Technologies: Transformations In Audiences' Perception Of Media

Name: Institution: Course: Date: Transformations in Audiences’ Perception of Media Current media and communication technologies have an associated influence in creating and passing symbolic representations to its audience. It is common, especially in industrialized countries, for people to occasionally spend a significant amount of their leisure hours on mass media than they spend in work, school, or in face to face interactions. Leisure is nowadays part of the lifestyle in the media-rich households, a phenomenon that is most likely to be passed to the next generation. As a result, the media may end up being perceived as a background feature of everyday life, despite the existing anxiety over media content and regulations. Hansen asserts that “today’s postmodern, globalized culture of consumption has developed new, and ever more elusive, technologies of power and commodification, operating through diversification rather than homogenization the worldwide manufacture of diversity does anything but automatically translate into a new cultural politics of difference.” (Hansen 199) The continuous interaction with the media offers diverse images and information on how we perceive our existence and the existence of others, which eventually affects our own practices and behavior, our social relationships, and our overall identity as social beings. The paper aims at highlighting some transformations in audience characteristics in relation to changing media and technological environment in history. According to Hansen, new electronic technologies have shifted the venues for film viewing in the direction of domestic space and have greatly influenced the terms on which viewers can interact with films (Hansen 198). The modern audience is subjected to a more self-regulated yet privatized media consumption, which is also characterized by a lot of distraction and fragmented acts of consumption. This is unlike the previous compulsive temporality of public projection in classical cinemas. However, interpretation of mass media and communication technologies depends on viewers’ or audiences’ socio-economic position, gender, and ethnicity, among others. Whether the audience ridicules or accepts the information presented is subject to various socially-determined contexts. During the early post-war period, people were highly interested in crime media due to their escapist irrelevance, unlike modern audience whose main concern in media is its relevance. In the perspective of the contemporary audience, a connection to one’s own life is what makes the media more engaging. The relevance of a media thus acts as a source of gratification and motivates the process of reception. Initially, the characters and action in crime dramas were interpreted in relations to their internal coherence of the narrative rather than strongly drawing interpretations form daily life situations. Modern audience perceives the action or drama as a representation of their daily life experiences (Gunning 66). Escapism was vital and had a positive value to the audience which transformed their lifestyles. The modern young audience prefers media tha...