Discussion: How far do you agree with the comment that mass audiences are still passive recipients of media texts?

Throughout the media, whether it be newspapers, magazines, advertisment and social networking it is said that discrete, subliminal  messages are deployed to engage with the subconcious mind in order to influence the recipient of a media text.

Conjecturally, these messages are represented through personal beliefs and manifested through fashion and even personas. For example, are 'regional identities' really perceived stereotypes, or merely vague representations of how we should behave as, for instance, residents of East London. Women are often exploited solely on their asthetic qualities in 'lads mags' - which suggests that it is acceptable for women to strut around half naked, refusing self-respect to attract the attention of testoserone fueled men, degrading women and showcasing them as objects rather than human beings.

During a lesson, we discussed how things the public (passive recipient) are fed in the media are expressed through their actions. We analysed an image depicting Jim Royle from "The Royle Family" engulfed in an armchair, with a cup of tea. The text connoted he was watching television - he seemed immersed, slumped lethargically whilst holding a cup of tea adjacent to the remote control. This can be interpreted through two ideologies:

a) Jim is represented as a passive recipient of media text, there is ambiguity as to what he is watching it could be anything from the news to Top of the Pops. The picture elicits a valid argument - is the photo a metaphor for passive recipients of media texts? The lazy manner in which Jim is sat whilst indulging in the television represents a 'passive recipient', susceptible to the subliminal messages the media transmits in order to interact with the psyche.

b) Is the depiction of Jim Royle a 're-presentation' of the way we behave, tinkering with the concept of regional identity (tea, armchair etc.) or is it a representation of how we should behave, suggesting that we should indulge and soak up the media's ideas.

Obviously, The Royle Family was first broadcast in 1998, when there was less access to the sophisticated technology such as smart phones that are available now. Therein, it is becoming apparent that we are even more vulnerable to the media due to how accessible the these materials are - most teenagers are able to surf twitter at the touch of the button, absorbing the ideology 'tweeted' by journalists and newspapers second by second. Is this to suggest that in the formative years of the media had a rather more mild effect on it's recipients? Quite possibly, yes. The contemporary human can be influenced, some would say controlled by the new wave of technology exploited by the media in order to reach vulnerable minds.

Programmes such as "The Only Way Is Essex" (TOWIE) have in some senses evolved youth culture in their fashion and terminology, because young demographics believe that if something is televised and accessible, then it must be socially acceptable. Some argue it also represented Essex as unsophisticated, adding to the 'Essex' stereotype.

To emboss the importance of the media's affect on it's audience, it must be established exactly what a 'passive recipient' is:

A passive audience is a recipient which the media are able to inject messages into without the individual being completely aware of this. For example, children are a passive recipient of media texts, as they do not interact with the media but are receptive to it's content. They have no control over the media influence that affects them.