User:Kelvin Khoo

Contents 1 Personal Particular 2 Current 3 Self Description 4 Annotated Bibliography 5 Topic Space

Personal Particular

Name (as in passport) : Khoo Boo Chong, Kelvin
Preferred Name : Kelvin
Gender : Male
Age : 25
Date of Birth : 07/07/1979
Nationality : Singaporean
Country of Residence : Australia, Brisbane
Race : Chinese
Address  : 2104/363 Turbot Street, Brisbane City 4000, QLD.
Telephone/Mobile : 38318011 / 0433172568
E-mail : bc.khoo@student.qut.edu.au
Spoken Language  : English and Mandarin
Dialect Spoken : Hokkien
Written Language : English and Chinese
IT skills  : Microsoft Words, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, Lotus Word Pro, Lotus 123, Lotus Freelance Graphic, Macromedia dreamweaver, Flash MX, Moo, SQL, VRML, Adobe Photoshop.

Current

Studying at Queensland University of Technology
Course Bachelor of Creative Industries (inter-discipline)
Majoring in Digital Media and Communication Design 3rd year

Self Description

Strongly independent, keen to learn, self-motivated, result-oriented, versatile, appreciative, optimist and like to meet people

Send me an email

Annotated Bibliography

Media audience

Hall, Stuart. (1997) Representation : Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, SAGE Publications, ISBN 0761954325.

Stuart Hall has addressed theoretically the issue of how audiences make sense of media texts, differing from Althusser in emphasizing more scope for diversity of response to media texts. Hall’s points about preferred, negotiated and oppositional readings. Hall argued that the dominant or mainstream ideology is typically inscribed as the 'preferred reading' in a media text, but that reader do not automatically adopt this. The social situations of readers, viewers, and listeners may lead them to adopt different stances. Next after ‘preferred’ readings will be ‘negotiated' readings which are produced by those who inflect the preferred reading to take account of their social position; and 'oppositional' readings which are produced by those whose social position puts them into direct conflict with the preferred reading. Hall’s argument is strong and covers most members of the media audience. We accept the dominant ideology in mainstream media preferred reading, accept some of it and look between the lines negotiated reading or reject it outright in favor of our own reading of the text oppositional reading. In another words, we can relate this theory across all the different media.

Denis McQuail. (2000) Mass Communication Theory, SAGE Publications, ISBN 0761965475.

Let look at media audiences from a different prospective. Denis McQuail has divided the term media audiences into three types. The first approach is ‘potential audience’ meaning all those members of an audience that are able to be reached, base on certain factors, such as the receiving equipment like television antenna, internet modem, location and social demographic factors, example; age, income, education, culture. The second approach is ‘paying audience’ which refers to the mass media audience members who are willing to buy or purchase particular media, like certain newspapers, cinema tickets, or internet subscriptions. Thirdly McQuail says there is a type of audience which he calls ‘audience reached’. It indicates audiences such as the households who subscribes to newspapers everyday. The question is whether the newspaper subscriber reads the daily papers. Another example would be the television, when it is switch on but nobody is watching.

Uses and gratification theory acknowledged that the audiences are seen as active. It argues that everyone uses the media for different purposes, and that audiences choose what to watch or listen. McQuail categorises uses and gratifications into four areas.

• The first is ‘information’ where we use the media to educate us in certain areas, such as learning more about the world, seeking advice on practical matters, or fulfilling our curiosity.

• The second factor is ‘personal identity’ where we may watch television to associate an actor’s character with our own. For example in the comedy ‘Friends’ all the actors have different personalities, we as the audience imagines or desires that we were them or resembling them.

• The third usage of media is ‘integration and social interaction’ and refers to gaining insight into the situations of other people, in order to achieve a sense of belonging. For example when watching a movie, sometimes we get very emotional because we experience a sense of connection to the movie, and experience symptoms like crying, or covering our eyes. Television also facilitates us in our personal relationship with friends as we are able to relate and discuss details of media texts that we like in common with our friends.

• Last the fourth usage of the media identified by McQuail is ‘entertainment’, that is, using media for purposes of obtaining pleasure and enjoyment, or escapism. For example when we watch TV shows or movies we end up going into a new world of fantasy, diverting our attention from our problems, wasting time when we are free and even sometimes acquiring sexual arousal or emotional release.

Ien Ang.(1985) Watching Dallas, Routledge, ISBN 0415045983.

In this book, Ien Ang articulates, the media were acting like hypodermic needles, injecting messages directly into the vein of their completely defenseless viewers and listeners. Ang points out two important flaws of many audience studies, first, they tend to ignore the fact that media audience consist of human beings who do not merely more or less passively respond to media output, but are actively involved both emotionally and intellectually, with particular forms of media material. Second, they do not take account of the fact that we do not consume media material as isolated and solitary individuals, but in particular social settings and within certain cultural frameworks.

However, Ang criticise the users and gratification method in a number of reasons. The critic means that the uses of the media is always associated with gratifications. Therefore people always find some satisfaction in their media usage, in conclusion the media always give us what we want and there will not be an argument to change them. Ang points out that this reasoning take into account only what is actually available, ignoring the possibility that alternative kinds of media output might be even more gratifying for many people

A good example will be Ang’s work about different audience receive the movie ‘Dallas’ and interpreted the movie quite differently.

David Morley (1986) Family Television: Cultural Power and Domestic Leisure, Comedia Publishing Group, ISBN 0906890721.

David Morley focuses at how people live with the media. Morley work in Family Television was based on in depth interviews with working class families in their homes about their viewing practises. There were major implications arising from Morley’s discovery that audiences were active viewers of the media and that most of this use took place within the household.

Morley realize these factors that posed.

• Power and control over program choice lies mostly with adult men.

• Men tend to plan their viewing more systematically than women, who tend to watch what is on at any given moment.

• While men deny talking about television, women use it as a conversation piece.

• The use of the video is controlled by ‘Dad’.

• Women express guilt over their viewing preference especially ‘solo’ viewing habits.

• Drama and fiction feature more in preference of women than man for whom sports and news are more central.

• Women prefer local to national news

Nevertheless, there are acknowledge limitation to his work in term of the restricted range of families both in term of number and composition, but it is nevertheless suggestive of the kinds of work that can be done in relation to television in domestic setting.

James Curran. (1990) The New Revisionism in Mass Communication Research, Sage Publishers Ltd, London.

James Curran corrects the notion that the line of thinking about audiences as an active interpreter of media messages is not new, noting that traditions such as “Users and Gratification Theroy� had arrived at many simailar insights. Like many critics of the new approach, Curran cautions that there are limitations on the autonomy of active audiences

James Curran has listed four limitations which are,

• Lack of attention due to the attempt from semiotics to develop a science of text from the audience to read off the positioning force, and hence the ideological effect, of a media text on its readers was likely to be flawed.

• Reception analysis only takes place within the macro structures of the media and society and it is unacceptable that concern with minutiae of reception analysis should displace concern with the power relationship that pertain at the macro level.

• It is not sensible to look for meanings within media text, rather to look at how meanings are constructed at the point of encounter between texts and reader.

• Media texts are certainly polysemic, multi-accentual, meanings are constrained, and they are not totally indeterminate.

James Lull. (1990) Inside Family Viewing : Ethnographic Research on Television's Audiences, Routledge, ISBN 0415049970.

James Lull explain his work on ethnography, which simply means simply ‘writing about a way of life’ This approach, involves the researcher to participate in people’s lives for an extended period of time, watching what happens, listening to what is said, asking questions. This helps to describe the way of life of a group of people. According to James Lull a more elaborate method of ethnography, which is organized around participant observation, the use of informants and in-depth interviewing can be used by the researcher as an integrated means of understanding the everyday world of social groups, their patterns of interpersonal communication and their uses of the media. Audience research methods done by Lull, the family members were given six independent set of fabricated program selections to choose from. The members’ conversations were audiotape recorded as families decided what television shows to ‘watch’. The nature of their overall discussion patterns, comparative willingness to express preferences, the degree of selection consensus and perceptions of interpersonal influence in the family were later reported. Lull also placed himself in the homes of the family.

This problem is being feared by most researcher for example David Morley and James Lull. However, Lull did a research with nearly one hundred families in China's cities who openly describe how foreign and domestic television programs have helped stimulate visions of liberation from the suffocating circumstances of everyday life.

Sue Turnbull. (2002) "Audience", in Stuart Cunningham & Graeme Turner (ed.) The media & communications in Australia , Allen & Unwin, pp. 85-98. ISBN 1865086746

In her chapter of ‘Audience’ Sue Turnbull define audience in terms of space and time. She claims that we are surrounded by media influence everywhere, we are accustomed to it. There are limitations to media audience research, due to issues of social or cultural, rapid change of new media technologies, different interest. It is interesting when she talks about when people cease to become media audiences and become active producers. The part which is interesting is people are developing a new way of treating the media. With the Internet, and Wiki we are considered creators on this medium. The convergent of media enable us to engage with media at a different level. However in this chapter she categories audience research enclosing case studies as evidence.

Mark Balnaves. (2002) "New media and new audiences", in Stuart Cunningham & Graeme Turner (ed.) The media & communications in Australia , Allen & Unwin, pp. 293-303. ISBN 1865086746

In the chapter, Mark Balnaves begins critics from Ang and Beinart illustrating the different views of globalisation that contributes to new media and new audiences. Balnaves bring us back in time, describing the works of Adorna, Lazaersfeld and Merton. The purpose of Balnaves writings on new media and new audiences challenge how media is tested on audiences and providing an overview of new media in Australia. He compares this challenge with other countries for example the United States and Singapore.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation (2002) “ABC New Media,� retrieved August 12, 2004, from http://www.abc.net.au/corp/ar02/ar02_newmedia.pdf

Click to go to article

This web content provides information on new media contents in regards to Australia contexts. It displays graphs on audiences reached and audience loyalty to new media program. Showing breaks down the contents they host in twelve different gateways. Ratings on the amount of publicity were give to each of the gateway were listed as to supply a clearer understanding on what audience are looking for. ABC also writes about emerging new media platforms in developing new audience in the following years.

Kelvin Khoo 19:07, 12 Aug 2004 (EST)

Topic Space

Internet as a new media