Audience essay media institutions

"Audiences now have just as much power as media institutions." To what extent do you agree with this statement?"

Back in the day Big Tech multinational conglomerates like Disney, Facebook, Twitter, etc. They have had more power for many years over the audiences as the producers would create the media for audiences to watch and enjoy in cinemas, as well as over social media itself. But all of this has slightly changed nowadays, thanks to the role of web 2.0 and YouTube, YouTube has received 30,000 hrs of videos uploaded daily, and with 1 billion hrs of videos watched every day, this market is huge and will keep growing as technology grows. as well. Web 2.0 has helped many around the world with gaining power over media as it helps audiences to create their own media instead of relying on big tech conglomerates to create media on time and worth the wait with key points of knowledge and entertainment, with audiences creating their own media it helps others to enjoy it more as its content that audiences would like and isn't in a specified age bracket.

Clay Shirky had come up with a theory called the end of audience Theory, he believe that audiences are becoming their own producer and creating media for others to watch, Clay Shirky coined the fraise "prosumers", it is the way in which Clay Shirky argued that audiences' behavior has progressed from the passive perspective of media texts to a much more interactive experience with the producers and each other, which makes them the new active audience. The prosumers are able to create their own media and share it with other active audiences to like, share, and comment on the media, whereas passive audiences are more likely to just get fed the information and not do anything with it.

The Hypodermic Needle Theory is a communication theory that suggests that media messages are injected into the brains of a passive audience, which means that we’re all the same and we all respond to media messages in the same way. The Theory originated and developed in 1938 after researchers identified the effect of advertisement during World War I and events like Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds broadcast, which caused police to get calls from 2000 people in 2 hours.

Stuart halls reception Theory talks about the active audiences and how they can be identified as Dominant/Preferred, Oppositional, and Negotiated readers.

• Dominant/Preferred Readers - Audiences are perceived as audiences who will take this position if the messages are clear and if the audiences are of the same age and culture if it has an easy-to-follow narrative and if it deals with themes that are relevant to the audience.
  
  
• Oppositional Readers -  When the audience rejects the preferred reading and creates their own meaning for the text. This can happen if the media contains controversial themes that the audiences disagree with. It can also arise when the media has a complex narrative structure perhaps not dealing with themes in modern society. Oppositional reading can also occur if the audience has different beliefs or is of a different age or culture.
  
  
• Negotiated Readers - A compromise between the dominant and oppositional readings, where the audience accepts parts of the producer's views, but has their own views on parts as well.

Two-step flow theory suggests that the flow of information and influence from media to the audiences involves two steps from the media to certain individuals which are the large dominant groups also known as the opinion leaders and from them to the public of active and passive audiences.

Social fragmentation in the social media world has resulted in consumers having a multitude of interests, jumping from place to place, following friends, following trends, following celebrities, leaving groups they would be done with, and moving to fresh groups and new identities. However, Fragmentation in media describes the extent to which audiences are distributed across media offerings. Broadcast networks have long feared that technological growth within the world and regulatory changes would increase competition and take away their audiences, and Example of this would be how news broadcastings are fearing the growth in technology as it can provide its own news for audiences on the go and as a result of this audiences will not be following the news broadcasting platform on the TV as they used to because of the technological advancements as it is on their phones.