New Media Key Theories, Models and Personal Media

use

The implication of new media technologies and

practices for established models or key theories can
be defined by analysing the main points of the
theories and relating these to the researchers own
media use. By doing so, the researcher can obtain a
clearer understanding of the interaction between
audience and new media.

Content Analysis is a key theory that examines the

messages in new media sources. Hansen with his
colleagues (Cottle, Negrine, Newbold 1998) describe
the purpose of Content Analysis as “examining how
news, drama, advertising output reflect social and
cultural issues, values and phenomena’s.” (p. 92)
Content Analysis’ six-step approach enables the
researcher to obtain results of messages in new media
and create a conclusion on these results. The six steps
outlined by Hansen (et al 1998) include the definition
of the research problem, selection of media sample,
defining analytical categories, constructing a coding
sheet, piloting the coding schedule and checking
reliability and data preparation and analysis. Content
Analysis being a quantitative theory allows the
researcher to draw conclusions on how the messages
affect the audience or viewer.
Content Analysis could be used to measure the
researchers own media use by researching the
messages they send by their mobile phone. As the
researcher sends over 50 messages a day, the proposed
problem for Content Analysis could be the content in
each of the messages over a period of time. By using
Content Analysis’ six steps a conclusion could be
obtained on how this new media affects the audience,
especially in this case the sender and receiver of
these messages.

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Livingstone (1999) makes the point that new media
has become more personalised compared to the
“traditional sociostrucutual” ways that we dealt with
media sources in the past. New media including
mobile phones and laptops are examples of
personalised new media communications, which can be
compared to their pre existing media forms of a house
phone and family computer. These new media sources
have allowed for affairs to go on behind closed doors
and our media lives to become more private. These
personalised media sources have also allowed for
individuals to be private even while they are in public
surroundings. Livingstone (1999) describes this
change from public new media forms to private new
media forms as significant. Livingstone describes the
three links that connect the audience with new media.
These links include the “implied audience” are
imagined to react to act as if the attended audience
would, the audience engage with new media and new
media transforms the audience. Livingstone notes that
the active and interactive audience become less of a
mass audience and more of an individual audience,
where they all react differently. This can be seen in
the comparison between a Television audience and an
Internet audience.
Livingstone’s theory can be seen in the
researches use of new media such as mobile phone and
laptop use. As the researcher continues in private
affairs whilst in the public setting of their own home.
Even these new media sources have become
personalised, as only one individual will be the owner
of a phone at a time.

McMillan’s (2006) key theory is on new media and

how interaction is not just evident in new media
sources but it can also be seen in old media. Examples
of old media that are interactive include fan mail,

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telegrams, talk back radio and the telephone.
McMillan states that interaction in new media
“focused on the properties and/or features of the
message an/or the medium.” (p. 207) The message can
be interpreted differently by each audience member,
which links to Nightingale’s (1996) point on Hall’s
theory of Encoding and Decoding. The point that
Nightingale makes on the theory is that the sender
does not fix the message so that the audience
interprets the message the same. The message can be
taken as a dominant, negotiated of oppositional
reading.
McMillan (2006) states there is two ways that a
user can interact with new media, which are
categorised as user-to-user interaction and user-to-
document interaction. McMillan describes user-to-user
interaction as “[focusing] on the ways that individuals
interact with each other.” (p. 209) User-to-user
interaction can be seen also in old medias such as the
telegram. New media examples of user-to-user
interaction include electronic mail, online chat and
online bulletin boards. User-to-documents on the
other hand is how an individual interacts and
interprets a document and those involved with its
creation. The audience of user-to-document
interaction are seen as an active audience who use
mass media communication regularly. McMillan
suggests that user-to-document interaction involves a
large amount of active participation by the individual.
McMillan’s (2006) theory on the audience as
active participants and hold their own interpretation
on sources. This can be resembled in the researchers
own media use, as participation in blogging sites, chat
rooms, creation and downloading or memes allows the
researcher to be an active and interactive member
with new media.

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Nightingale (1996) describes Hall’s theory of
encoding and decoding in their scholarly work.
Nightingale describes that visual images sent by the
media source assist the viewer in receiving the verbal
content. Nightingale states “the promised benefit of
the encoding/decoding model centred on its situating
structure of production, text, and audience (reception)
within a framework where each could be read,
registered and analysed in relation to each other.” (p.
22) The theory’s framework relies on how well the
sender communicates the message and how well the
receiver interprets the message. Hall’s theory that
Nightingale (1996) describes states that the messages
meanings are not fixed by the sender, as each receiver
could interpret the message in different ways. This
can be seen by the audience divisions that Hall
creates. The divisions include the dominant reader,
the negotiated reader and the oppositional reader,
which are all based on how the receiver interprets the
message. As Nightingale explained, Hall also suggests
in the encoding/decoding model that the message was
never transparent and could always be receiver by the
audience in some context.
The encoding/decoding theory that Nightingale
(1996) explains applies to the researchers own media
us as it explores how we receive messages. New media
sources that the researcher uses and can be analysed
through encoding/decoding include mobile phone
messages, print media sources including newspapers
and magazines and online blogs. The researcher may
than be categorised as a dominant, negotiated or
oppositional reader.

Gebner and his colleagues (Bryant, Jennings, Zillman

2002) scholarly work describes the Cultivation
analysis model. Gebner (et al) described their
findings of the model as “[focusing] specifically on
televisions contribution to viewers national culture.”

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(p. 44) The Cultivation Analysis model closely
examines how television shapes the viewers social and
cultural life. Gebner (et al 2002) described the
process of Cultivation Analysis as “[examining] the
responses given to questions about social reality
among those with varying amounts of exposure to the
world of television.” (p. 46) By conduction surveys to
individuals on how television affects them, the
examination of how messages sent via television
affects the audience social reality. Television being a
major part of our lives both publicly and in private
can affect how we communicate, interact and process
messages.
Cultivation Analysis can be used to examine the
researchers new media use of television to analyse
how messages change their social reality and
perception. The researcher watches various types of
shows including sports, news, comedy, animation and
drama, which can alter the researchers interpretation
of messages and their own identity. After watching a
news and a comedy program the researcher will
interpret a story covered by both shows in a different
context to how they would interpret it if they watched
one of the shows. This proves that the audience can
view programs differently and television can alter our
own social perception on a topic.

The researcher believes that a combination of the key

theories and models can analyse how new media
affects the audience. The use of the interaction model
and encoding/decoding theory shows how an audience
can interact not only with a text but also with new
media sources. The Cultivation analysis model
highlights how television changes our social and
cultural identity and to examine why this change
occurs, the use of the content analysis theory could be
used. As there is a large number of new media sources
and theories to analyse the combination of these

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theories is required to obtain a greater understanding
of how new media affects the audience and how the
key theories work.

In conclusion, examining these key theories and

relating them to the researchers own new media use
can obtain a clearer understanding of why these
theories are so important.

Word count: 1431

References:

Gebner, Bryant, Jennings and Zillman, Zoft eds 2002

‘Growing up with Television: Cultivation Processes’
in Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research.
Lawerence Erlbaum, London pp 43-67

Hansen, A., Cottle, S., Negrine, R., Newbold, C. 1998

‘ Content Analysis’ in Mass Communication Research
Methods. Macmillan, London.

Livingstone, S. 1999 ‘New Media, New Audiences?’

LSE Research Online
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/archive/00000391

McMillan, S., Lievrow, L., Livingstone, S. 2006

‘Exploring Models of Interactivity from Multiple
Research Traditions: Users, Documents and Systems’
in Handbook of New Media pp 163-182

Nightingale, V. 1996 ‘Encoding/Decoding’ in

Studying Audiences: the Shock of the Real.
Routledge, London and New York pp 21-39

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