Production/Reception

This chapter starts by recounting the story of Orson Welles’ radio play War of the Worlds , which led some to believe the invasion of earth by Martians was real, but early effects research revealed that this was greatly exaggerated by print media competing with the new medium of radio. This brings us back to the political economy of media production, highlighting the tendency of oligopolisation within capitalist modes of production. This, it is argued, has a profound impact on the kind of content that is being produced. At the same time, this does not mean that there is no space or opportunity for the production of counter-cultural media content. Another angle focuses precisely on the nature of that content and how through the production of content meaning is encoded into media texts, which is explored by looking at how respectively news media and activists represent protest. Subsequently, the focus shifts to the reception side, i.e. to what audiences do with the content they consume and how media content is being decoded. This opens up the contentious and complex debate on what the precise effects are that media has on its audiences which gave rise to a variety of perspectives and positions which also ties into ideas of the power or impotence of media to influence behaviour. Finally, the idea of the active audience and the user of technology is introduced, and the chapter concludes by introducing the Circuit of Culture, as proposed by cultural studies scholars, to highlight the importance and richness of researching production, reception, but also questions with regards to identity, representation, and power conjunctly.