Does the mass media have a significant amount of power over its audience, or does the audience ultimately have more power than the media?

Does the mass media have a significant amount of power over its audience, or does the audience ultimately have more power than the media?

Media is one of the central elements of contemporary life, as well as gender and sexuality remaining at the core of what we think about identities. The media contains many different images of men and women and messages about sexuality today. It is thought that these ideas will have some kind of impact on our own sense of identity.

One of the biggest debates is about the impact that media has on society, a lot of people have had their opinions on which is the greatest; media power, or people power. Many theorists have taken part in this debate, but the two most celebrated representatives of each side of the arguments are Theodor Adorno (1903-1969) and John Fiske (1939- ). Adorno’s writings argued that the media had more power over society, whilst Fiske believed the audience had more power.

I think it is understandable that Adorno thinks the media is so powerful, as he witnessed it first hand when he fled to Frankfurt in the 1930’s around the time the Nazi’s came to power, because of the way that Hitler used mass media and propaganda to change opinions. He referred to mass media as the ‘culture industry’ and thought it was a well oiled machine producing products in order to make a profit. However, Adorno didn’t like referring to media businesses as ‘mass culture’ as he believed the products were not culture produced by the people, but the culture consumed by the masses is imposed and distributed by the culture industry.

In 1947 Adorno and his colleague Max Horkheimer wrote the book ‘Dialect of Enlightenment’, which contains the essay ‘The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception’. Adorno argued in his book that media products can never be art, as they are commodities because of their commercial text, and that all products of the culture industry are exactly the same because they are what the people want and people will pay for more of the same thing, because they like it and enjoy it.

Axis is Awesome, the Australian comedy group also proved this point with their comedy sketch, called four chords, in which they show how big hits from over the years all use the same four chords and just different lyrics, it is a real eye opener, as it shows you all songs are the same. There is no choice, it is just an illusion. We might think that the media offer a range of different forms of entertainment and giving different types of people the different genres they want, but Adorno and Horkheimer also commented on this by saying ‘Something is provided for all so that none may escape’ (1979: 123) They are basically saying that anyone who is in search of entertainment has to acknowledge what the culture manufacturers offer them, and accept it. So to sum up, we can choose what we like but from a limited range that is presented by the culture industry. Adorno wrote ‘Our consumption merely fosters the circle of manipulation and retroactive need in which the unity of the system grows even stronger.’(ibid: 121)

On the other hand John Fiske argues that is the audience, not the media that has more power. Fiske is a fan of popular culture, and was one of the most influential media scholars from the 1970’s to the 90’s. In 1989 he wrote a book called ‘Understanding Popular Culture’ in which he wrote: ‘Popular culture is made by the people, not produced by the culture industry.

All the culture industries can do is produce a repertoire of texts or cultural resources for the various formations of the people to use or reject in the on-going process of producing their popular culture’. So he is basically saying that the media sends out their messages, but it is the audiences own decision how they interpret the message. He wanted to show that people are not drones, and they are all individuals with their

own tastes and opinions, and they are not existing as a mass audience, as he thinks its ridiculous to think that culture in manufactured. He also wrote that ‘Culture is a living process. It can be developed only from within; it cannot be imposed from without or above.’ He argues that people chose what they want to watch and listen to, and that they are not forced, and that what’s popular is not what people have been forced or tricked into liking, but what people genuinely like.

However, he does agree that our choices are limited to an extent, but he argues that audiences interpret different meanings from texts, and that most text contains the preferred reading, but also offers potential for audiences to interpret their own meaning and bring what they want from it. He believes that the audience are not just consumers, but they get happiness and their own meaning from their message that they construe. Fiske believes that media could leave to a social change from all the diversity and difference it’s promoting with the ideas and meanings people bring from it. Some people think that Fiske is too optimistic with his views on the impact of media and how it could progress.

Personally I agree with both, but I am slightly swayed towards Adorno’s argument, as I believe there is far more evidence to back up his case. I also believe a lot more people are beginning to understand this, such as Axis of awesome, who I spoke about earlier, as they recognized all songs as being the same and decided to show it in a very clever way. There is also another song that shows this, called Like, OMG Baby by DJ Earworm, which has all the famous songs from the past year in one, it shows how similar they all are. It can also be shown in films, as they all have the same story line in each different genre, such as love stories and horror films; they are almost predictable from the start.

In the film Swordfish, at the beginning John Travolta is talking about how easy it is to make a film, because they are all predictable and how all films are the same, however the film ruins it by then being a predictable film, just like all the rest. However, you couldn’t have a film without a happy ending, because people wouldn’t like it, and therefore wouldn’t pay to see it, so it would not be popular, and would be unsuccessful.

In conclusion I think that people are so used to the music they listen to and films, that they are not open to listening or watching anything other than what they already are, so the culture industry makes a lot of money by producing more and more of the same thing, however when there is a new idea or something different they adopt the idea and use it again and again, so there is never anything different.