Mass media: effects research - reception analysis

Reception studies - Morley

Morley's research is often hailed as something of a breakthrough. In turning his attention resolutely to the audience, it is, though he probably overstates his case in his claim that the effects tradition was dominated by a hypodermic needle model of influence until the uses and gratifications approach developed. Curran (1990) has pointed to many instances of early studies which focused on audience reception. The fact remains, though, that, although it may be possible to find many such studies, they were not in the mainstream of the effects tradition.

Morley's detailed observations of audience reception were among the first to attempt to address the over-emphasis on semiotic analysis of media texts, which may be seen as a deficiency in the CCCS approach.

The Nationwide audience

Morley's audience study of the Nationwide audience is a major text in media research (Nationwide was an evening current affairs TV programme). Morley's investigation of two broadcasts focused on the way that meanings are constructed through the interaction of the media text and the social and discourse positions of audience members.

Combining semiological and sociological study

His two main intentions were

• semiological study, involving the notion of the preferred readings of media texts, the way that the polysemy of the text has its range of potential meanings narrowed down ('closure')
• sociological study of the ways that age, sex, race, class and gender may determine a person's access to possible readings of the texts

Relationship between readings and sociological variables

He demonstrated that different groups generated quite different meanings for the Nationwide broadcasts and showed that the meanings generated were closely related to the subcultural groups within the same social class. (Morley (1980))

Morley found, for example that bank managers rarely commented on the actual content of the programme. It seemed to be that they shared the 'comonsense' framework of assumptions within which Nationwide operated. For other groups, aspects of the programme's content were much more salient. A group of management trainees saw the programme's items on trade unions as being biased towards the unions, whereas a group saw the same items as rabidly anti-union. A group of university arts students were especially conscious of the methods deployed by the programme makers in constructing the discourse of Nationwide. A group of apprentices tended to show cynicism and alienation, rejecting the whole of the system of party politics, but nevertheless were most in line with the assumptions made by the programme makers.

Dominant, negotiated and oppositional readings

These observations are in line with Stuart Hall's notions of dominant (or preferred), negotiated and oppositional readings of media texts. Morley builds on Parkin's suggestion (1971) that in any society there are three dominant 'meaning systems':

• The dominant value system, the social source of which is the major institutional order; this is a mmoral framework which promotes the endorsement of existing inequality, in deferential terms;
• The subordinate value-system, the social source or generating milieu of which is the local working-class community; this framework promotes accommodative responses to the facts of inequality and low status;
• The radical value-system, the source of which is the mass political party based on the working class; this framework promotes an oppositional interpretation of class inequalities

Morley (1992)

Related articles:

de Certeau's views

Fiske's views

Ang on Dallas

Brown on soap operas

Fiske on Madonna

Hermes on women's magazines

Morley: Family Television

Radway: Reading the Romance

Criticisms of reception studies

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