorrect an old idea. Continue until you are satisfied with your drawing! Think aloudas you draw and explain what you are doing as you do it!,. Eleven subjects producedan average of nine drawings each; one drew as many as thirteen, and nobody settledfor fewer than six). (1969: 129-130).

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This approach - to make one further point - seems to usefully bridge thedivide between dheory> and <practice> in media studies. At both school anduniversity level, media and communications studies is often taught as asubject of two halves - the <practical> work (making media) on the onehand, and the <theory> work (studying media) on the other. This dichotomyis often a source of frustration for both students and teachers, andunhelpfully carves up the field. The approach to media studies discussed inthis paper fuses the two together - studying media by making media; or, tobe more specific, studying media and its place in the everyday worldthrough working with people in the everyday world to make mediaproductions.

ReferencesAng, I. (1996). Living Room Wars: Rethinking media audiences for a

postmodern world. London: Routledge.Aristotle (2004). Poetics, translated by Malcolm Heath. London: Penguin.Arnheim, R. (1969) Visual Thinking. Berkeley: University of California

Press.Arnheim, R. (1986). New Essays on the Psychology of Art. Berkeley:

University of California Press.Bell, J. (1999). What is Painting?: Representation and Modern Art.

London: Thames and Hudson.Betensky, M. (1973). Self-discovery through Self-expression: Use of Art ill

Psychotherapy with Children and Adolescents. Springfield, Illinois:Charles C. Thomas.

George Berkeley (1709). An Essay Towards A Newed.ited by David R. Wilkins, 2002, Dublin:http://www.malhs.tcd.ie/-dwilkinslBerkeleyNision/

Buck, J. N. (1948). «The H-T-P Technique: A qualitative and quantitativescoring manual», Journal ofClinical Psychology 4: 317-396.

Buck, J. N. (I~). The House-Tree-Person (H-T-P Manual Supplement).Beverly Hills, California: Western Psychological Services.

Buckingham, D. (1993). <Boys talk: Television and the policing ofmasculinity>, in Buckingham, D. (ed.) Reading Audiences: Young peopleand the media. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Buckingham, D. and Sefton-Green, J. (1994). Cultural Studies Goes toSchool: Reading and Teaching Popular Media. London: Taylor andFrancis.

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Buckingham, D. and Bragg, S. (2003). Young People, Sex and the Media:The Facts of Life? London: Palgrave Macmillan.

C1ottes, J. and Feruglio, V. (2004). The Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc.Website at http://www.culture.gouv Jr/culture/arcnatlchauvetlen/. Paris:Ministere de la culture et de la communication - Mission de la rechercheet de la technologie.

Danto, A. C. (1981). The Transfiguration of the Commonplace: APhilosophy ofArt. Cambridge, Ma: Harvard University Press.

Dewey, J. ([1934] 1980). Art as Experience. New York: Perigee.Di Leo, J. H. (1973) Children's Drawings as Diagnostic Aids. New York:

BrunnerlMazel.Di Leo, J. H. (1983). Interpreting Children's Drawings. New York:

BrunnerlMazei.Diem-Wille, G. (2001). <A Therapeutic Perspective: The Use of Drawings

in Child Psychoanalysis and Social Science>, in T. Van Leeuwen and C.Jewitt (eds) Handbook of Visual Analysis. London: Sage.

Frosh, S., Phoenix, A., and Pattman, R. (2001). Young Masculinities:Understanding Boys in Contemporary Society. London: Palgrave.

Furth. G. M. (2002). The Secret World of Drawings: A Jungian Approachto Healing Through Art - Second edition. Toronto: Inner City Books.

Gauntlett, D. (1995). Moving Experiences: Understanding Television'sInfluences and Effects. London: John Libbey.

Gauntlett, D. (1997). Video Critical: Children, the Environment and MediaPower. Luton: John Libbey Media.

Gauntlett, D. (2001). «The worrying influence of <media effects> studies»,in M. Barker and J. Petley (eds) III Effects: The Media/Violence Debate- Second Edition. London: Routledge.

Gauntlett, D. (2002). Media, Gender and Identity: An Introduction.London: Routledge.

Gauntlett, D., and Hill, A. (1999). TV Living: Television, Culture andEveryday Life. London: Routledge.

Gauntlett, D., and Horsley, R., eds (2004). Web.Studies - 211d Edition.London: Arnold.

Greenfield, S. (2000). Brain Story: Unlocking our inner world of emotions,memories, ideas and desires. London: BBC Worldwide.

Hegel, G. W. F. (2004). Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics, translated byBernard Bosanquet, edited by Michael Inwood. London: Penguin.

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Hesse-Biber, S. N. and Yaiser, M., eds (2003). Feminist Perspectives 011Social Research. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hockney, D. and Joyce, P. (2002). Hockney on ,Art,. London: Little,Brown.

Holzwarth, P., and Maurer, B. (2003). <CHICAM (Children inCommunication about Migration): An international research projectexploring the possibilities of intercultural communication throughchildren's media productions>, in M. Kiegelmann and L. Giirtler (eds)Research Questions and Matching Methods of Analysis. Tiibingen:Ingeborg Huber Verlag.

Howells, R. (2003). Visual Culture. Cambridge: Polity.Kitzinger. J. (1990). <Audience Understandings of AIDS Media Messages:

A Discussion of Methods>, Sociology ofHealth and Illness 12: 319-35.Kitzinger, J. (1993). <Understanding. AIDS: Researching audience

perceptions of Acquired Immune Deiciency Syndrome>, in J. Eldridge(ed.) Getting the Message: News, Truth and Power. London: Routledge.

Klepsch, M. and Logie, L. (1982). Children Draw and Tell: An Introduction to the Projective Uses of Children's Human Figure Drawings.New York: BrunnerlMazel.

Koppitz, E. (1984). Psychological Evaluation of Human Figure Drawingsby Middle School Pupils. Orlando, Florida: Grune and Stratton.

Kuh, K. (2000). The Artist's Voice: Talks with Seventeen Modern Artists.Cambridge, Massachusetts: Da Capo.

Langer, S. K. (1942). Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the SymbolismofReason, Rite and Art. Cambridge, Ma: Harvard University Press.

Letherby, G. (2003). Feminist Research in Theory and Practice.Maidenhead, Berkshire: Open University Press.

Lewis-Williams, D. (2002). The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and theOrigins ofArt. London: Thames and Hudson.

Malchiodi, C. A. (1998a). The Art Therapy Sourcebook. Los Angeles:Lowell House.

Malchiodi, ~. A. (1998b). Understanding Children's Drawings. London:Jessica Kingsley.

Matthews, J. (1998). The Art of Childhood and Adolescence: TheConstruction ofMeaning. London: RoutledgeFalmer.

Miller, D. (1994). Don't Mention the War. London: Pluto Press.Mirzoeff, N. (1999). An Introduction to Visual Culture. London: Rout

ledge.

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Moores, S. (1993). Interpreting Audiences: The Ethnography of MediaConsumption. London: Sage.

Niesyto, H. (2000). <Youth Research on Video Self-productions:Reflections on a Social-aesthetic Approach>, Visual Sociology 15: 135153.

Niesyto, H. (2001). Selbstausdruck mit Medien. Eigenproduktionen mitMedien als Gegenstand der Kindheits- und lugendforschung. MUnchen:kopaed.

Niesyto, H. (2003). VideoCulture. Video und interkulturelle Kommunikation. Grundlagen, Methoden und Ergebnisse eines internationalenForschungsprojekts. Miinchen: kopaed.

Nietzsche, F. ([1872] 1967: 43). The Birth of Tragedy and the Case ofWagner. New York: Random House.

Oster, G. D. and Montgomery, S. S. (1996). Clinical Uses of Drawings.Northvale, New Jersey: Jason Aronson.

Palmer, J., ed. (2004). Private Views: Artists Working Today. London:Serpent's Tail.

Philo, G. (1990). Seeing and Believing: The influence of television.London: Routledge.

Philo, G., ed. (1996). Media and Mental Distress. London: AddisonWesley Longman.

Prosser, J., ed. (1998). Image-Based Research: A Sourcebook forQualitative Researchers. London: RoutledgeFalmer.

Reinharz, S. (1992). Feminist Methods in Social Research. New York:Oxford University Press.

Roberts, H., ed. (1990). Doing Feminist Research. London: Routledge.Rose, G. (2001) Visual Methodnlogies. London: Sage.Ruddock, A. (2001) .. Understanding Audiences: Theory and Method.

London: Sage.Silver, R. (2001). Art as Language: Access to Thoughts and Feelings

Through Stimulus Drawings. London: Brunner-Routledge.Storr, A. (1992). Music and the Mind. London: HarpeICollins.Sturken, M., and Cartwright, L. (2001). Practices of Looking - An

Introduction to Visual Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Thom~s, G. V. and Silk, A. M. J. (1990). An Introduction to the Psychology

of Children's Drawings. Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire: HarvesterWheatsheaf.

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Titchener, E. B. (1926). Lectures on the Experimental Psychology of theThought-Processes. New York: Macmillan.

Tolstoy, L. (1960). What is Art?, translated by Aylmer Maude.Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.

Whelton, N. M. and McWhirter, J. (1998). <Images and CurriculumDevelopment in Health EducatiOn>, in J. Prosser (ed.) Image-BasedResearch: A Sourcebook for Qualitative Researchers. London:RoutiedgeFalmer.

Williams, T. Welton, N. M. and Moon, A. (l989a). A Way In. London:Health Education Authority.

Williams, T. Welton, N. M. and Moon, A. (l989b). A Picture of Health.London: Health Education Authority.

Winston, R. (2003). The Human Mind, and how to make the most of it.London: Bantam.

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David GauntleltProfessor of Media and AudiencesBoumemouth Media SchoolUniversity of Boumemouth, UKWeb: www.theory.org.uk/davidE-mail: [email protected]

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Documentary - A Definition for the Digital Age

Documentary texts are supposedly those which aim to document reality,attempting veracity in their depiction of people, places and events. However, theprocess of mediation means that this is something of a oxymoron, it beingimpossible to re-present reality without constructing a narrative that may befictional in places. Certainly, any images that are edited cannot claim to be whollyfactual, they are the result of choices made by the photographer on the other endof the lens. Nonetheless, it is widely accepted that categories of media texts canbe classed as non-fiction, that their aim is to reveal a version of reality that isless filtered and reconstructed than in a fiction text. Such texts are oftenconstructed from a particular moral or political perspective, and cannot thereforeclaim to be objective. Other texts purport simply to record an event, althoughdecisions made in post-production mean that actuality is edited, re-sequencedand artificially framed. The documentary maker generally establishes a thesisbefore starting the construction of their text, and the process of documentarymaking can be simply the ratification of their idea. Perhaps, to misquote Eco, theobjectivity of the text lies not in the origin but the destination?

The documentary genre has a range of purposes, from the simple selection andrecording of events (a snapshot or unedited holiday video) to a polemic text thatattempts to persuade the audience into a specific set of opinions (Bowling ForColumbine). Audiences must identify that purpose early on and will thereforedecode documentary texts differently to fictional narratives.· •

Modes of Documentary

In his 2001 book, Introduction to Documentary (Indiana University Press), BillNichols defines the following six modes of documentary

• The Poetic Mode ('reassembling fragments of the world', atransformation of historical material into a more abstract, lyricalform, usually associated with 1920s and modernist ideas)

• The Expository Mode ('direct address', social issues assembled intoan argumentative frame, mediated by a voice-of-God narration,associated with 1920s-1930s, and some of the rhetoric and polemicsurrounding WW2)

• The Observational Mode (as technology advanced by the 1960s andcameras became smaller and lighter, able to document life in a lessintrusive manner, there is less control reqUired over lighting etc,leaving the social actors free to act and the documentarists free torecord without interacting with each other)

• The Participatory Mode (the encounter between film-maker andsubject is recorded, as the film-maker actively engages with thesituation they are documenting, asking questions of their subjects,sharing experiences with them. Heavily reliant on the honesty ofwitnesses)

• The Reflexive Mode (demonstrates consciousness of the process ofreading documentary, and engages actively with the issues ofrealism and representation, acknowledging the presence of theviewer and the modality judgements they arrive at. Corresponds tocritical theory of the 1980s)

• The Performative Mode (acknowledges the emotional andsubjective aspects of documentary, and presents ideas as part of acontext, haVing different meanings for different people, oftenautobiographical in nature)

These roughly correspond to developmental phases in the genre, when newgenerations of documentary makers have challenged the forms and conventionsthat have gone before, and re-invented what documentary means for them.

Further Reading

• Towards A Definition of Documentary - a selection of articles from RealityFilm

• Definition of Documentary - from New Frontiers in American DocumentaryFilm

• What Is A Documentary?

•

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Task 2 GridTechniques UsedNarrative structure:What information arewe being given and inwhat order?

Cinematography:Shot types andmovement

Sound:diegetic I non-diegetic

Editing

Settings:Consider why these /01

settings were chosen

Character:What type of peopleare they and how dowe know this?

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Documentary Touching the void Spellbound Supersize Me Capturing the FriedmansnameTechniques Scene 2: 06.23 - 08.30 First scene (Including Scene 'Day 22, more burgers' Scene 3 - 18.05 - 21 ish

Used titles) - 1.21.45 - 1.25.00

A Drama-documentary:Observational 'realist' A commercially successful Award winning documentary

Dramatic reconstruction documentary: cinema documentary: film:

Formal interview (often Actuality Video Diary Formal IV'sused as voiceover)

Handheld Voice over Rostrum photographsGraphics ('Day One')

GV's (General Views) Formal interview Home video (archive) footageMusic (builds suspense)

Formal and informal Archive footage (news) Archive (news)interviews

GV's (to set up IV GV'sInterview question location)often heard (off •camera) Graphics

Graphics - to introsetting, people andnarrative (used insteadof voiceover).

Cut Away (close upshot of knitting duringranch ower IV)

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Task 2 GridTechniques UsedNarrative structure(what information arewe being given and inwhat order?)

Cinematography(Shot types andmovement)

Sound - diegetic Inon-diegetic

.... -"" .. _.June 2006

The narrative structure is a 'format'; a programme with a structure that will be replicated in all theprogrammes in that series (Like 'Faking It', 'Wife Swap', Big Brother', 'Strictly Come Dancing')Formats are popular with audiences as they are easily recognisable and guarantee 'predictable'entertainment. These are reliable family viewing programmes, placed in prime time slots.Introduction.to each family.TV Production companies I channels like formats as they are cheap to make, easily replicated and createbig revenue when sold as a format idea to other countries (The BBC sold 'Strictly come dancing' to 27countries including the USA.

Pre -titles tease - to hook the audience by giving theme glimpse at the action to come.Introduction to family 1 - their life and their holidayIntroduction to family 2 - their life and their holidayCutting between interviews (IV's) and actuality of both families accentuating their differences.

Establishing family portrait shot (This is a 'trademark' of many format shows - it places them in theirsetting). •Actuality of what they do - for example, a variety of shots showing Mr Baker being a mechanic etc.GV's ( of banger racing to build up a picture of the sport).Movement in shots and lots of variety to make it visually interestingShots are often 'reveal' shots - ie: the person comings into view, or the camera pans u to reveal thecharacter - For example this is used as a way to introduce the two girls on their bikes.

Non- diegetic:Music montages - the music reflects the action.Theme tuneSoundtrackVoiceover - strongly guides the narrative.

Diegetic:IV's to set up family, background, character and their place in the narrative. The dialoQue helps to set up I

e

Editing

Settings

Character

Kirsty PainterJune 2006.

_.... _.,-_.- ... - .--._ ...._. ,.... __ ._..._.Actuality sound (often mixed with IV, music and Voiceover)

The speed of the editing changes depending of the action I family:Fast paced editing for the montage of Banger racingSlower paced editing to reflect the more leisurely pace of life the middle class family have.Cutting between families to accentuate their differences.Editing special effects like 'wipes' and 'split screens'

IV settings used to reflect the persons character (and class) - snug, warm living room I Caravan anddebris I GarageBaker family - garage (dirt, oil etc), busy road, caravan, office, pub.Armes -large house and garden, playing cricket, looking at photos on laptop, playing cards.

Baker family are seen to be Working class because:Employment: work in a garageHoliday location: Skegness in a caravanCostume - overall, vest, tracksuit bottomsAccent - Colloquial rough and ready

Armes Family are seen to be middle class because:Employment: They are psychologistsHoliday Location: Morocco nomadic desert adventureCostume: smart casual attire •Accent: well spoken, 'posh'

-P-P

Useful Documentary terms

Observational

Fly on the wall

Actuality

Handheld

Vox pops

Voice over

ii

Formal interviews

Informal interviews

Dramatic reconstruction

Music montage

Cut away

GV's (general Views)

location

Rostrum

Archive footage

Video Diary



Useful Documentary terms

Observational Style of documentary making wherewe observe ordinary people in everyday situations

Fly on the wall Similar to Observational: We theaudience are voyeurs, watchingpeople who act as if the camera is notthere. It's realist.

Actuality The type of footage you film inobservational documentary. It is thefilming of everyday things (likesomeone making a cup of tea ordriving to work).

Handheld A documentary shooting style: Shaky,less polished look, making what youare watching seem more credible andreal. .. ,

Vox pops The voice of the people:Short IV's with people in the streetasking for their views about a certainsubject

Voice over A tool to create a narrator who drivesthe narrative forward. This is placedin after the filming, within the editingprocess.

Formal interviews Structures questions, often withcharacters sitting down, in a set uplocation (sometimes a studio),professionally lit.

Informal interviews 'On the hoof interviews, unstructured,often when the character is doingsomething (like making tea). Feel farless formal and often more personal.

Dramatic reconstruction Reconstructing a real event I situationusing actors (Crime watch I dramadoc's)

Music montage A selection of shots interestingly cuttogether with music to summarise anarrative.

Cut away A shot used to 'cut away' from theaction, often used to hide edit points

(so in an interview you may cut awayto a close up of the interviewershands).

GV's (general Views) Literally general views of things - soshots of New city, to use with aninterview about New York.

location Another word for the setting of ascene, interview, event etc. filmed.

Rostrum Still photographs that are used withindocumentaries are place on a'rostrum and recorded with a highspec camera so that the quality of theimage is good.

Archive footage Footage filmed in the past: Newsfootage, home video etc.

Video Diary The video diary is a private recordedmoment, where the individual isallowed to speak openly within beingheard. There ~ no interviewer andthe person speaks to' the camera.These is a very personal filmingtechnique.


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ISSUE 10JUNE 2006

Welcome to BARB Bulletin - the BARB Newsletterwith a face-lift. Listed below are the topics we are /covering in this issue - we do hope you find theminformative and interesting and welcome yourfeedback.

New people meter technology

Sky+ PVR playback reporting

UKTelevison OutlookA View Into The Future

Developments in interactivemeasurement

~ BARB and RAJARjoint R&D initiative

.~ BARB investment in new people meter technology

BARB has committed to an investment in metering equipmentfor its current panel.

To complement BARB's recent introduction of reporting from Sky+homes, the first use of a new meter, which will be installed in up to10% of BARB panel homes during 2006, will be to identify time-shiftviewing from other systems of disc playback - PVRlDVRs (other thanSky+) DVD recorders etc.

The new metering technology is the 'Unitam' people meter,designed and developed by BARB's metering contractor, AGBNielsen Media Research. It is based on a content-matching technology and underwent extensive testing in the UK by AGB NielsenMedia Research and BARB throughout 2005. In time Unitam isexpected to offer measurement potential for other new types ofviewing, such as broadcast content on demand.

The deployment of Unitam was envisaged when BARB's contractwith AGB Nielsen Media Research was extended at the end of 2004and demonstrates BARB's continued development of the servicethroughout the life of the current BARB contracts.

•

)0

Time-shifted viewing in SKY + homes

Reporting of "time-shifted" viewing via Sky+ boxes wasreintroduced within the BARB panel on 6 March 2006.

~.

TIme-shifted viewing includes viewing of programmes recorded tothe hard disc and subsequently played back within seven days, aswell as viewing after pausing (or ret.-ir:Jding) live TV.

In the eight-week period 6 March to 30 April 2006. time-shiftedviewing accounted for 13.8% of all viewing by individuals in Sky+homes (including guests). Approximately 40% of Sky+ individuals'time-shift viewing took place on the same day as the original broadcast. Peak-time programming was subject to a greater degree oftime-shift than the all-day average.

Data from the 6 March to 30 April period suggest that 35-54 yearolds time-shifted a slightly higher proportion of their viewing thanother age groups. On average. 15.7% of 35-54-year-old viewing wastime-shifted compared with 11.0% for over 5Ss and 9.6% forchildren.

Although variation across demographic groups is not particularlymarked, use of Sky+ across individual viewers varies widely. Duringthis period, 8% of viewers used their PVR to time-shift half or moreof all their television viewing, and 28% time-shifted 20% or more oftheir viewing.

A number of factors may cause results for time-shifted viewing tovary, for example: take-up of the devices; seasonality; changingprogramme schedules; changes in PVR functionality.

Children 4-15

35-54

Women

55+

ABCl

ODE adults

16-34

Average sample base: 458 individuals in165 Sky+ homes.

~ View Into The Future

On 6 April BARB presented "UK Television Outlook A View Into The Future':

It came across clearly from our Future Into View consultation,launched last Summer, that the industry would like assistance innavigating the issues of the future. BARB has generated some futurescenarios work (available in full on the BARB website). Possibleoutcomes of the development oftelevision up to 2015 are included.Growth in new types of viewing (such as mobile) or an increase intime-shift viewing are examined. The projections have been developed as part of BARB's forward thinking agenda - to help to defineBARB's future priorities.

It is clear that with more options for distributing and consumingcontent we need to develop views about what may be important and •when. Conclusions on where the lines should be drawn for whatBARB should deliver, however, will need to be made.

Some challenges for the future are known - transportable content,out of home viewing in its different forms, mobile viewing, the natureof live broadcast vs time-shift vs on-demand. The aim of the workBARB has done is to aid understanding of a range of possibleoutcomes and to take thinking forward on how these factors mayaffect the industry.

We want to understand what our challenges might be so that we canbe in a position to make more informed decisions to ensure that theBARB service remains relevant to the industry we serve. We areencouraging feedback of alternative scenarios, or assumptions thatshould be considered.

We also outlined (as shown in the chart) where we were and what weexpected to be working on in the Summer of last year and where theline has now moved to. Of particular significance are the introductionof Viewing On Same Day As Live figures (VOSDAL) which reportssame-day playback figures into the overnights and the delivery ofreporting from Sky+ homes.

Our delivery capability has moved on and we continue to progress anumber of projects - for example, expanding interactive measurement (described in this Bulletin) and capturing broadcast content ondemand.

I BARB starts field tests for interactive measurement

A new measurement technique has been developed for itspotential to expand BARB's 'measurement of interactive services.

Currently, interactive applications are identifiable by BARB if theyconstitute a separate broadcast stream on the digital satelliteplatform. Visual bar-coding is the new technique aimed to extendmeasurement within and across platforms. It will enable, for moreinteractive applications, an assessment of reach of viewers usinginteractive content and time spent in the services. This couldprovide a valuable extension of the service for broadcasters, advertisers and advertising agencies.

•The technique was conceived by BBC Technology Group and hasbeen developed, over the past two years, with input from BARB andAGB Nielsen Media Research. It involves the insertion of a 'visualbarcode' on to the bottom four lines of the active picture area ininteractive applications. In virtually all homes the barcode will not bevisible as most TV screens over-scan the picture area to this degree.

Bar-eoding has passed a number of stages of testing on the digitalterrestrial and digital satellite platforms. BARB hopes soon to be ableto confirm that the technique will also be applicable on the digitalcable platform.

Field testing, anticipated to continue through to July, will demonstrate whether bar-eoding is viable in a range of different homeconfigurations and validate that there is no adverse impact onBARB's ability to collect all forms of viewing from these homes. Wehope that we will then be able to determine whether to expand theuse of the technique throughout the full range of digitally enabledBARB panel homes. This will depend upon an assessment ofwhether the technique can deliver a valuable service to the industry.

If the decision to go ahead is made, it is anticipated that BARB maybe able to begin formal reporting of data in mid 2007.

One of the challenges for TV measurement in the future is increasedviewer control. Some of the devices through which televisioncontent will be received are likely to require measurementtechniques supplementary to BARB's existing fixed wired electronicmeters. A wireless technique is likely to be needed in order toidentify consumption of transportable content, or for certaindesigns of television equipment that will be difficult to wire unobtrusively for the monitoring process.

This project will not form part of BARB's offering ofdata to the industry but will exist to determine possible future benefits. It is beingentered into by BARB to help understand whether such approachesmay be able to offer solutions for measurement of some of the newways that content is likely to be consumed. BARB will benefit fromefficiencies by engaging with RAJAR in this project. It should not beinterpreted as a prelude to cross-media measurement onv & Radio- the data derived will be delivered separately to each organisation,which will retain sovereignty over the data for its own medium.

•

We always encourage feedback, so do tell us what you thinkBARB 18 Dering Street, London W1 S 1AQTelephone 020 7529 5529 Fax 020 7529 5530 www.barb.co.uk

~ BARB and RAJARjoint R&D initiative

BARB has embarked upon a newjoint R&D initiative with RAJAR,commencing in January 2007. BARB has initially committed toinvolvement for one year.

A new panel of 500 adults will be recruited for R&D purposes fromwithin the M25. This is an exploratory exercise intended to giveBARB a more rounded understanding of the potential for portablemeters for television measurement and the issues involved in detection, identification, processing· and reporting. The panel will beadministered and managed by TNS, utilising Arbitron's PPM(Portable Personal Meter) device.

BARB

AVerage sample base: 458 individuals in 165 Sky+ homes.

Page 1of2rr-

06.

gack tQ New~

Headlines

% IndividualsProportion of viewing timeshifted

Time-Shifted Viewing Accounts for 13.8% In Sky+ Homes

In the eight-week period 6 March to 30 April 2006, time-shifted viewingaccounted for 13.8% of all viewing by individuals in Sky+ homes (includingguests). Approximately 40% of Sky+ individuals' time-shift viewing took place onthe same day as the original broadcast. Peak-time programming was subject toa greater degree of time-shift than the all-day average.

Time-shifted viewing includes viewing of programmes recorded to the hard discand subsequently played back within seven days, as well as viewing a.fterpausing (or rewinding) live TV.

6 March - 30 April 2006 % of viewing time-shiftedAll Day Peak time (1800-

2300)% %

Individuals 13.8 17.4

Adults 14.4 18.0Men 14.1 17.3Women 14.8 18.8

Children 4-15 9.6 12.4

16-34 14.8 19.435-54 15.7 19.4

55+ 11.0 13.2

ABC1 adults 13.7 17.6C2DE adults 15.6 18.7

News

Data from the 6 March to 30 April period suggest that 35-54 year olds timeshifted a slightly higher proportion of their viewing than other age groups. Onaverage, 15.7% of 35-54-year-old viewing was time-shifted compared with11.0% for over 55s and 9.6% for children.

Although variation across demographic groups is not particularly marked, use ofSky+ across individual viewers varies widely. During this period, 8% of viewersused their PVR to time-shift half or more of all their television viewing, and 28%time-shifted 20% or more of their viewing.

B.ARS

11.'",®)HOME

~ABOUTBARB

~ SUBSCRIBERS

(~~NEWS

@TVFACTS.

S. VIEWINGSUMMARY

BARB

Illustrator:www.marcelbaker.com

<C BARB Ltd 2006 I Terms and Conditions I Privacy Policy

http://www.barb.co.uk/news.cfm?fullstorv=true&newsid=11R&fll'lo=npUT''

A number of factors may cause results for time-shifted viewing to vary, forexample as the take-up of the devices expands, or due to time of year, changesin programme schedules, and changes in PVR functionality.

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Notes for editorsReporting of ·"time-shifted" viewing via Sky+ boxes was reintroduced within theBARB panel on 6 March 2006. For technical reasons, reporting continuity ofSky+ homes is currently lower than for other types of homes on·the panel. As aresult, the level of time-shift viewing reported from Sky+ homes is likely to beslightly under-estimated.

Page 2 of2

5b-

BARB was set up in 1981 to provide the industry-standard audiencemeasurement service for television broadcasters and the advertising industry. Itis a not-for-profit limited company owned by BBC, lTV, Channel 4, five, BSkyBand the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising.

BARB provides in-home TV viewing measurement tor the UK. This is obtainedfrom a panel of 5,100 homes. These homes return data from around 11,500viewers. Viewing from visitors to the home is included (Guest Viewing). Viewingfigures are available to subscribers the morning after transmission. VCR andSky+ playback is incorporated within 7 days of transmission (ConsolidatedViewing). Audiences are reported on a minute-by-minute basis.

The panel design is representative of the whole of the UK. People are recruitedfrom all sectors of the population. All viewing environments in the home arerepresented. Multiple TV sets are measured. BARB measures both analogueand digital delivery via cable, satellite and terrestrial distribution.

12/05/2006

Back to News Headlines

BARB

And following every evening's highlights programme you can have your say.

..

Press the red button for a host ofoptions

BBCi is offering a double interactive service for the World Cup with highlights,analysis and alternative commentaries during live BBC matches, plus anadditional service for times when games are not showing.

Digital viewers can access interactive TV for news, updates, stats and awhole lot more than 90 minutes of action, around the clock.BBC Sport online/interactive schedule

Viewers will also be able to replay matches in full.

Every night of the tournament, fans can send in their emails and SMS messagesto the studio to get their views aired live on air, get it off their chest and sharetheir gripes with other viewers.

The interactive Talk Forum will open its doors through digital TV, on BBC RadioFive Live and video-streamed live on the internet at bbc.co.uk/worldcup to host afull hour-long discussion for fans with BBC pundits.

With all the build-up to England games, including a look around the stadia, BBCigives living-room supporters a real flavour of the atmosphere and tension ofGermany.

The exclusive service dedicated to the Englandteam on and off the field will show the most up-to-date interviews with SvenGoran Eriksson, press conferences, video player profiles, news and views fromGermany and those all-important full repeats of England matches.

The text service offers all the top stories and breaking news, including live stats,latest scores, key moments from the big games, match previews and reports andgroup tables.

And live match coverage on interactive will be extended beyond BBC Onetransmission to allow for extra post-matchanalysis.

Viewers will have the audio choice of BBC TV or Radio Five Live matchcommentary, the real-time noise from the stadium.

Fans can send in their own opinion by email or SMS which will appear live onscreen, and BBCi will be asking specific talking-point questions throughout thegame. •

Available on all digital TV platforms around the clock, pressing your red buttonwill offer two main services - Live Match and Replay. The permanent BBCi serviceof sports news and results will also be available.

This will include a non-stop England stream,repeats and highlights from every match and everygoal from every game on demand.

The BBCi World Cup Zone will be up and running inbetween BBC match broadcasts.

There will also be expert analysis from BBC football pundits Alan Hansen andMark Lawrenson.

This is in addition to the permanent red button service for sports news andresults. Press 302 on Freeview, satellite or cable for the latest football headlines,301 for news from all sports and 300 for the main menu. Satellite and cableviewers can also catch our video update through the day.

•

Frequently asked questions regarding the BBC's coverage of Germany2006.

Please check the questions here before sending further queries using the form onthe right.

TV COVERAGE

Q: Why are you only showing one England group game on TV?

A: The BBC and nv share the live rights to broadcasting World Cup matches inthe UK. In the first round, the BBC is showing the Paraguay game live, with theTrinidad & Tobago and Sweden matches on lTV. However, if England progress tothe second round and quarter~final, those matches will be exclusively live on BBC.And if they get to the semis or final, both broadcasters will show it. II

Here's our full scheduleWATCHING ON BROADBAND

Aashish Chandarana, who oversees our broadband operation, has been writingabout this issue on our editors' blog.

Read his post here

The answers to specific questions you have asked are below.

Q: Why is broadband viewing online restricted to UK residents?

A: The main reason is because the sports bodies, who hold the rights to eventssuch as the World Cup, sell those rights on a country-by-country, or regionalbasis because that's the way they make the most money. In the case of theWorld Cup, where the BBC and nv hold the UK rights, other broadcasters will beproviding a similar service in their own territories.

Obviously the internet is a worldwide medium and we ensure that the bulk of ourwebsite is available to all, regardless of location. But as a public serviceorganisation, which is funded by UK licence fee, BBC Sport's priority has to be theBritish domestic audience.

Q: How do you do this in practice?

A: We determine your location via the IP (Internet Protocol) address of yourconnection. From that, we can tell whether you are in the UK or not and whetheryou are entitled to see the content.

Q: But why can't you make it available overseas on a pay-per-view basis?

A: Rights are sold on a territory by territory basis. The total worldwide fee isestimated at 1.2 bn euros. So any attempt to get global reach would cost rather alot!

We would have to charge so much no-one would take it up. That is before youeven consider whether it is something we should be doing as the BritishBroadcasting Corporation, funded by people living in Britain, or indeed whetherthe rights holders would allow us to obtain the rights to so many territories.

Q: So how can I follow the games abroad?

A: There are our usual text services - but this year we are offering a new service- instant graphical replays of all the games and this will be available everywhere.

Q: The main appeal of watching on broadband is surely for people atwork who can't access a TV. But won't most companies simply blockthis?

A: We make the content available freely on the internet within the UK. If yourcompany chooses to block the service, that is its choice unfortunately. We haveno call over a company's IT policy I'm afraid. ..Q: What steps are you taking to ensure demand for this does not bringdown the whole UK internet?

A: The SSC constantly works with the ISPs and the industry as a whole to makesure we don't impact on people's services.

As part of the SSC's long-term plans to deliver content to new platforms, we'vebeen working with the industry to take measures that will help us deal with thelevels of demand that these sorts of major events can generate.

Q: Is there anything IT managers in UK companies can do to restrictaccess to the BBC's live broadband coverage?

A: Yes. An IT manager may be able to block access to the streams from within acompany's firewall.

Click here for a full list of URLs for the streams

Q: Will it cost anything?- ie is this for all UK broadband users, or onlylicence-fee paying UK broadband users?

A: It is a free service. You do however need a TV licence.

In the long run, it may well be that the government decides the TV licence needsto be replaced by a more relevant funding model, one not solely based ontelevision ownership. For instance, it is considering things such as a tax onpersonal computers.

See this story for example

Q: What quality will you be streaming at?

A: At least at 256kbps.

We are still trying to see what works best. While we appreciate some people havereally fast connections, not everyone has yet and it is a question of making surewe get the balance right between providing the highest quality that is still widelyaccessible.

Naturally, we are trying to make sure as many people as possible can watch it(because we are funded by aI/licence fee payers).

bO

The difficult thing with streaming online is being able to handle a large number ofconcurrent users. This also affects our decisions on quality (ie the higher thequality, the fewer concurrent users we can serve).

Q: How will the content be streamed? Will it be done through a medium(Quicktime) or through something slightly less Mac-usable such asWindows Media or RealPlayer?

A: The SSC in the early days of the web, took a decision to work with Real Player.At the time and given the state of the industry, it made sense. One of the mainreasons behind offering content in Real is that it works on many platforms (e.g.Windows, Mac, Linux). In 2004, we took the decision to start supporting WindowsMedia as well.

There is always going to be a debate on why we picked those two formats.However, we all know that Windows is the most prevalent operating system outthere and when you unpack your new machine, Windows Media Player is alreadyon there. Real gives us the ability to deliver to other operating systems.

Q: Are the games only going to be shown on the day or can they beaccessed for up to 7 days like 'listen again'?

A: We will offer live simulcast of all the SSC games and then four minutes ofhighlights of all matches available throughout the tournament and for a periodafterwards. We have to abide by rights holders restrictions.

Q: How can you assure us the service won't break down because of allthe people trying to access it?

We are working towards making this available to as many users as we can and tomake it as stable as possible. We have already made a huge quantity of live sportavailable successfully and hope to continue this for the World Cup.

Q: I get constant rebuffering when I try and access video on the web. Isthis your fault or mine?

A: There could be many different reasons behind this. One reason could be poorperformance of your computer and its connection speed. Or it may be the fault ofyour ISP (Internet Service Provider). Or it maybe because there are so manypeople accessing the service, there are problems serving it at our end.

We are actively pursuing a number of ways to minimise this type of problem. Forinstance by multi-casting the stream. This means we transfer it directly to an ISPand they broadcast it, which reduces the direct load on our servers. Sut constantrebuffering can be down to a number of reasons and we would need moreinformation. Please contact us using the feedback form on our audio video helppages, stating the type of connection you have (i.e. are you at work or at homeand what speed your service is).

What is multicasting?

Q: I do live in the UK but I often get an error message saying I don't..

A: It may be your service provider may be non UK, or not on the SSC's list of UKISPs.

For this and other eneral technical audio video•

Q: What do I need to do to watch the World Cup in HD TV?

A: You need a High Definition Television Set and a High defintion feed going in toit. You can get this on Digital Satellite and on some Digital Cable services. Thereis also a technical trial for a limited number of Freeview users.

More on HDWATCHING ON BIG SCREENS AROUND THE UK

Q: Where will you be showing the games?

A: There will be permanent fixed screens in the following city centres:

Manchester Exchange SquareBirmingham Chamberlain SquareLiverpool Clayton SquareHull Queen Victoria SquareLeeds Millennium SquareRotherham All Saints SquareBradford Centenary Square

They will show all SSC & lTV England games.

There is also a temporary screen in Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London, whichwill show all the games.

Two big screens will also be touring the country. See the television section of thisguide for more details

6L

UK World Cup 2006 TV audiences plateauby Kevin Alavy Brand Republic 27 Jun 2006

from Media Bulletin

Beckham: captaining England - LONDON - While England's World Cup 2006campaign gathers momentum following their victory over Ecuador, UK in-home TVaudiences have fallen compared with England v Sweden, writes Kevin Alavy, senioranalyst at Initiative Futures.

Initiative's most recent ViewerTrack shows England's first match of the knockout stages at World Cup 2006, against Ecuador, sealed by a David Beckhamfree kick, attracted an average programme audience of 14.2m in the UK. Thiswas higher than England's opening two matches against Paraguay (8.8m) andTrinidad & Tobago (11.3m), but failed to topple the England v Sweden inhome audience of 14.4m.

This was despite the fact England had to beat Ecuador to remain in thecompetition, whereas they were already guaran~ed progress to the nextround when they took on Sweden.

There are a number of reasons for the lower average audience for England vEcuador compared with England v Sweden. The match against Sweden wasarguably a more exciting game, being less one-sided and with more goalsscored. Initiative's previous ViewerTrack studies have all shown howaudiences respond to more competitive matches and more goals.

Another reason for the lower audience is that England v Ecuador kicked off at4pm on Sunday when fewer people typically choose to watch TV, comparedwith a peak 8pm midweek kick-off against Sweden.

England v Ecuador drew a much larger audience share at 75%, however,compared with 58% for England v Sweden.

While England v Ecuador drew a smaller in-home audience, the scheduling ofthe match means it is likely that the out-of-home audience was larger than forEngland v Sweden.

Initiative's Real Youth Panel has shown that people are more likely to opt forout-of-home viewing on a Sunday afternoon than on a weeknight.

The in-home audience for England's Second Round match in 2006 is alsolower than for the same stage at the last two World Cups. England's SecondRound match against Denmark at World Cup 2002 attracted an averageprogramme audience of 15.7m. This match was simulcast on BBC One andITV1. England v Argentina in World Cup 1998 drew a massive 24.1 m viewers,nearly 10m more people than last Sunday's match.

:

World Cup TV audiences soar

Stephen BrookMonday June 19, 2006

Global television audiences for the 2006 World Cup have surged, withaudiences up nearly 30% for the opening matches compared with 2002 andBrazil the most popular team among viewers.

Last week's Brazil v Croatia match attracted an average global audience of 60million people, owing to its evening scheduling and the enormous popularity ofthe Brazilian team, which won 1-0.

Italy v Ghana was the next most popular match, attracting 59 million televisionviewers, according to media analyst Initiative, which surveyed audiences forlive matches in 23 TV markets.

The study found that the average global audience for each match had grownby 26% since the 2002 World Cup in South Korea and Japan, mainly as aresult of better timezones for viewers in Europe. •

The study found that Germany's 4-2 victory over Costa Rica was the thirdmost popular match, with an average of 50 million viewers.

England's 1-0 victory over Paraguay brought in an average of 29 millionviewers and was the eighth most popular match.

The study found audience levels were down in Asia, compared with the lastWorld Cup.

The survey also found the tournament was very popular in countries that didnot have a team playing.

Relative to size of population, each match was watched by on average 13% ofHungary's population, beating the UK, where on average 9% of the populationwatched each match, and France, where 8% watched each match.

The average audience for each match in the host nation Germany was 14%.

SWEDE AND SOUR: PAGES 4&5

DAILY--. Wodnosday, J.... 21,2006

iMATCH REPORTANDANAlYSIS:SPORI..+

How to teach audience - Valentine McCarthy

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