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Contemporary Media Experiences

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Iheanyi Genius Amaraizu

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 Contemporary Media Experiences
And the Suppositions of Future Effects and Meaning

Paper written in analyzing texts from

“Canonic Texts in Media Theory”

Södertörn University
School of Culture and Education
Media, Communication and Cultural Analysis

by
Iheanyi Genius Amaraizu
(This work is an assignment written as part of studies at Södertörn University, funded by a Swedish
Institute scholarship)

Stockholm, Sweden
1st October 2020
Introduction

With the advent of radio and then television, it became imperative to understand media experiences
from the perception of not just media content, but media audiences. A great number of researches
have investigated media effects consequently, however, Herzog and Horton and Wohl are regarded
as pioneers in their area of interest. The both shared aspirations of understanding the role of media
audiences and subsequently established relevant coherence in attitude and behavior.

Upto to the 80s, there have been two great versions of the analysis of the media, just as of the
masses- one optimistic and referred to as technological optimism, and the other one pessimistic
and referred to as a more traditional version called dialectical optimism (Baudrillard, 1985).
Herzog’s study of radio listenership, “On Borrowed Experience: An Analysis of Listening to
Daytime Sketches” (1941) could with mutual arguments be placed on either of the two flanks of
optimism or pessimism, and this placement can be influenced by the readers view or assumptions
and understanding of Herzog’s work. On the other hand, Horton and Wohl focused on the
interaction that happens via the television. This interaction between the performer and the audience
they called ‘para-social’ in their work, “Mass Communication and Para-social Interaction” (1956).

Both Herzog and Horton and Wohl placed relevance on media audiences. They accordingly,
investigated the roles and consumption attitude of these audiences as well as their treatment of
mediated messages.

The internet, being latest of these electronic media have changed everything about mass
communication as we used to know it. The question at this time is how media audiences are treating
content, and what the changing role of the audience is becoming. This paper summarizes the works
of Herzog, and Horton and Wohl, while relating them to existing traditions. Further, the question
on contemporary media experiences is posed before us, and this paper intends to establish the need
for a conceptual framework that would be helpful in the analysis of future media effects and
meaning.
“Getting Into Trouble and Out Again”:

Analytical Summary of Herzog’s “On Borrowed Experience”

This particular work on radio listenership has been considered a pioneering piece in the research
of Uses and Gratification approach to study the media, or more specifically, the radio broadcast
medium (Liebes, 2003). The work, released in the Studies in Philosophy and Social Science
Journal, Volume IX/1941 (Published by Institute of Social Research, Morningside Heights, New
York City, 1941) was published alongside other notable works of notable researches whose works
have shaped media studies, and these include researchers like Paul Lazarsfeld, Theodor Adorno,
Max Horkheimer, and Harold Lasswell.

“On Borrowed Experience” is a critique of popular culture and its effect on consumers. The study
presents media audience as important part of the mass communication process, however with
extensive example on the effects of media on the audience as it concerns uses and gratification.
Born out of the quest to usher in a new era of the ‘then’ contemporary social research to determine
the effect of radio soaps on listeners, Herzog between 1938 -1941 conducted a personal interview
with about 100 women living in Greater New York. These women were of various ages and income
groups and listened to between 2 -22 daytime radio soaps daily and questions like what the program
mean to them, why they listened and what they do with what they hear on the programs helped in
the development of a conceptual framework on the study of uses and gratification (Herzog, 1941).

Herzog tried to find out reasons behind the listenership of the soaps by their audience while
interpreting behaviors, feeling and gratifications realized by these audiences. Very concerned
about the meaning accorded to the soaps and how the meanings impact the lives of the audience,
she concluded her research emphasizing that “that the stories have become an integral part of the
lives of many listeners. They are not only successful means of temporary emotional release or
escape from a disliked reality. To many listeners they seem to have become a model of reality by
which one is to be taught how to think and how to act. As such, they must be written not only with
an eye to their entertainment value, but also in the awareness of a great social responsibility”
(p.91).
Herzog’s work showed that the popularity of serial soap operas were not just with women of lower
socioeconomic status but a recognizable correlation to content, and therefore was not a product of
lack of engagements and excess free time. As an example, with an average of 6.6 programs of
daytime serials listened to by the participants of the study, very few of the listeners said "yes" to
the question whether they were only listening "because there was nothing else on at this particular
time of the day" (p.67).

Presenting the media as a provider of false gratification to her active consumers, Herzog explains
three main types of gratification or reactions consequent to the experiences of these women from
actively being consumers of the soap operas:
1. Listening as an emotional release;
2. Listening as means of remodeling one’s drudgery;
3. Listening for recipe making for adjustments.
In the analysis, Herzog went further to conclude that one of the benefits of listening to stories is
that it provides the listeners with formulas for behaviour in various situations, while giving them
sets of explanations with which they may appraise happenings around them (p.89).

The ‘Sterotyped formula’ of “Getting into Trouble and Out Again”

“All of these listeners look for the "troubles" in the story and how they are solved, but each
interprets the "trouble" situation according to her owe problems. Thus, for example, a sick listener
stresses the sick people cured by the doctor in the story. The young high school girl, who wishes
she knew interesting people like Dr. Brent, picks the jealousy aspect of the story and the way Dr.
Brent stands up to it. The woman over forty, with the memory of a sad childhood, insists that Dr.
Brent "is doing God's work." And the mother sacrificing herself for an unappreciative family feels
a common bond in the fact that "sometimes he (Dr. Brent) is left out in the cold too." (p.68)

Even though Herzog does not adopt the perspective of her interviewees, her analysis draws the
picture of disempowered listeners driven by unconscious motives and fulfilled by false and
harmful satisfactions (Liebes, 2003, p.40). A formula termed, “Getting into trouble and out again”
was applied to all her sketches (p.67) in describing the interpretation of the interviewees on the
program they had listened. Listeners do not take these radio soaps as imaginary or fictitious. They
dwell in these experiences while equating them to reality and their own personal problems.

The interesting analysis of this Herzog’s stereotype is the affirmation that program selection by
the respondents is determined by the current problem they most intimately were passing through,
and they like only programs with relative stories as that problem. In addition, the more complex
the listener's troubles are or the less able she is to cope with them, the more programs she seems
to listen to (p.69).

Effects and Meaning in Visual Experience:

Horton’s And Wohl’s “Mass Communication and Para-Social Interaction”

The understanding of media experiences cannot be adequate without a critical look into the
evolution the television invented in media studies. Anthropologist Donald Horton and the
Sociologist R. Richard Wohl laid the foundation through their work on para-social interaction and
relationships, 'Mass Communication and Para-social Interaction: Observations on Intimacy at a
Distance', published in the Journal Psychiatry 19: 215-229 in 1956. The phenomena of ‘para-
social’ so far has been widely researched about while achieving an accepted popularity in the study
of media reception.

Expressively concluding that the relationship between the audience and the visual experience is
parasocial, Horton and Wohl started by giving an explanation to the terms (p.215-216):

 Para-social relationship: this is an elusive relationship between a performer and their

spectators. By defining meaning to para-social relationship, Horton and Wohl explained
that the mass media is characterized as a medium of providing illusion of face-to-face
relationship between the media audience and the performers;
 Para-social Interaction: Television through its visual feature creates ordinarily, an attentive
social perception, which in turn ensures that interaction takes place. The effects of the
 appearances on a television makes the audience to do more than observation, they go ahead
in creating responses that establishes a conversational give and take relationship called
para-social interaction;
 Persona: These are the pilots of the para-social relations. They are a creation of the media
and lead as performers that attract adoration or interaction by the audience. The persona
works to achieve intimacy with the spectators/audiences who are completely strangers. To
this end, the stories characterized by the persona shows continuing relationship, care,
affection, and an image that he (the persona) is well known by the spectator, like a close
friend, whom must have been known through observation, gesture, voice and appearance.

In further understanding the role the persona plays in strengthening the bond of intimacy and
effects of the media on the audience, Horton and Wohl stresses that the persona struggles to blur
the line between illusion and reality, this is to get the audience to completely blend with his media
content. “The most usual way of achieving this ambiguity is for the persona to treat his supporting
cast as a group of close intimates. Thus, all the members of the cast will be addressed by their first
names, or by special nicknames, to emphasize intimacy. They very quickly develop, or have
imputed to them, stylized character traits which, as members of the supporting cast, they will
indulge in and exploit regularly in programme after programme. The member of the audience,
therefore, not only accumulates an historical picture of 'the kinds of people they really are,' but
tends to believe that this fellowship includes him by extension” (p.217).

On the other hand, the audience also have a role described by Horton and Wohl. The role of the
audience are derived from the expectation to reciprocate the interaction characterized by intimacy,
friendship and closeness established by the persona. “The audience is expected to accept the
situation defined by the programme format as credible, and to concede as 'natural' the rules and
conventions governing the actions performed and the values realized. It should play the role of the
loved one to the persona's lover; the admiring dependent to his father-surrogate; the earnest citizen
to his fearless opponent of political evils. It is expected to benefit by his wisdom, reflect on his
advice, sympathize with him in his difficulties, forgive his mistakes, buy the products that he
recommends, and keep his sponsor informed of the esteem in which he is held” (p. 219).

However, Horton and Wohl, explained that acceptance of the para-social role by the audience is
not absolute. They argued that for an audience to live in the illusion of this relationship there must
be an ability to relate to the program or have a legitimate claim to its contents being interpretative
to the audiences’ wants as regards their social environment.

Herzog’s, Horton and Wohl’s Correlations and The Place of Their Theories in Existing
Traditions in Media Research

There are many intersections between the work of Herzog in “On Borrowed Experience” and
Horton and Wohl’s “Mass Communication and Para-social Interaction”. First, “On Borrowed
Experience” is grouped as part of the Columbia School while “Mass Communication and Para-
social Interaction” is part of the Chicago school. However, the accepted similarity of these schools
of thought remain the focus on audience and the adoption of new methods that allow the unique
individual to appreciate the attitudes and behaviours while effectively gauging media effects and
meaning to audience attitudes and behaviours.

Both Herzog, Horton and Wohl agree to the relevance of audience study in the extensive
understanding of media effects. And from their statements, Horton and Wohl posit that the creation
of media personality, the performer (persona) is deliberate in an attempt to build an audience which
Herzog referred to as an audience who watch out for ‘troubles’ in the story, so as to interpret the
situation according to their own problems:

“All these devices are indulged in not only to lure the attention of the audience, and to create the
easy impression that there is a kind of participation open to them in the programme itself, but also
to highlight the chief values… Because the relationship between persona and audience is one-sided
and cannot be developed mutually, very nearly the whole burden of creating a plausible imitation
of intimacy is thrown on the persona and on the show of which he is the pivot.” (Horton, Wohl,
1956, p.218)

“The listeners studied do not experience the sketches as fictitious or imaginary. They take them as
reality and listen to them in terms of their own personal problems.” (Herzog, 1941, p.67)
Additionally, the both theories agree that the audience is not without a mind of their own. Even
with the clearly described strong effect of the media experience on the audience, both Herzog and
Horton and Wohl maintains that the audience must interpret the media content to suite their
situation for meaning to be established:

“All of these listeners look for the "troubles" in the story and how they are solved, but each
interprets the "trouble" situation according to her own problems.” (Herzog, 1941, p.68)

“When the persona appears alone, in apparent face-to-face interaction with the home viewer, the
latter is still more likely to maintain his own identity without interruption, for he is called upon to
make appropriate responses which are complementary to those of the persona. This 'answering'
role is, to a degree, voluntary and independent. In it, the spectator retains control over the content
of his participation rather than surrendering control through identification with others, as he does
when absorbed in watching a drama or movie”. (Horton, Wohl, 1956, p.219)

Aside the strong similarities and arguments that Frankfurt school sits right for the work of Herzog
in “On Borrowed Experience” due to her expressive use of popular culture to explain media effects
on real audiences, there is a major agreement found in the British school, in the work of Sturt Hall
(Encoding, Decoding. 1980). Hall, in his hypothetical position of decoding accepts that the decoder
could always modify. While there is opportunity for the predetermination of the decoded meaning,
there is also a chance that there might be no ‘consumption’:

“The domains of ‘preferred meanings’ have the whole social order embedded in them as a set of
meanings, practices and beliefs: the everyday knowledge of social structures, of ‘how things work
for all practical purposes in this culture’, the rank order of power and interest and the structure of
legitimations, limits and sanctions.” (Hall 1980. p.98)

“If no ‘meaning’ is taken, there can be no ‘consumption.” (Hall 1980, p.91)

Conclusion: The Present and Future Effects and Meaning

Internet without doubt has revolutionized media and a term “new media” have come to connote
the contemporary media. Herzog and Horton and Wohl’s thoughts have even become more
relevant due to the power that has come to the audience not just to obtain gratification from the
media, but also to extend his para-social interaction through user-generated contents.

With Facebook, Spotify, YouTube and other social media platforms, the radio and television have
taken new forms and media communication have as well embraced new enhanced effects and
meaning. Where the radio and television exist, we see hybrid media convergence. That is, every
radio station, or television station now owns a Facebook page or Youtube channel or Twitter
account.

Just like the days of soap operas, the serial format have been successful in building audience
loyalty. With the facilitation provided by the internet, the audience are more than ever active
participants and consumers of media, and not only do they interpret the media to suite their
situations, they further engage accepted content through discussing, sharing and providing
feedback. The effects and meaning the future holds remain uncertain, especially with further
revolutionary innovations like the Artificial Intelligence, which may blur perfectly the existing
differences between the media relationship of a machine/device to an audience/receiver in
comparison to the relationship of a performer and the spectator.

Words: 2,706
 References

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Hall, S. (1980). Encoding, decoding. In S. During, (Ed.), The Cultural Studies Reader (1993. P.90-
103). London & New York: Routledge

Herzog, H. (1941). On Borrowed Experience. An Analysis of Listening to Daytime Sketches. In

M. Horkheimer (1980), Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung. Studies in Philosophy and Social
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Retrieved from: http://archive.org/details/ZeitschriftFrSozialforschung9.Jg

Horton, D. & Wohl R. R. (1956). 'Mass Communication and Para-social Interaction: Observations
on Intimacy at a Distance', Psychiatry 19 (3), p.215-229

Liebes, T. (2003). Herzog’s “On Borrowed Experience”: Its Place in the Debate over the Active
Audience. In E. Katz, J. D. Peters, T. Liebes & A. Orloff (Eds.), Canonic Texts in Media
Research (p. 39-54). Cambridge: Polity Press

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