mass-communication-theory

260 Section 4 Contemporary Mass Communication Theory
Thus, this third generation of reception studies attempts to return to some of
the more macroscopic concerns that initially motivated critical theorists. It represents
an effort to integrate these critical theory concerns with reception analysis to
establish a challenging research agenda. This trend parallels developments in other
areas of media theory we discuss in Chapter 11. You can read about what some
critical theorists are calling reception studies’ latest incarnation in the box entitled
“Semiotic Disobedience.”
FEMINIST RECEPTION STUDIES
THINKING
about
THEORY
Janice Radway (1984) was one of the first American cultural studies researchers to
exemplify the shift away from an exclusive focus on textual analysis and toward an
increased reliance on reception studies. Her work provided an influential model for
American scholars and is frequently cited as one of the best examples of feminist
cultural studies research. Radway initially analyzed the content of popular romance
novels. She argued that romance characters and plots are derived from patriarchal
myths in which a male-dominated social order is assumed to be both natural and
just. Men are routinely presented as strong, aggressive, and heroic, whereas
women are weak, passive, and dependent. Women must gain their identity through
their association with a male character.
SEMIOTIC DISOBEDIENCE
British cultural theorist John Fiske (see Chapter 2)
coined the phrase semiotic democracy to refer to
audience members’ ability to make their own meaning
from television content. In his words, viewers possessed
the skill—and the right—to produce personal
“meanings and pleasures” when interacting with media
texts (Fiske, 1987, p. 236). In “meanings” you can
see evidence of reception studies, and in “pleasures”
you can see hints of entertainment theory and usesand-gratifications
theory. But a new generation of
active-audience writers and thinkers takes a more
critical theory approach to the concept of an active
audience. They argue that semiotic democracy, quite
naturally, is evolving into semiotic disobedience,
individuals’ ability to reinvent or subvert media content,
not to impose a personally meaningful reading, but
to oppositionally redefine that content for themselves
and others.
Examples abound. In San Francisco, the Billboard
Liberation Front “improves” billboard advertising so
the new “preferred” reading is in direct opposition
to the one intended by the original advertiser. The
Media Foundation, best known for its Buy Nothing
Day, Digital Detox Week, and its magazine Adbusters,
produces a series of magazine ads featuring a
smoking, cancerous Joe Chemo bearing a remarkable
likeness to the cigarette icon Joe Camel. Its
American flag, with fifty brand logos rather than fifty
stars, has filled a full page of the New York Times.
Disaffected! is an online videogame designed to
“introduce” people to the copy company Kinko’s.
Developer Ian Bogost, who wants to show that
“games can bite back” at “colonization” by advertisers,
promotes the game on his company’s website
this way: “Feel the indifference of these purple-shirted
malcontents first-hand and consider the possible
reasons behind their malaise—is it mere incompetence?
Managerial affliction? Unseen but serious
labor issues?” (Walker, 2006, p. 18).
Hamburger giant McDonald’s has also had its
name and logo oppositionally subverted and redefined
in online games. In McDonald’s Videogame players
decide how much rain forest to clear in order to raise
more cows for slaughter. Thirty-thousand people
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