LO3 Audiences responses and behaviour

The Media has taken over in terms of control. They can curve your opinion and change your attitude due to what content they can put out, which can be used for good and for evil. With use over the internet which is accessed through laptops, computers and mobile phones it can be seen by nearly anyone with an electronic device at any time. Then with television being broadcasted and newspapers being printed people without access to the internet, can use the television and people without access to even electronic devices can read the newspaper that will tell you what is going on around. Different newspapers will then portray the news to a different style. You have papers such as The Times which give the information correctly and formally, there are then newspapers such as The Sun which use a bit of tongue and cheek, and change titles which can throw up a bit of controversy now and then. If we look back to something such as the London Riots, it escalated because of the media, because it was all over the internet and newspapers. People saw it and thought they could get away with it too. I’m not saying the London Riots were not a terrible event but the media was there to blow up the situation so more people heard about it, some doing what they can to help, but others getting involved and triggering the situation worse.

When it comes to the Video Game industry the media can change how the release of a game will go down. The journalists can curve criticism and opinions to how they then advertise the game, giving it good or bad ratings which then can have an impact on sales and people’s opinions of it. If we look at a game such as Bioshock: Infinite, a recent release with a huge public release. I personally saw banners all over London and advertisements popping up all over the internet. ’10 out of 10 Unforgettable’ – Game Informer, ‘9.5 A brilliant shooter’ – IGN and ‘An early favourite for 2013’s game of the year’ – USA today. It got great reviews from all the top game magazines and news sites and I haven’t seen a bad word about it from reviews. This is a situation where the media has really helped out a game to be heard about and then played. It is one of the biggest releases of this year. I believe without the media this game would have still been a great success because of its previous accomplishments (Bioshock 1 & 2) who again got great reviews comments and scores. Many fans had waited for this game for 3 years so once they knew a date the fans blew up for it. A game where the media hasn’t helped a release of a game is one such as Dead Island. This was going to be a huge first person free roam zombie game so had a lot of press against it pre-release. Upon release the game was published, mass produced and SOLD with a button that put you into developer’s mode. How this was never noticed was beyond a lot of people so what good press there was turned into bad press fast. It soon spread across that a bug this big had been left in the game. This blew up around YouTube, social networking sites and also Game magazines such as PC Gamer. But they do say bad press is good press. Lots of talk on the game got it further known and people wanted to then try it out for themselves.

There are 3 main theories which discuss how we as an audience use and understand the media industry. Firstly there is uses and gratification, this is the theory that we use the media to fulfil our needs, such as our cognitive needs. This is includes how we find information knowledge and understanding, something people enjoy and need in life is to seek new information either for personal enjoyment or for knowledge and understanding. They can gather this from the media because of outlets such as the news. Secondly we use the media to fill our affective needs. This means our emotion, pleasure and feelings, this can be when you’re passionate about something so you will look into it for pleasure and interest. Thirdly there are personal integrative needs which includes credibility, stability, and status. This is having the service there and active when you need it. Social integrative is the need to have contact and be ‘in the loop’ when it comes to talking and keeping up with friends and family. Finally there is tension release needs which are having something that the person can feel like they can escape too, the media in this sense is something you can get lost in, fill your mind up with other story’s and thoughts then your own. Which can be good and bad.

Hypodermic needle is the 2nd theory that suggests the mass media could influence a very large group of people directly by ‘injecting’ them (where the needle comes from) with messages designed to generate a chosen response. This can relate entirely back to the riots as I discussed earlier. This was something that was blown up by the mass media and continued to grow as it was shown across the media. The images used to express this theory are quite hard hitting. The bullet and a needle, the bullet being that the it is being fired by the ‘media gun’ into the audience/viewers ‘head’ which is quite a site. Similarly the media messages being injected straight into the audience/viewer is again sounding like it can only mean bad, which in most cases it does.

Thirdly there is passive and active consumption; which is the audience being open to what the media is injecting into us and being active in knowing what is going on, through a daily basis or so. Having an active consumption of such information means that you must be okay with what is being published otherwise it wouldn’t be something you have passive emotions towards.

When it comes to the media how different subjects can be taken or ingested varies with your audience and the type of person they are. For eg. Violence in video games can heighten or lower due to what the game genre is, there has been huge controversy over a game called ‘man hunt’ in the past due to its violent nature. In this game you roam around using any tools you can find to kill innocent people in the streets. This controversy began when a boy killed his best friend with a hammer after playing this game and getting the idea from it. Are games like this suitable for any age? Are video games ruining kids? The game was then banned from being produced because of this story, but there are games not as violent but close such as Grand Theft Auto.

Such adverts as lynx, where they use women to lure in men to buy their deodorant because men believe that if they start using Lynx that women will

literally climb all over them at any time, like in the adverts, which clearly won’t be the case. Is it right for adverts to give false ideas to consumers? Or is this just a technique used by several companies so it makes it okay?

When the mass media gets a lock on a story it WILL blow it up to as high as it can go, it wants to be heard, and they will get there way about it. This can work out for when a charity organisations or such needs help. Something as big as this can spread the message and then people can choose to help out, such as Kony which was good and bad. The mass media can be used for bad though giving out the wrong messages and causing trouble and making situations escalate.