REPRESENTATION and AUDIENCE - Issue - Teenage pregnancy across

media formats/genres.

Representation – Drawing Comparisons and Conclusions

You will need to compare the four texts that you analysed on your worksheet
on teenage pregnancy.

Consider the following questions and discuss your thoughts/findings in pairs

before writing up your responses fully, and citing examples.

* How is ‘femininity’ being portrayed surrounding this issue in the texts on teenage pregnancy that you
have analysed ? ( eg, positively ? negatively? problematic, carefree? mixture? )

* What ‘ messages’ are conveyed about teenage pregnancy through the representation of the issue ?

* How similar are these ‘messages’ across the four different texts? Give examples.

* Do these messages differ/vary across the texts.? Give examples of how exactly. Suggest reasons
why this might be (culture? Writer ?, producer of the text, broadcaster, channel etc?)

* Who or which groups of people in society do you feel are best served by the representations of teen
pregnancy that you have observed? Why do you think that this is?

Audience

The uses and gratifications theory focuses on a model of the audience as

active individuals for whom a variety of needs can be gratified through the
consumption of media texts.

Origionallly, it was suggested that these ‘gratifications’ could broadly be described as belonging to one
or more of these four main catagories

Diversion—Escape from routine and problems; an emotional release.

Personal relationships—Social utility of information in conversation; substitution of media for
companionship.
Personal Identity or Individual Psychology—Value reinforcement or reassurance; self-understanding,
reality exploration.
Surveillance—Information about factors which might affect one or will help one do or accomplish
something (Severin and Tankard, 1997)]

In 1973 study, Katz, Gurevitch and Haas saw the mass media as a means by which individuals connect
or disconnect themselves with others. They developed 35 needs taken from the largely speculative
literature on the social and psychological functions of the mass media and put them into five
categories:

Cognitive needs—Acquiring information, knowledge and understanding.

Affective needs—Emotion, pleasure, feelings.
Personal integrative needs—Credibility, stability, status.
Social integrative needs—Family and friends.
Tension release needs—Escape and diversion (Severin and Tankard, 1997).

Using these two theories on active audience consider the trailer for Juno and answer the
following ,

Who is the target audience ?

How do we know?

Suggest other possible audiences for the text

How is the ‘ideal’ audience constructed (representation, messages etc.)?

What gratifications does the text offer?

For the target audience?

For others?

Discuss the trailer with at least three other classmates? How did they respond? What pleasures or
gratifications did they derive from the trailer?

Suggest two different audiences for the text – how might they respond in different ways (e.g.
preferred/ negotiated/ oppositional reading)?

Post to VLE or email at the end of the lesson.