CHAPTER 5

CONSTRUCTING AUDIENCES

This is a common scene in most nuclear families: the father comes home from work, hoping to watch
the final game of the PBA season. The mother arrives from work, wants to see the latest teleserye to
witness how the conflict from last Friday’s episode would resolve itself. It is Monday, and the rest of the
family members want to check out the other teleserye in the competing channel. The kids also want to
tune in to cable television and watch the newest reality show in North America.

A couple of months later, the mother has installed another television set in the master’s bedroom.
Before dinner, she retreats to the bedroom to watch her favorite teleserye. This setup has proven to be
very convenient, especially now that the new season of the national basketball games has just started,
and the living room TV will have to give way to the father. Having two television sets has become a
convenient set-up to avoid potential conflicts between family members.

Much recently, computer devices have complemented television units in households. Middle- to
high-income families are often connected to video-on-demand subscription services that allow for
more expanded media preferences.

CHAPTER OVERVIEW
In this chapter, we define the term audience and how it is articulated in different media environments.
There is an audience for television and film, a listener for the radio, a reader of print materials, and
then there is the netizen who takes a more active engagement with media texts in an interactive
environment.

We tackle audience segregation, how it came about, and how useful the mechanism is for media
producers. We examine the passive and active theories of audience reception. Lastly, we take up
audience research as a tool that media producers use to better understand audiences. Scholars
of media and communications also engage with audience research to produce knowledge on how
audiences behave and how consumer cultures impact media production.

At the end of this chapter, you are expected to:

1. define and elaborate on the concept of an audience;

2. identify, explain, and evaluate the various theories of audience reception;

3. map the various theories of audience reception in a continuum;

4. cite concrete and everyday examples to show both the strength and the weakness of each of
the audience theories; and

5. identify several methods of audience research.

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 With ABS-CBN off the air, Filipinos lose a way of life, sociologist says
by Kristine Joy Patag (August 24, 2020)

MANILA, Philippines — When Typhoon Ambo battered Aurora Province in mid-May, a cop
manning a checkpoint posed this question to ABS-CBN news reporter Jeff Canoy: “Babalik na ba
kayo sir?”

By then, ABS-CBN’s 43 channels, including flagship and free Channel 2, had been ordered off
the air for ten days.

On July 10, members of the House of Representatives lawmaker dashed the hopes of the
embattled media network to resume broadcasting. In a lopsided vote of 70-11, the House Committee
on Legislative Franchises rejected ABS-CBN’s bid for a fresh legislative franchise. Three members
of the panel opted not to vote.

Sociology professor Mario “Mayong” Aguja told Philstar.com that not only did lawmakers vote
to deprive thousands of Filipinos of jobs during a pandemic—ABS-CBN has announced layoffs and
pay cuts—but have also helped create a virtual monopoly in television.

“In the guise of ending oligarchy, Congress, by not renewing the ABS-CBN franchise, only
created a new monopoly in the TV industry. It either favors the Number [Two] in the industry or in a
matter of time, a new player will emerge with the blessings of the emperor,” he said.

“Taken together, ABS-CBN and GMA had accounted for 80% of audience share, reach and
advertising revenue, making them a duopoly,” the 2020 Digital News Report on the Philippines
released in June said.

“In late March, as the country entered its second week of lockdown because of the coronavirus
lockdown, television viewership leapt 23%—an additional three million viewers—as people tuned
in to their television, mostly for news.”

TV for democratizing information

Aguja, who is president of the Philippine Sociological Society and teaches at the Department of
Sociology of the Mindanao State University-General Santos City, stated it plainly: Filipinos love TV.

“It keeps them informed, it makes them laugh, and cry, and makes them conversant of the
issues of the day,” he said in an e-mail interview.

Aguja holds a doctorate degree in International Cooperation Studies from Nagoya University in
Japan and a master’s degree in Sociology at the University of the Philippines in Diliman.

In its 2013 Functional Literacy, Education and Mass Media Survey report, the Philippine
Statistics Authority said: “Access to information is essential in increasing people’s knowledge and
awareness of what is taking place around them that may eventually affect their perceptions and
behavior.”

TV has also democratized information, Aguja said. “TV is the primary source of information for
Filipino families and communities ... Through the TV channels, the rich and the poor’s information
needs are catered, be it news, current affairs, or entertainment, from Aparri to Tawi-Tawi,” he
explained.

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 While accessible to all, TV has proven to be of more help to the poor as they are the families
with limited sources of information. Access to the internet, cable channels, newspapers and social
media may be difficult for them, Aguja pointed out.

The same survey report from the Philippine Statistics Authority found that television is “the most
popular form of mass media” with 65% of Filipinos from ages 10 to 64 watching every day.

It also said that “over 4 in every 5 households owned cellular phones and almost the same
proportion of households have television.”

TV as a power mass media tool

Aguja said that TV’s power is derived from its “ability to provide timely and often graphic information
to the public,” and that has not changed just because the world is grappling with COVID-19. TV
showed the “two faces of crisis—brought by the pandemic, and by the government responses to the
pandemic,” he said.

Despite criticism of “trash content”, an allegation hurled at ABS-CBN during the House
hearings, television is still the most sought-after channel of information during elections, as evidenced
by the “tremendous amount of money” politicians pour in their TV ads, Aguja said.

The sociologist also noted that during Martial Law, President Ferdinand Marcos—ousted as a
dictator in 1986—“made sure that he controlled TV (and other media outlets) not only to limit the
flow of information to the public (e.g. brutality and corruption of the regime), but also to use it for its
propaganda of New Society or ‘Bagong Lipunan.’”

During the first week of martial law in 1972, Marcos shuttered media outlets, with security forces
sweeping television and radio stations and later jailing publishers and journalists.

And when the dictatorship was overthrown, “TV, accompanied by the development in the
broadcast technology, made the information long desired by most Filipinos accessible,” Aguja said.

“As free TV and radio channels proliferated, so thus the numerous programs developed to
address the changing tastes of Filipino audiences. TV became a status symbol and a measure of
development. What made one marginalized is measured through access to TV and ownership of the
TV sets’ brand,” the sociologist said.

More than being a status symbol, television has shaped the culture and memory of generations.

“Except probably Generation Z, ABS-CBN has shaped the Filipino psyche—it became the
Filipinos comic relief for their grief over our politicians and their own personal crisis. Thus explains
the proliferation of entertainment, to the point that some could be considered trash, or soap opera
of endless crying, and slapping,” Aguja said.

Tuning in to ABS-CBN for its newscasts had also become a ritual in many Filipino homes, he
added.

Filipinos have become ‘Kapamilyas’

With 74 years of service under its belt, ABS-CBN’s “Kapamilya” tagline found resonance with
generations of Filipinos, those who “laughed with the network during its noontime shows, or cried
with it during its soap operas, or joined the nation in solidarity during disasters.”

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 In an earlier Philstar.com report, Global Digital Media associate professor Jonathan Ong said
that ABS-CBN has become an «institution that the Filipino poor would turn to in times of need and
calamity.»

Apart from its reportage, ABS-CBN, has too, pioneered the ABS-CBN’s Bantay Bata program,
founded by the late Gina Lopez, that helped “shaped public awareness about children’s rights,” while
its Sagip Kapamilya program serves as a channel for disaster response that has, at times, arrived
in disaster zones ahead of government relief.  

Aguja said, it was through these outreach programs, coupled with the content it produces, that
ABS-CBN made a mark on Filipino families. “It was with them in good times and bad times, even
guiding them during disasters or providing them relief. It brings Filipino families together.”

“The truth of the matter is that... millions joined the Bahay ni Kuya with passion, rather than
watch congressional debates far from the lived experiences of majority of the Filipino,” he said,
referring to reality series “Pinoy Big Brother”.

“Slaying the oligarchy?”

With its pioneering spirit and massive investments, ABS-CBN became “feared and loved” as it
became a powerful broadcasting giant—painting a target on its back for “political persecution” said
Aguja.

President Rodrigo Duterte, whom the Palace said is now neutral towards the network, openly
expressed disdain for ABS-CBN even before he assumed the country’s top post. He accused the
network of “swindling” him by failing to play all of his campaign ads and later, of allegedly biased
reportage.

It was under this hostile political climate that the network had to fight tooth and nail to secure a
fresh 25-year franchise. It was a fight that it eventually lost.

On the eve of voting for the network’s franchise renewal bills, Rep. Mike Defensor (Anakalusgan
party-list) manifested that a vote to deny ABS-CBN fresh franchise “is a vote to stop the perpetuation
of an oligarchic state that continues to suppress our people.”

Days after these lawmakers effectively killed ABS-CBN’s franchise bid, no less than the chief
executive bragged about his “dismantling the oligarchy.” While the Presidential Communications
Office tried—and failed—to keep this under the wraps, the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Rappler
uncovered that the president aimed his tirades against supposed oligarchs, including the owners of
ABS-CBN.

But with the lawmakers’ rejection of ABS-CBN’s franchise bid, they “only created a new monopoly
in the TV industry,” Aguja said, as he stressed: “Oligarchy cannot be slain via a show of brute political
force.”

“If the government is serious in dismantling the oligarchies in this country, it must institutionalize
the initiative through the rule of law—by passing legislation that strengthens competition, limits
monopoly, and provides more excellent choices to the public. It also has to seriously address the
issue of cronies, and political dynasties, who, through the years, consolidated economic and political
powers to few families and clans,” Aguja said.

After all, these, the sociology professor said, are more devastating than ABS-CBN.

[Retrieved from https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2020/07/24/2030137/abs-cbn-air-filipinos-lose-

way-life-sociologist-says) (Accessed October 1, 2020)]
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 Motivational Activity
Read the article very closely. Sort out the data it presents and seek out its implications to our topic.
From the article, deduce how a major broadcast network can generate a new lifestyle for its loyal
followers. Then, as the article suggests, reflect too on how these lifestyles will be lost or altered with
the non-renewal of its franchise.

Lesson 1: The Notion of the Audience

Because the invention of the radio, broadcasters have always been curious about the nature of
its listeners—how do they react to what they hear, how many are they, and what are they doing while
listening to the radio.

In 1938, the Rockefeller Institute sponsored what is now known as the Radio Research Project led
by Frank Stanton, Paul Lazarsfeld, and Theodor Adorno. The undertaking sought to know more about
the listeners of radio. Some of the research questions the project wanted to answer were the following:

• Who listens?

• When and to what do they listen?

• Why do they listen?

• How are they affected by what they hear?

John Marshall of the Rockefeller Institute underscored that “the project will study that audience not
in terms of what it buys, but rather in terms of its needs, interests, and capacities.” The Radio Research
Project was a pioneering endeavor and could have jumpstarted the field of mass communications
research by introducing tools for probing audiences.

Technologies for broadcasting have changed tremendously since 1935, and yet today’s network
executives are still asking the same questions: how do we reach out to our audiences? The desire
to know the audience has endured through time, but the methods and tools to get to know them have
dramatically improved to respond to the changing landscapes in the media industry.

In this chapter, we will try to understand the nature of the audience, how it receives or consumes
media, and the ways by which the media and information industries build their audiences.

We are all audiences. Even the producers and creators of media and information—the creative
people, media executives, marketers, those who decide on what should be shown and distributed, and
those who decide what should not be—are audiences too of their own work and of the work of others.

Thus, the audience is a highly valued concept in media and information production. Some media
networks take on the services of market research firms to probe audience behavior so they can be
more responsive to their preferences.

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 Activity
Take a classmate as a viewing partner. Agree on a primetime television show that both of you will
watch separately. Write down a short essay feedback by identifying the things you liked and disliked
about that television show.

Compare notes with your partner. What are your common areas? Do you like and dislike the same
elements? What did you notice that your partner did not notice? What did your partner notice that you
did not notice?

Build a Venn diagram so you can illustrate your common areas of likes and dislikes. Share the
Venn diagram with the rest of the class.

When you think about it, no two people will read or hear the same message from the media texts
they engage with. Your classmate may share the same hobbies and lifestyles with you, but you will
still look at things quite differently. You bring your own lived experiences as a person and that makes
your character as unique as your thumbprint. These include your childhood, upbringing, education,
experiences with friends, and even your own habits and values that have come to define you as a
person. When these aspects of ourselves engage with media texts, unique interpretation and readings
are generated.

These differences may be more apparent with people outside your age bracket, your immediate
environment, or with people outside your social class. Reflect and draw up some scenarios: How will
this media text be received by someone whose social class is different from yours? Or someone who
is much older than you?

Such differences influence our reception of the media texts we engage with, while the similarities
create common areas of understanding.

The word audience also evokes images of gatherings of people in a specific location. Often, they
are imagined as a mass of people congregating in a space (as in the case of live shows or sports
events), a smaller group of people in a cinema, or even the smaller family unit gathered in the living
room. These gatherings of people in various spaces could be the first image that comes to the minds
of media producers and creators as they try to think of ways by which their media products can attract
viewers, followers, and consumers.

Mass communications expanded the possibilities of audiences. A family gathered in front of a

television set is an audience inasmuch as a student watching a documentary on YouTube. The rise of
new media has also expanded levels of interaction and engagement with the text. These developments
prompted a new set of responses from media producers and creators.

Audience, as defined in the Dictionary of Modern Journalism, is the receiver in the process of
information communication. The general consensus is that the audience is the reader, listener, viewer,
and spectator. Communicators create their messages to respond to the perceived needs and desires
of the imagined and targeted audience. In the drawing board, their receptiveness (or lack of it thereof)
is already imagined. Even the mode of delivery is planned. For content that is new or trailblazing, their
readiness to accept it is calibrated and adjusted, perhaps, and taken into consideration.

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McQuail (1997) broadly identified six features of audiences today:

• Audiences plan and organize viewing and listening, even the performances or events themselves.

• Audiences engage with events that have a public character.

• These events are secular in nature.

• Audiences engage with an event on a voluntary basis.

• If there are audiences and spectators, there are performers, authors, and media creators.

• Spectator engagement is physically located even if the audiences are scattered in various physical
locations.

The rise of new technologies in media production and dissemination, notably in the area of
broadcasting and digital industries, eliminated the need for audiences to be physically located in one
place. Livingstone (2005) cited that our notion of audiences evolved because of dramatic technological
breakthroughs, such as the rise of the printing press and the emergence of the print industries, the
development of broadcasting, and the massive growth of the Internet. Livingstone (1999) noted that
the rise of new media, aside from dispersing audiences away from one physical location, has also seen
some developments, such as the reconfigurations of relationships in different media environments,
a diversification of forms and contents, and the evolution from mass communications to interactive
communications.

Relationships in media environments are constantly changing because of the multiplication of

media gadgets and equipment that keep emerging in the market. What used to be living room wars
occasioned by a single television set have been mitigated by individual viewing as afforded by extra
television sets and electronic gadgets. The traditional practices of parents assuming the authority of
regulating television viewing have now eroded in favor of individual viewing in the household.

The rise of solitary viewing over shared viewing has also generated the diversification of forms
and contents of media to cater to individualized choices, generating audiences now who have a wide
array of media to choose from. Tastes have changed, and audiences are earning the capacity for more
discernment.

Activity
Audiences adhere to certain social conventions when engaging with media forms in different media
environments. Most of the time, there is an expectation to “behave properly.” Compare the social
conventions in these different environments: watching a documentary on YouTube versus watching a
documentary in the school auditorium and watching a soap opera in the living room versus watching in
the cinema. For instance, who do we expect to be present in the public events? What does it mean to
“behave well” in these different environments?

Reflect some more: What changes in your viewing behavior are results of the shift from shared viewing
to solitary viewing?

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 Different Media, Different Audiences

Consider the differences between audiences of different media and media environments. We may
cite the following items as areas of differences:

• Level of activity and engagement with the media and information text

• Level of interaction with fellow audiences

• Location and space occupied

• Amount of time devoted for watching or viewing

• Accessibility and proximity

Live audiences of noontime shows come together to engage with a specific form of entertainment.
They sing and clap, wave their hands when summoned by the hosts, and are sometimes enjoined to
be part of a contest. While watching, they interact with each other—exchange pleasantries, engage in
games, and, possibly, jostle for viewing space. Television audiences in the domestic setting are also
able to engage but in a limited way. They can now send text messages to designated numbers in some
portions of the show that call for home viewer participation.

Space and location bear on the behavior of audiences. In a domestic setting, audiences feel
relaxed and may even get interrupted by house chores, a telephone call, or a visitor. Together, they
share opinions and insights once they sit before the television screen. Audiences in cinema behave
differently as they remain seated and couched in the darkness of the theater.

While it is true that producers think of audiences as huge groups of people congregating in a
particular location to consume their media products (think of droves coming to see the latest blockbuster
movie on the first day of screening), they also think of their audiences in terms of smaller groups, with
well-defined tastes and preferences. Print advertisements prominently displayed along a major avenue
takes the individual passerby or pedestrian as its target audience. Social media campaigns think of
particular groups of netizens to launch their products or advocacies. Television producers think of
specific sectors that will tune in to programs in a particular time slot.

Nightingale (quoted by McQuail 2000) proposed a typology of audiences:

• Audience as “the people assembled” and paying attention to a media performing before them

• Audience as “the people addressed,” referring to a group of people who were imagined by
the communicator in the creation and dissemination of the text, such as the women who the
advertisers think should be patronizing their product

• Audience as “happening”, which could be the experience of reception alone or with others
as an interactive event, like live streaming on the Internet of a global event, such as the Miss
Universe pageant or the address of the president of the United States

• Audience as “hearing’’ or “audition,” which refers to participatory audience experience, a high

degree of engagements like in a noontime show broadcast live, and the audience participation
is embedded in the show

The traditional notion of an audience has evolved through time, from the time of live entertainment,
to the emergence of industries of print and broadcasting, and to the unbridled developments of digital
technologies.

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 Activity
Classifying is a way of categorizing a group or something using common characteristics. Beyond
what we have discussed, there are other ways of classifying audiences. Think of ways by which you
can classify audiences.

Mass Audiences

In Chapter 3, we have learned about the nature of mass communications, specifically its immense
reach to large audiences. The word audience has its roots in the idea of a spectator or the captive set
of listeners or viewers assembled in a more or less public and common space.

We have emphasized that the dramatic change that has happened because of the advent of
technology is that media now can be experienced by people even if they are alone. We can be in
various parts of the globe, separated by seas and continents, but will still be receiving exactly the
same thing. Think of a CNN live coverage of a spectacular event or a local news channel broadcasting
through satellite to reach out to Filipinos living in different parts of the world.

When we listen to a song in Spotify or watch a video clip on YouTube, we become part of the
mass audience in many ways, like the thousands gathered for the Wimbledon Finals in England or a
concert of a Korean pop band in Barcelona. We become part of the mass audience even though we
are separated from all the other members of this mass by both time and space.

We have established in earlier chapters that the idea of a mass audience came from the invention
of photography, film, radio, and television. These developments allowed media that might have been
restricted for just a few to be transmitted to huge numbers of people in different parts of the world. In
the past two decades, these platforms include now electronic media gadgets such as PC, tablets, and
mobile phones, expanding audience access at unprecedented levels.

From “Mass Audience” to Audience Segments

By the early decades of the 20th century, the newspaper industry and the cinema have spread
through Europe and the United States. By 1920s, broadcasting emerged. Suddenly, a new “market” was
created both for the television and radio as appliances, and television and radio programs as formats.
It was during this time that the word “market” offered a more lucrative concept for producers and
advertisers. McQuail (2005) noted that as the media have become bigger business, the term “market”
has assumed critical importance. Market can now create geographic as well as social-demographic
categories and align these with specific media products and services.

Such move, McQuail (2005) insisted, is both pragmatic and imperative for media industries to
thrive—to treat audiences as sets of consumers, aggregated according to characteristics, rather
than treating them as an undifferentiated public. Thus, the relationship between media creators and
producers and the audience became more calculative, as McQuail would claim, a social relationship
similar to a cash transaction between the producer and the consumer rather than a communication
relationship.

Take the case of the glossy magazine industry in the Philippines. Most of these “glossies,” as they
are referred to, are franchised from multinational publishing corporations. Summit Publishing, Inc.,
considered by many as the leading magazine publisher in the Philippines, combines foreign licensed
and locally conceived magazines in its product line-up.

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 If you examine its website (http://www.summitmedia.com.ph), you will realize see each of the
magazines as targeting segmented audiences. Some magazines are meant for the male population
belonging to a specific age bracket. Others cater to women of a specific age bracket and a specific
economic status. Some magazines go beyond gender and target specific segments of society, outdoor
enthusiasts and athletes, homemakers, the upper echelons of society, and fans and followers of local
showbiz personalities.

Segmenting audiences customize the content to a specific sector of the society, thus improving the
quality of the material that will most likely be relevant and appropriate to the needs and desires of the
target audience. When it speaks to them, they are more likely to patronize the product.

Audience segmentation, according to Turow (2014), is the direct result of channel fragmentation,
a phenomenon that started way ahead before the web. In the 70s, under the grip of martial law,
Philippine television was confined to five channels, one of which was government-owned. After the
EDSA revolution and the restoration of democracy in television broadcasting, the number of channels
throughout the Philippines rose to more than 100. While cable television was introduced in 1969, it was
only in the decade of the 90s that it gained ground with the establishment of Sky Cable. A decade after,
satellite television went into full swing. Decades of expansion both in traditional and cable-satellite
television have resulted to channel fragmentation, a situation marked by the increase in the number of
channels and the personalization of program content to a niche market.

Today, the attention of the audience is divided across multiple channels and platforms to include
movie-on-demand (also known as video-on-demand) services such as Netflix, iFlix, and Amazon
Prime.

The advertising industry also benefits from audience segmentation in two ways. First, it becomes
easier to decide which airtime will align with their target markets. Second, it makes advertising messaging
and content creation more specific to target markets. Advertising executives will argue that audience
segmentation is as old as the advertising industry itself, but today’s advances in digital technology
have brought in data science and analytics to the game. Globalization has allowed target audiences to
expand, with new nationalities and user segments emerging as factors to consider. Advertising firms
now are more driven to gather data and employ more complex mathematical algorithms to sort out
what they have gathered, and more resources that do data-driven decisions can be maximized.

Lesson 2: Audience Theories

We have already established that audience is a highly valued concept in media and information
production. From the side of the creators and producers, the audience is the perceived receiver, the
viewer, and the end user of the media texts that will come out of the production cycle.

Media corporations spend a huge amount of funds trying to learn about their target audiences.
Television executives prioritize audience research as a prerequisite before embarking on any media
project. Politicians on the campaign trail conduct poll studies to finetune their campaign messages to
win over a bigger fraction of the voting population. As discussed above, advertising companies are way
ahead in the use of state-of-the-art technology to render their media campaigns more attractive to the
target audiences of the products they sell.

From those examples, it would seem that audiences are subsumed by more powerful structures
and individuals—from media corporations to advertising companies and from aspiring politicians to
media moguls. This brings us to two main schools of thought about audiences.

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 On one end stands the assertion that media and information messages
emanate from powerful structures, and the audiences are passive
recipients.

On the other end stands the belief that audiences create or generate
their own meanings from the media and information texts and are therefore
considered active. In between the two ends of this spectrum is a give-
and-take situation, where the audience exercise their ability to interpret
meanings enabled or constrained by their personal circumstances and
the context surrounding their communities.

Passive Theories

The hypodermic needle theory emerged in the late 1920s and gained prominence until after World
War II. It asserted that media and information messages, like a hypodermic needle, injected messages
directly to their audiences. Media was described as powerful conduits of messages and audiences as
passive recipients. Audiences simply take in and believe anything and everything told to them by the
media. Audiences are also largely homogenous and undifferentiated; thus, media texts generate the
same interpretation.

The hypodermic needle theory was developed in the 1920s and the 1930s when communication
researchers observed how propaganda messages were utilized to serve the ends of war in the
recently concluded World War I and in the following years leading up to World War II. Harold Lasswell
(1902–1978) introduced it in his 1927 book, Propaganda Technique in the World War, and sought to
systematize understanding of the mechanisms of persuasion.

The theory asserts that media could influence a very large group of people directly by “injecting”
into their “bloodstream” messages designed to elicit the desired response.

Between the late part of the 1920s and the early part of the 1930s, a private institution called The
Payne Fund conducted research to assess the effect of media on children. The research concluded
that films indeed bear a strong influence on children, creating panic among the public and thus paving
way for the formulation of a governing code for the movie industry.

By the 1950s, the weaknesses of the hypodermic needle theory became apparent. It does not
allow for freedom of choice and diminishes the capacity of individuals to make choices and decide
what media they will consume. The 1950s were also a time that talked about the rise of a liberal man—
one who recognizes and relishes his freedom, exercises his capacity for discernment, and articulates
his demands and desires from social institutions. The climate was ripe for schools of thought that
recognizes man’s exercise of his/her free will.

The two-step flow emerged from the initial studies of Paul Lazarsfeld (1901–1976) and his
colleagues at the Columbia University. They analyzed voters in the 1940 United States presidential
campaign. The findings revealed that voters did not access information directly from the media but
through what was referred to as opinion leaders, a group of people who exerted particular influence on
the voters. They could be national opinion leaders, or they could be people in their immediate circles
who could influence their opinions and decisions. These opinion leaders actively accessed information
from the media and transmitted it to less active sectors of the population. Thus, the theory was called
a two-step flow, with the media as the first step and the opinion leaders as the second step. In the two-
step flow, the direct influence of the media was diminished in favor of the mediating role of the opinion
leaders.

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 Lazarsfeld and his colleagues were bent in pursuing the idea that audiences are not passive beings.
Further efforts in coming to terms with how audiences responded to media enabled the researchers
to shift the focus from the opinion leaders and toward the opinion leaders. The uses and gratifications
approach argued that the audiences accessed media with their needs and desires, which in turn
structured the way media is received.

In other words, when we encounter a media text, we are expecting to get something from it, some
kind of gratification. In this model, the individual has the power, and he/she selects the media texts
that best suit his/her needs and wants, so he/she can derive some gratification. What are the kinds of
gratification that can be derived from the media? Researchers have identified at least four:

• Information: We want to know about the society we live in. We want to make sense of the world.
Human beings are naturally curious, and we want to satisfy our curiosity. The news genre is an
example of how we gather information about our country and society. Public affairs programs
broaden our knowledge beyond what the newspapers, books, and magazines can provide us.
For some sectors of society, the Internet is the first stop for information.

• Personal Identity: We watch the television to validate our understanding and appreciation of
our identities. Young people may identify with the characters of a romantic comedy as they go
through rites of passage. Housewives identify with the women of advertisements discussing
challenges of running households. We laud the values extolled by media celebrities and find
ways of emulating them. We glimpse role models in many media personalities. Some programs
even provide us a picture of our strengths and weaknesses as citizens of our country.

• Integration and Social Interaction: We turn to the media for information, so we can integrate
and interact with social groups. For instance, from the media, we learn about the lives of the
marginalized and excluded sectors of society or sectors we hardly know about.

• Entertainment: Sometimes, we simply use the media for enjoyment, relaxation, or just to fill time.
This explains our attraction to television programs that provide us with the simple pleasures of
song and music or fictional programs that engage us with engaging narratives with plot twists
and dramatic conflicts.

Activity
Try to go back to a regular television viewing habit—a favorite program, or a regular time slot that
makes you tune in the television. Reflect on the uses and gratifications approach and how they coincide
with your own viewing experiences. Build a short essay on this and share it with your classmates.

However, there have also been criticisms against the uses and gratifications approach. First, it
assumes that we have complete choices as to what we receive or consume from the media. However,
we have already clarified that there are cases when we are unconscious audiences as our everyday
life is saturated by media texts, and we do not always consciously decide what we receive or consume.
Imagine yourself on a bus trip where there is a television installed near the driver’s seat, and you have
no choice but to view the movie that is being played. It can also be the radio program blaring from
the speakers, and even if the content is objectionable, the circumstances leave no choices for the
passenger.

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 Second, the individual becomes the unit of analysis, thus blurring the
social dimensions of viewership. It neglects the reality that the uses and
gratifications an individual might claim for every media message that comes
his/her way is influenced by the social group that joins him/her in the viewing
process.

Cultural Effects Theory

In 1976, George Gerbner argued that television cultivated in its viewers a way of sensing and
seeing the world. Without judging television viewing as good or bad, Gerbner intuited that regular
usage of television over extended periods of time can shape people’s opinions, views, and behavior;
that television viewing engendered a common denominator between groups of people, and groups of
people begun to share a common perspective regarding the themes and motifs presented in television
programs that were part of their common viewing habits.

Gerbner’s book, co-authored with Larry Grossman, titled Living with Television: The Violence
Profile (1976), went further to state that high-frequency viewers of television were more vulnerable
to the violence expressed in its messages and images. He classified viewers from heavy to light and
asserted that heavy viewers were more susceptible to the ill-effects of television violence.

Cultivation theory regards the role of television in shaping the viewers’ perceptions, beliefs, attitudes,
and values (Gerbner and Gross 1976). Shrum (2017) noted the development of the cultivation theory
as the product of a more expansive cultural indicators project that pursued three directions: first, how
media messages are produced and disseminated; second, the content of actual media messages
probed through a message system analysis; and third, how exposure to media messages influences
the recipients’ conception of the real world.

Like the uses and gratifications approach, the cultivation theory was developed when television
was the most dominant media platform. In its simplest articulation, cultivation theory builds on the
relationship between the amount of time spent watching television and the behaviors cultivated by
such practice.

For instance, studies have been conducted on how citizens learn about politics and governance
through media outlets, particularly radio and television. Voting behavior, in fact, can be influenced by
exposure to media platforms with a particular political slant.

In such studies, the strength of the cultivation analysis was the focus. For instance, some studies
sought to develop empirical means to assess the relationship between the amount of viewing time
vis-à-vis behavior and the attitudes and opinions of the viewers. However, critics thought the theory
presented a very mechanical model, very much similar to the hypodermic needle approach that
overvalues television as an opinion and attitude shaper and indirectly dismissing other factors in the
social environment.

In the decades to come, more complex insights on audience reception would emerge. We
need to invoke our basic understanding of encoding and decoding messages. If we hold on to our
understanding of these processes, then we can truly understand that audiences are not the passive
recipients of messages they appear to be as illustrated by the previous theories. We will also appreciate
the complexity of the content that is encoded in media and information texts.

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 Meaning and power always intersect in media and information texts (Thompson 1988, 34). Those
who are in power will always push for a preferred meaning in the media messages they create and
disseminate, and it ultimately decides and bears their interests. Hall acknowledges that from the side
of those who create and produce, the construction of the media and information texts will always be on
the side of power.

What do we mean by this? There is at least one dominant message coming from media’s tendency,
consciously or unconsciously, to reproduce the meaning preferred by the most powerful groups in
society.

On the decoding side, which is on the part of the audience, the media and information texts are
always open to a range of meanings in terms of interpretation.

There is also the notion of a polysemic text. The prefix poly implies plurality, while semic is derived
from the Greek word sema, meaning audiences see various meanings in the signs that are in the
media and information texts. Polysemic texts carry multiple meanings. Audiences can make multiple
meanings out of media texts; seldom are they confined to a single reading.

It must be stressed, however, that an individual’s interpretation of a media text is shaped by the
social circumstances surrounding him/her and by the contexts that govern his/her existence. Usually,
the social factors are summed up as the triumvirate of class, gender, and ethnicity.

Let us illustrate the theory using an example from daily life. Turn to the next activity that will make
you view an advertisement from a major brand.

Activity
Access the link below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-oVg_Ga4Ks (Last accessed: June 15, 2020)

In 2016, Coca-Cola came out with an extended advertisement celebrating the quiet heroism of
those who work to make Yuletide celebrations more meaningful. Sales clerk, waiter, gift-wrapping
attendant— they are the workers who give extra as the entire nation prepares for the traditional Yuletide.

The camera captured them in their worksite—wrapping gifts, taking orders, and attending to their
customers. We see their weary faces, and yet, we also see the smiles that speak of delight and the
pleasure of serving eager customers.

We hear their voices that resonate with dedication to their jobs and the desire to be with their
families.

There’s a twist. Well-meaning customers played a practical joke. A man bought a bagful of items
and offered it to the supermarket clerk while a woman happily blurted out “all these gift-wrapped items
are for you.” A restaurant customer called in the family of the waiter to share the special moment with
him.

Write a brief reflection on this advertisement using the following guide questions:

1. How do you classify the genre of this media text? It is an advertisement, but others would say it
resembles some characteristics of reality television. Why do you think it was necessary to bend
the better-known rules of creating advertisements?

2. What are the implications of this media text to the issues confronted by underpaid workers in
the service industries?
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 3. What did you feel after watching the media text?

4. The shots were rendered as if it was captured by a CCTV camera. Why do you think it was
done that way? What do you think is its effect to various audiences?

Take an opportunity to compare your insights and reflections with your classmates.

But beyond this, let us look at the implications of Stuart Hall’s assertions regarding the context that
is encoded in the media text.

We have defined context as the set of conditions that locate a media and information text in a
particular historical period and social context that should include the social institutions like church,
government, social structures like business and economic institutions, the mass media, art, and
culture. It also includes current issues, even political movements, and the social forces competing to
gain access to power.

Reception and Resistance

Our reception of media texts is not only one of passive acceptance nor is it also just a matter of
interpreting the multiple meanings of the complex web of signs. In 1980, David Morley, deriving much
from Stuart Hall, articulated three modes of reading media texts on television. Morley argues that
audiences can, in fact, resist the messages of media and information texts in very creative ways, and
this is done through the social positioning of the audience.

First, there is the dominant reading where the reader fully shares the text’s code and accepts and
reproduces the preferred reading. For instance, a shampoo commercial features the luscious hair of a
woman. For women viewers, this ignites the desire to have the same hair as the product endorser so
they head to the supermarket and purchase the product.

Second, there is the negotiated reading where the audience partly shares the text’s codes and
broadly accepts the preferred reading but modifies it in a way that reflects one’s own position, lived
experiences, and even opinions.

A woman who sees the commercial about luscious hair also sees that it is possible that the woman
is naturally endowed with luscious hair, or some production technique must have given her that
“crowning glory.” Still, she buys the product and uses it sparingly because, to her mind, there are other
factors that can give one’s hair that shine and glow. Women may enjoy the character of a scorned
woman, but somehow, they know they can do better, that they can summon a better part of themselves
against such behavior.

Third, there is the oppositional reading, where the audience takes a directly oppositional stance
to the dominant code of the media and information texts and resists it completely. Using our own
example, the viewer might totally see the advertisement as a sham, a blatant attempt to turn women
into passive consumers aspiring for something they can never have because the whole advertisement
is a scam. They make extend their engagement by refusing to buy the product or refusing to watch
soap operas that represent women in that manner.

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 Activity
Let us provide some examples to illustrate the three types of reading. We will draw from your
experience when watching television.

Most of the time, we watch soap operas or otherwise known as teleseryes. These formats are
known to have very resilient formulas that dictate their storytelling conventions.

You can actually name some of its most common characters that are almost a staple to the narrative:
there is the aggrieved woman, the martyr wife, the shrewd villainess, the womanizing executive, the
homosexual best friend, or the subservient maid with a Visayan accent. Plot directions usually emanate
from the central character in search for something, an object of endearment, but most likely his/her
biological origins because, most likely, unfortunate circumstances have severed them from each other.
The endings are always happy, as the characters are liberated from unfortunate circumstances and
provided the chance to reconcile all contentious relationships.

We will now go to a teleserye archive. Most of the programs of major television channels are archived
on the Internet, in YouTube, or dedicated websites such as www.tfc.tv. ABS-CBN Entertainment and
GMA Network maintain an archive of their programs in their special channels and platforms.

Choose a teleserye to watch. Finish at least a one-week run. Build an essay about your viewing
experience using not more than 100 words. Use the following guide questions to help you structure
your essay.

1. Do you watch teleseryes?

2. If yes, why do you watch teleseryes? If no, why not?

3. How did you feel about watching one week’s worth of episodes of this teleserye? What emotions
were generated? Is it a single emotion all throughout? Are there alternating emotions? Or would
you say it was a range of emotions?

4. Do you think these are the same emotions generated in other people?

5. Push yourself to reflect: What is it about you and your character, as we life experiences, that
generated these emotions?

6. Are there characters you identify with? Who are they and why do you think you can identify with
them?

7. Push yourself further: What is it about you that made you identify with these characters?

The Notion of Constructed Audiences

Something is constructed when there is a deliberate attempt and effort to turn an idea into material
reality. The audience for a teleserye does not exist per se, but the creators and producers build in
their minds the kind of people the teleserye will attract. A group of people defined as the audience of
a particular television program could not have existed had it not been imagined and realized by the
producers and creators.

Media outfits, as they embark on a media project, start off with the question, “Who is the target
audience?” Constructing target audiences is making audiences specific. By identifying why this product
is relevant to a particular group of people and by bringing in that imagined group of people to the
drawing table, the media text actually constructs the audience for whom it is intended. A whitening

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soap released by the pharmaceutical company is in need of consumers who will patronize the product.
Intrinsic to the product are some value propositions, foremost of which is white skin is superior than any
other skin color and therefore their products have an edge in the market. It could be the articulation of
what the product can offer to its potential consumers, a way of saying, “this is the answer to your needs”
or “the solution to your problem.” A marketing plan is conceived and the concept for an advertisement
follows. The potential consumers are now transposed as the target audience of such advertisements.

A target audience is best defined as a specific group of people identified and aggregated from
selected population segments who are the intended users. The information they generate helps
them develop media messages that will attract this group, or in the case of advertisers, help them
recommend products that will be potentially attractive and useful to this target audience. They speak
to your interests, work around what will attract you, and avoid what might drive that away. In the case
of most media platforms, what is important is to keep a growing base of subscribers or viewers.

Media executives do not think of target audiences in the same way that the target audiences think
of themselves. Let us take the case of Maribel, an 18-year old college student who is as hardworking
as anyone who wants to graduate with honors and lands in a high-paying job. She is a daughter, sister,
friend, and president of an academic organization on her campus. She defines herself as a good
student, a responsible campus leader, a loving sister, and an obedient daughter. However, the media
executives in the advertising company think of her in a different light. The characteristics that should
properly describe Maribel is something that the advertising executive can exploit when they map out
potential users of a whitening soap. They gathered the data about Maribel from a survey questionnaire
that Maribel answered while she was buying some goods in a mall, and this survey questionnaire
was secured by the advertising company now bent on making a successful marketing campaign for a
whitening soap.

For the advertising agency, Maribel belongs to the age bracket of 16–20 years old, a female, a
student or a young professional, unmarried, with limited money.

Think of yourself and the many roles you play in your life—as a student who devotes 35 hours
a week in school, as a daughter who assumes responsibilities in the house once you get home, as
an older sister who tends to younger siblings, as a regular churchgoer, or even as a reliable friend to
your peers. Your best friend might see herself both in a similar and different light. She may be a doting
daughter, but less of a churchgoer, but more studious and devotes a greater deal of time than what you
give to your academics. She is certainly more of a loner who spends more time reading than socializing
with friends or even family members.

Consider this scenario: both of you are surfing on the Internet, particularly the website of a teen
magazine called Tweens, a lifestyle magazine for young adults. A pop-up window emerges onscreen.
It is a survey form designed to know more about you—your television viewing preferences, the amount
of time you spend in the malls, your cinema habits, the amount of free time you have, the number of
cars your family owns, your family’s monthly income, etc.

To Tweens magazine, you and your best friend could just be part of the 13–18 years old age group,
a female, a student, a member of a family that owns two cars, owns a house in the metropolis, with
parents earning Php 600,000 combined annual income, and someone who travels outside of your city
at least twice year. Tweens magazine’s characterization of you is starkly different from how you see
yourself or how you convey your identity to your peers and mentors. Magazine publishers like Tweens
are not interested in your other hobbies, your spiritual life, or the depth of your relationships with your
friends and family members. But they certainly care about how much your parents earn, how many
cars you have, and how many out-of-town vacations you can afford as a family. They are interested in
your mall-going habits and your preference for other media forms, such as television and cinema, or
the amount of time you spend on social media. Your status as a middle-class teenager is appealing to
them, for it illustrates how much purchasing power you have, even if you are not yet earning your own
income.

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 Tweens earns its revenue from both sales and advertising. Its publishers want to keep tab of their
readers who are attractive to their advertisers. The information generated from the online surveys that
pop out on your computer screen is processed, consolidated, and given to advertisers to attract them
to buy advertising space in their magazine.

To keep that base, audiences must be constructed. Creators and producers do not simply assume
that the target audience is there. It is constructed in the mind of the media producers. The imagined
audience is translated in the actual creation of the media product.

How Audiences Are Constructed

Audience, as a word, is best appreciated in its plural form—as audiences. This is because audiences
are as diverse as the population of a certain geographic scope. However, for media producers, they
are categorized by how they receive the media (in the privacy of their homes or out in the shopping
malls) and other identity markers, such as gender, race, ethnolinguistic group, class status, and other
positions in society.

They are also mostly invisible. Ralway (1988) thought the word audience has indeed evolved from
face-to-face interaction in one shared physical space to include now consumers of electronic media
and information. It has become difficult to pin down audiences’ specific characteristics as they are
widely dispersed in different settings and contexts.

Demographic audience analysis enables media producers to tap into similarities and differences,
so they can narrow down their target audiences. Demographic information includes attributes such
as age, gender, or geographic location and socio-economic status. Media producers are sometimes
guided by the acronym GEARS to build a demographic audience analysis. The acronym represents
the following items:

• Gender
• Ethnicity
• Age range
• Region or nationality
• Socio-economic group

Because advertising peddles products or services, the S or the socio-economic group is a priority
concern. The traditional segmentation of audiences has been useful in terms of calibrating buying
potential.

Traditional Segmentation Model

Social Grade Social Status Occupation
A Upper middle class Highly managerial, allied with huge firms, professionals
with a steady base of income
B Middle class Middle management, administrative or professional
C-1 Lower middle class Supervisory or clerical, junior managerial, administrative
or professional
C-2 Skilled working class Skilled manual workers
D Working class Semi and unskilled workers
E Poorest of the poor Lowest grade workers, jobless

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 Psychographics is largely derived from the concept of demographics but is focused on psychological
traits. This category is often utilized to provide more substance to the profile of potential media
audiences. It covers attitudes, personality types, opinions, and motivations. These are elements that
are usually tied to income and age brackets.

However, an advertising agency in the West, Young and Rubicam LTD, has conceptualized what is
now commonly referred to as the 4Cs—the cross cultural consumer characterization model. It sees the
audience as a group of people who will be the receiving end of media products and what they should
be getting should appeal to a complex set of traits that they possess. 4Cs divide people into seven
types, depending on their core motivation.

(from www.yr.co.uk)

Consider the producers of a Saturday afternoon teen show who would like to illustrate the current
lifestyle habits of their viewing public. They build a research design to probe into the psychological
habits of their target market. The researchers find out certain elements about the target viewers that
provide more information: for instance, the 13–16 age group is mostly apolitical, while the 17–19 age
group find delight in discussing social issues; 92% of the entire age range of 13–19 maintains at least
two social media accounts, and most of them belong to at least one organization in the school, church,
or community.

Furthermore, the research company, after the first season of the telecast, declared that their findings
indicate three types of viewers who are drawn to the television show: (a) those who follow their favorite
performers; (b) those who are drawn to the narrative; and (3) those who seek lifestyle and role models.

The television producers can refer to the result of the research to finetune their narratives to sustain
a base of loyal viewers. As such, there might be changes that will be implemented mid-stream, such

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 as narrative revisions, changes in the line-up of performers, and other features that will appeal to the
fan base.

Research is part of the investment of media industries to boost the capacity of a media product
in generating profits. Research supports the construction of a solid base of audiences using well-
generated and organized data.

Discernment, deliberate thought, and a very systematic way of calibrating risks are just some of the
traits of media executives. Success stories are guideposts. Sometimes a national or even global media
trend can be an inspiration, having proven itself as a market success. These successes generate best
practices and become the basis for a business model that other entities can replicate. Take for instance
the market demand for romantic comedies (also known as rom-com) both in the global and local
cinema, as well as in the mainstream and independent film industries. The genre has sustained itself
in the market and spurred innovations. The local and international market has adopted many business
models that ensure the genre’s sustainability and resilience in the profit-generating department.

Creating content for target audiences may be a tricky business for media executives. It involves a
lot of research, a wide array of options, a feel for the market, and wise management of risks in case
the initial formats do not work well.

However, most of the time, risks are mitigated. Creative departments are composed of those who
have a proven track record in creating target audiences and generating commercial success. Huge
media firms employ a research and development arm (commonly called R and D) to train its sights on
how innovation can be best handled with minimum risks and thus optimizing investments.

Activity
Choose a produce (e.g., milk for toddlers). Choose a local brand that is the most expensive, and
another one as the cheapest. Compare how the advertising campaigns of the two are carried out, both
in terms of messages, styles of presentation (including endorsers, language, etc.), and even the mode
of delivery.

Lesson 3: Audience Research

Who is watching? Who is listening? Who is reading? Who is patronizing the media product? These
seem like basic questions but have profound implications to the creation, production, and dissemination
of media and information. Certainly, the creators and producers of media and information would want
a systematic and, more significantly, an accurate way of finding out about their audiences.

Audience research is traditionally about first, gaining insight on audience preferences, however
fluid and ever-changing these could be in the present period, and second, calibrating audience sizes
and reach.

However, there can be other directions for audience research that may be relevant to cite. For
instance, research can be conducted, so technological advances that the media industry will undertake
can be based on sound empirical data. The web-based platforms like iwantv.com.ph for delayed
television viewing is an example of a technological innovation that is based on a study of viewing
preferences in a time of shifting work schedules—more time is spent traveling on the road due to
intensifying traffic congestion or work hours in different time zones, like those in the BPO industries, that

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prevent audiences from tuning in to their favorite television programs. The formulation of social policy
or a legislative agenda for the media industry media can also be a trigger for a research undertaking. In
the news article below, the research findings of how children are affected by the violence of teleseryes
are credibly tackled using very specific research tools that were aligned to the research objectives. As
stated in the article, the research findings will yield recommendations for new television standards that
will favor Filipino children.

Good or bad? Most Filipino children glued to teleseryes

The National Council for Children’s Television urges media companies to produce more TV
programs ‘sensitive to the developmental needs of a child’

MANILA, Philippines – A recent study shows most Filipino children still prefer watching television
when they get home after a long day of school, and they like watching teleseryes (television series)
or adult-oriented shows.

Most Filipino children watch television for close to 3 hours during weekdays, and 6 hours
during weekends, the same study showed. Both are beyond the internationally-prescribed daily
exposure to television which is only 1 to 2 hours.

The study, conducted by the National Council for Children’s Television (NCCT) late February
to March 2015, surveyed 4,395 children below 18 years old from Grades 3 to 10 enrolled in 209
public and private elementary and high schools all over the country.

It revealed that during weekdays, many children watch television from 5 pm to 10 pm —

considered the prime time of Philippine television replete with teleserye programming.

Time slots Weekday Weekend

6 am to 9 am 13.7% 29.5%
9 am to 12 nn 6.3% 43.2%
12 nn to 1 pm 12.50% 31.5%
1 pm to 5 pm 8% 36.6%
5 pm to 7 pm 51.8% 37%
7 pm to 10 pm 48.4% 49.6%

“Several studies pointed out how television programs, which are not specifically created for
children, may not be beneficial toward their growth, even without the existence of vulgarity and
violence in its content,” the study read.

“Any concept that is improperly interpreted by children could mean a shift in their perspective,
and any incorrect inferences to what is ‘real’ and ‘socially acceptable or correct’ could lead to
possible conflicts in a child’s development.”

When it comes to genre, more children watch shows categorized as comedy and children’s
television, followed by news, education, drama, and music.

“Majority of children prefer watching teleseryes or adult-oriented television shows like comedy,
drama, news, and foreign television series dubbed in Filipino,” the report read.

But the study could not determine whether this trend is because of “the lack of child-oriented
shows, marred by the inability of television networks to follow the 15% child-friendly programs
policy under the provision of the Republic Act 8370.”

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 RA 8370 or the Children’s Television Act of 1997 requires every broadcast network to allot 15%
of their daily total airtime for education and child-friendly shows.

Favorite teleserye

Since the study was conducted early 2015, the ABS-CBN teleserye Forevermore, starring the
popular love team of Enrique Gil and Liza Soberano, topped the list of Filipino children’s most
favorite local television shows. The show was still airing then.

For the most favorite foreign television program, the top choice was the Korean drama My Love
From The Star which aired in GMA Network.

Top 15 most favorite local shows Top 15 most favorite foreign shows
1. Forevermore My Love From The Star
2. It’s Showtime Fated to Love You
3. Dream Dad NBA
4. Once Upon A Kiss The Heirs
5. TV Patrol Empress Ki
6. Matanglawin Meteor Garden
7. Eat Bulaga Discovery Channel shows
8. Wansapanataym Spongebob
9. Inday Bote Star Movies shows
10. Bagito Phineas and Ferb
11. Got to Believe The Voice
12. ABS-CBN shows Sofia the First
13. Gandang Gabi Vice Hunger Games
14. Oh My G! Cartoon Network shows
15. PBA Masterchef

Most of the respondents (48.7%) have access to only one television in their household, but a
significant number have access to more than one unit:

• 2 television units - 30.9%

• 3 television units - 11.2%

• 4 television units - 3.9%

• 5 or more television units - 2.6%

On why they like watching television, many children cited the following reasons:

• to gather information for their homework/academic requirement or just to learn new and
interesting things

• to tune in to the programs that they like

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 • to serve as a pass–time activity

• to do school or academic requirements

Role of parents

The study also stressed the role of parents in curbing the negative effects of television on children.

While most of the children watch television with their parents most of the time, a significant
number still watch without guidance from adults.

Parents/guardian’s guidance while watching television Percentage

Always 26.8%
Often 37.60
Seldom 28.0%
Never 7.70%

”The intervention of adults in television-viewing habits creates the difference between learning
something valuable or picking up a negative attitude from the programs that a child is exposed to,”
the study read.

The NCCT urged media companies to produce more television programs that are “sensitive to
the developmental needs of a child.”

The study also advised television networks to “create a more child-friendly viewing experience”
during the 5 pm to 10 pm time slot, since many children are tuned in.

Results of this study will be used by the council in drafting new children’s television
standards. – Rappler.com

[Accessed from https://www.rappler.com/nation/115437-filipino-children-watch-teleseryes (last

accessed October 1, 2020)]

Activity
Read the article very carefully. The recommendations of the National Council for Children’s
Television (NCCT) are quite clear. Build a position paper around these recommendations.

You may extend your recommendations on how an organization like the NCCT can be more
effective in lobbying for changes in television programming in favor of children.

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 Historically, radio and television have relied much on research because these mass media platforms
cannot accurately count their audiences. The manner of dissemination—transmission via the airwaves
—is given free to audiences, and there is no way of measuring how many are actually patronizing the
program. Audience research is the only way to get an estimate of audience sizes.

Today, beyond television and radio, even print and the Internet are investing heavily on audience
research. For instance, electronic commerce companies are conducting web-based surveys to
determine online buying trends.

Audience research is also closely allied to market research and social research. Market research
is a convenient way of knowing how markets thrive and how consumers behave and exercise their
consumption preferences. These researches are aligned with increasing revenues or addressing
issues that seem to constrain revenue growths. Social research is learning about social groups or
specific population segments to learn about their preferences, tastes, values, and habits; it takes
culture as the context that shapes social behavior. In social research, the tools of the social sciences
are mobilized to serve the ends of the research methodology.

Not all forms of information gathering can be considered research. Here are some of the defining
qualities of research that should apply to audience research, market research, or social research.

1. Systematic: The whole research undertaking should be structured with steps that are governed
by research design.

2. Logical: Research should be guided by the rules of logical reasoning and the logical process of
induction and deduction.

3. Empirical: Research is underpinned by data that is systematically gathered and forms the basis
of all analyses and conclusions that will be arrived at.

4. Replicable: Research findings are verifiable by replicating the study and achieving the same
results.

Methods of Audience Research

Since the 1930s, research has relied primarily upon quantitative methods—using surveys,
audience ratings, and analysis. In the recent decades, the qualitative tradition has emerged as another
useful approach to understanding audiences through the use of participant observation, focused group
discussion, and interviews of media consumers at media consumption environments (e.g., cinema, live
television, etc.)

The survey is the most common method of audience research. Surveys are conducted mostly
through questionnaires, administered to a select group of people where they are asked the same
questions, and their answers consolidated and tabulated.

Another popular approach to audience research is the ratings analysis. Napoli (2011) defined it as
“the analysis of the audience size and composition data produced by audience measurement firms for
use in both the commercial and noncommercial media sectors.”

Ratings data generated by market research agencies such as AGB Nielsen and Kantar Media
are used by network executives to measure the size of the audience that patronizes their programs.
Programs that garner the highest ratings command a higher price and dictate the content and creative
directions.

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 Along with surveys, observation, focused group discussions, and audience meters are employed
to gain valuable data that creators and producers need to shape media content and make programs
thrive.

Observation can be both formal and informal. A small notebook and pen will make informal
observation when done with live audiences of noontime shows or in market centers where consumer
behavior can be actually closely observed. Informal observation is good as a starting ground from where
more elaborate research methods can be applied. For instance, a network producer of a noontime
show would like to reformat the program, and he/she may start by observing live audiences in the
studio, how they behave, and at what points do they lose or regain their interests. Formal observation
may entail more structure and design; for instance, specific forms of behavior are looked into and
observed, such as when they start looking for the remote control or when they start to lose interest.
One particular study looked into the listening habits of housewives on radio dramas.

Focused group discussions are conducted with a small group of 6 to 10 people led through by
a skilled facilitator. Krueger and Casey (2000) defined this type of study as “a carefully planned
discussion designed to obtain perceptions on a defined area of interest in a permissive, non-threatening
environment.” The goal is to generate a maximum number of different ideas and opinions regarding
a particular topic centered around a media or information text. A set of carefully crafted questions are
cascaded to the participants to trigger responses that will generate opinions, insights, and perspectives.
Thus, it is a good way of gaining insight on how they receive or how they are able to generate their
own meanings from a media or literary text. It is also a good way of knowing their ideas, opinions, and
perspectives about various issues and lifestyles.

Not all research are implemented to serve the revenue-generating interests of media. Media
scholars engage in research to deepen their knowledge on consumer cultures and probe on the factors
that bear upon consumption of media texts as commodities.

CHAPTER SUMMARY
In this chapter, we have discussed the following:

• The audience as a very important element in all media environments. When before the common
notion of audience is as an undifferentiated mass, the advent of new technologies has made it
possible to consider audiences as dispersed and engaging with media texts across various media
platforms.

• In the light of channel fragmentation and the diversity of media platforms and environments, media
producers and creators segment audiences by dividing them into smaller groups, with those
with similar characteristics forming one segment. After audiences have been segmented, media
messages and media texts are customized and tailored to appeal to target audiences.

• Theories espousing audiences as active and able to create their own readings with media texts have
gained currency over those that regard media and its institutions as all-powerful and audiences as
mere end-users and passive recipients.

• Media institutions conduct audience research to know more about current and prospective
audiences. They may either be quantitative or qualitative or a combination of both.

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 Culminating Activity
Organizing a focused group discussion will provide you an insight on how other people make sense
of media and information texts.

You can choose a good number of participants. You may opt to choose adults working in your
school or a batch of students younger than you. Choose not more than 10 people.

Choose a media text that you think will generate a good and lively discussion. A television program
that caters to their age group is a good choice. It can also be a magazine article or an advertisement.

Design questions that may illustrate how they view the representations that the media or information
text generates. For instance, how does this media text represent women? How do they represent
young women? A set of sub-questions may be derived from the general question you have crafted.

Culminating Activity [2]

Targeting Audiences for Community Reforms
Divide the class into small groups of six to eight people. As a group, decide on a community
problem that you want to address. Be very specific about the problem and be very concrete about what
you want to achieve.

For instance, the problem is that the campus or barangay households do not practice waste
segregation. You may like to introduce waste segregation in one area of the school or the barangay
through the use of differentiated trash bins. Or you want each family in the barangay to prepare disaster
kits, so they will be prepared in the event of any natural calamity. Perhaps you want to eradicate the
use of plastic bags in the entire school campus.

These are all doable projects. However, it will need community mobilization. You will need to make
the concerned community members act for change to happen.

You will need to create and produce media texts and target specific audiences—the community
members who need to act—to achieve your goal.

Think of these community members as your target audience. Narrow down as much as possible.
Ask yourselves the right questions: What are they like? What is their economic status? What are
the beliefs they hold? Who do they listen to? Make a long list of questions to ask about your target
audience.

You can adopt the worksheets on the bottom of the page to guide you in constructing and gaining
more knowledge about your target audience.

As a group, seek answers to the questions you have posed. Brainstorm and deliberate as a group
on what will most likely appeal to your target audience.

After you have consolidated your thoughts about your target audience, it is now time to brainstorm
on a media text that you think can appeal to them and can make them act. What form of media text will
you make? Something that is doable and scalable. Perhaps, a set of posters or a 3-minute video shot
using your point-and-shoot digital cameras. These examples are cited because they use materials that
are within your reach.

Your media text should be able to encapsulate two significant questions: What is the problem?
How do we act to solve the problem? Schedule a community viewing of the outputs generated from
the exercise.

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Name: Date:
Year/Section:
Teacher: ______________________________________________ Score: ___________

WORKSHEET
Activity
Target Audience Analysis
The following steps will help you determine your target audience, understand their characteristic,
and look for opportunities to connect.

Step 1: Identify your target audience.

In order to be effective, you need to understand what you are advocating from the perspective of
the viewers. It is important to distinguish what you think and do from what the target viewers think and
do.

You need to know more about them, what they like and dislike, what their problems and issues are,
and what aspirations they nurture.

Demographics Psychographics
Age range Values
Occupations Interests
Location Hobbies
Education Needs or wants

Step 2: Classify your target audience according to the following categories:

• Directly affected: It seems obvious, but these are the people or community who are directly affected
by an issue. These are the people with the problems and pain points you described earlier. The
information in Step 1 most likely describes these people. In one or two sentences, describe those
who are directly affected.

_____________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________

• Decision-makers: The ones making the final decisions on how to address an issue. Make sure that
you are considering the whole process so that you connect with all the right people. Think about
who the decision-makers are and what they care about.

_____________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________

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 • Influencers: Who are the opinion makers in the community? Who directly influences those who are
directly affected by the issues and those who make decisions?

_____________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________

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 CHAPTER 6
MAKING SENSE OF MEANING: VALUES, LIFESTYLES, AND
IDEOLOGY IN MEDIA

In a most recent development regarding the Philippines’s most popular teleserye “Ang Probinsiyano,”
a retelling of a 1997 film headlined by the late Fernando Poe, Jr., the Philippine National Police (PNP)
has expressed its concern over the negative representation of the national police forces in the popular
series. The police chief is presented as a scalawag and “inviting revenge against wronged cops ex-
cops.”

The PNP is under the direct supervision of an executive agency, the Department of Interior and
Local Government (DILG).

DILG insists that “the show’s plot has been sending wrong messages to the public.” The department
is now mulling the possibility of legal action and imposing sanctions over ABS-CBN.

For its part, ABS-CBN is insisting it is fiction, saying, “There is no intention to smear the reputation
of any organization or portray any person in a negative light.” Even the daughter of the late Fernando
Poe, Jr., and now senator, insists on its fictional nature. Senator Grace Poe also asserts that the series
“espouses the values of family, respect for elders, courage and patriotism.”

Traditional and social media is now abuzz with talks on the implications of the issue. Questions are
raised: Is narrative fiction a mirror of the ills of society? How potent are these representations to turn
the tide against powerful institutions in society which, in this case, is the police force? Conversely, do
the values that the program champion mitigate its negative representations of authorities?

CHAPTER OVERVIEW
In this chapter, we examine how media is a channel for the production and reproduction of values,
lifestyles, and ideology. Media producers and creators frame media texts and thereby determine what
will be included and excluded and how the structure dictates what is most and least important. We will
elaborate on the media’s signifying practices and how it produces and reproduces dominant ideas,
ways of life, and worldviews. We invoke media as a powerful structure that purveys the dominant
ideologies but also affirm that these representations may be contested

At the end of the chapter, you are expected to:

1. understand the process by which media stories are framed and how this entails the decision-
making process of inclusion and exclusion;

2. discuss how values, lifestyles, and points of view of certain groups of society are made dominant
in media and information texts;

3. understand the difference between propaganda and persuasion; and

4. define ideology and how media can be a purveyor of ideology.

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 Motivational Activity
“What is a value?” Speak out your own definition of the term value. A value is your own sense of
right and wrong. A value is what you believe in.

Say whether you agree, disagree, or are neutral to the following:

1. I believe that sex education should be included in the curriculum.

2. I believe that Filipino should be the national language of the Philippines.

3. I believe that social media has more detrimental than beneficial effects.

4. I believe the government should regulate the content of narrative television fiction so that it
portrays a positive representation of the government.

5. I believe that men should also practice birth control.

Now reflect: Where do your values come from?

Lesson 1: Making Sense of Media: Frames of a Story

Take the case of news as an example. It is important to give weight to news because it is our main
source of information about our community, our society, and the world. The news organizations are
also considered authoritative bodies responsible for overseeing the political and social order aside
from shaping public opinion. In this section, we hope to unpack this common assumption and see
through the many implications of media and information texts emerging from news organizations.

We have already established that all media and information texts are constructed. In the process
of planning, producing, and creating these texts, choices have to be made and decisions implemented.
The producers and creators make the choices. Their choices reflect their values, opinions, and points
of view.

Integral and vital to the process of creation and production is the selection of what to include and
what to exclude. The selection of a news source implies that there will also be other sources that will
either corroborate or invalidate the opinions stated by the news source.

The process of inclusion and exclusion is best illustrated by the way we frame an event or a scene
before we click the shutter of the camera. Some do it with deliberate choice, most of the time guided by
the aesthetics of composition in photography. Others simply zero in to a central image and may even
take the option of blurring the background so that the foreground image may assume more centrality.
In this case, the frame is used literally, as a structure that surrounds something; in the case of the
picture, these are the imaginary four lines that form a square and border a scene that will be rendered
in a shot.

In the production of media text, the creators will focus attention on certain events and place them
within a field of meaning. Framing is the way creators and producers organize and present the events
and issues they cover. They focus attention on certain events or elements and place them within a
field of meaning. That is why framing is also called agenda-setting. Media producers and creators, by
framing stories or by deciding which enters the frame and which are located outside the frame, are able
to decide for us which is and is not important.

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 When tackling news stories, for instance, the journalist provides an angle by which to tell the story
or a platform to launch the story.

In the feature story or the investigative report, the frame can be a powerful organizing tool for
storytelling. For one thing, they will have to frame media stories so that their content and form, as well
as their meanings, can be shared by a huge segment of society. That shared experience is dependent
on shared narratives, metaphors, phrases, cultural memories, even allusions to local culture and
history, and basically a shared social context.

Frames can be both enabling and constraining to audiences. Teleseryes, for instance, frame the
long narratives around familiar themes that have resonated with audiences since the advent of this
format. Inside that frame are recycled love stories that incorporate contemporary elements, such as
highly altered courtship practices, power dynamics between men and women, and the influences of
popular culture and social media. It can also be constraining because that frame may deliberately
include tried and tested formula that is imperative to the storytelling.

Thus, framing is a process of putting together the elements to create or produce a media text. The
reverse is also true—it is also a process of not including some elements in the creation and production
of a media text.

These choices will inevitably bear the values, opinions, and points of view of the media creators and
producers. Every decision they make—lifestyles to portray, opinions expressed by major characters,
the actions in the plot—are enfolded in the media texts. The executives running the newsroom make
decisions about the chronology of the program—what news should make up the headline portion and
therefore should come first and what should come last. Based on shared cultural experiences, those
that come first are of national import, and those that come last bear the least significance. The political
and economic situation is constitutive of national concerns, implicates nation-building processes, and
bears an impact on the citizens. Lifestyle and entertainment stories are niche concerns. That is the
reason why they are called soft news.

Activity
Watch a prime time news telecast in one of the three major broadcast stations. Jot down the
chronology of the news reporting. Analyze your data—what news stories came first, what came last,
what news stories were inserted in between the hard news. Focus on the chronology.

After the close examination of your data, draw some hypotheses why the chronology of the news
telecast was structured this way.

1. What was privileged to be part of the headline news?

2. What was positioned to be in the last part of the telecast?

3. What news or feature stories were inserted in between the hard news?

There is always logic in the way a television program is structured. What could be the logic here?
Pay attention to the inserts.

After close examination and analysis, convey the values implicitly underpinning the chronology of
today’s news telecasts?

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 Media and the Status Quo

We all possess values or points of views and exercise lifestyle choices and attitudes toward other
people and situations. What we are after in this section are the values, attitudes, and points of view that
media today represent to support, perpetuate, and affirm the existing status quo.

When we say the status quo, we refer to the prevailing state of affairs in society—the social
institutions and the relationships that exist between institutions and social classes. The prevailing
state of affairs is such that very few hold economic and political power. They are also the elite who
discriminate, exclude, and marginalize those who do not have economic and political resources.

Do media serve the status quo? Do media enable changes so that reforms can be instituted and
the status quo a bit altered to serve the interests and well-being of the less privileged?

Mainstream media and how it supports and perpetuates the status quo have been the cause of
many reservations and resentments about the institution’s role in society. The rise of “independent”
outfits doing equally independent endeavors has also been largely a reaction, or a resistance, to the
dominant role mainstream media institutions play in our society. Using limited capital resources but
leveraging on the mileage provided by social networks, producers of so-called independent films, more
commonly known as indie films, embark on a creative journey to allow themselves to determine both
content and form without having to conform to the demands of big industries.

Public criticism against the media ranges from its bias in favor of mainstream ideas (defined
as the popular, acceptable, unchallenged, and favored by powerful institutions) to the propagation
and reinforcement of stereotypes. These limited perspectives circumscribe our understanding and
appreciation of the world and even make us blind to the possibilities of being a media user, of being a
citizen exercising and experiencing the spirit of democracy through responsible media use.

Activity
Interview an independent media producer. It could be an indie producer or an indie director and
seek out how he/she is able to produce and disseminate his/her movie, minus the big resources that
are normally within the disposal of mainstream media corporations. Find out how he/she views himself/
herself and his/her work in relation to the works of the mainstream film producers. Is he/she pushing
for new ideas, new forms, and new outlets for creative expression?

or

Pick an indie film produced by small outfits and marketed outside the mainstream cinemas of huge
malls. Some of them have been uploaded on YouTube.com. Close read the film and list down and
reflect on the alternative ideas that you think challenge the status quo.

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 A Fraught Time for Press Freedom in the Philippines
by Sheila S. Coronel

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte does not like the press. Stung by critical media reporting,
he has in the past months called some of the country’s largest media organizations “bullshit,”
“garbage,” “son of a bitch.” Journalists, he said, have no shame. They are corrupt fabulists and
hypocrites who “pretend to be the moral torch of the country.”

But Duterte does not just get mad; he gets even. This week, the Philippine Securities and
Exchange Commission revoked the corporate registration of Rappler, an online media startup that
has reported aggressively on Duterte’s troll army and police abuses in the government’s war on
drugs. If the order is confirmed by an appeals court, the company may have to shut down.

Threatening as this crackdown is, it’s only one arm of a pincer-like assault on the press. Duterte
is drawing from the Modern Autocrat’s Field Guide to Information Control. The aim is complete
encirclement so as to drown out critical and independent voices. Like Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s
Recip Tayyip Erdogan and Hungary’s Viktor Orban, he has launched a two-pronged attack.
One prong is media muzzling through government regulation. In Russia, Turkey and Hungary,
autocratic leaders have shut down critical news outlets or transferred their ownership to friendly
proprietors. In all these countries, government regulators have hounded recalcitrant media owners
with spurious allegations like tax evasion and failure to obtain licenses.

More insidiously, populist leaders have tried to de-legitimize independent and critical media by
ridiculing their editorial standards and their claims to a moral high ground. The press, said Dutere
[sic], “throw[s] garbage at us ... [but] How about you? Are you also clean?”

Demonization by government—something President Trump also deploys against media outlets

he dislikes—is just one tactic. The other is letting loose an army of trolls, bloggers on the state’s
payroll, propagandists and paid hacks who ensure the strongman’s attacks against the press are
amplified in newspaper columns and on the airwaves, on social media and fake news sites.

In 1972, when Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law, he closed down all newspapers and
broadcast stations and hauled dozens of journalists to jail. When the presses and broadcast
networks reopened, they were all owned by Marcos kin and cronies and were censored by the
presidential palace. The flow of information was strictly controlled: There were only three daily
newspapers and a limited number of TV and radio stations.

Duterte is an admirer of Marcos, but he is using a 21st century playbook for media control.
The strategy is no longer restricting information flows, but flooding the information space with
disinformation and propaganda while also attacking legitimate purveyors of the news.

Last year, the president launched blistering assaults against two news organizations that reported
allegations he had stashed millions in secret bank accounts. As he turned up the heat, the owners
of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the country’s second largest newspaper, announced they would
sell the daily to a businessman chummy with the president. Duterte also tightened the screws on
the top television network, ABS-CBN, threatening to block the renewal of its franchise and to sue
its owners for failing to air campaign ads that he said he had already paid for.

Rappler was investigated supposedly because it violated the ban on foreign media ownership.
The pioneering startup issued $1 million in securities, called Philippine depository receipts, to the
Omidyar Network, the philanthropic arm of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.

Other companies, including a giant telecommunications firm and two broadcast networks, have
similar arrangements with foreign investors. But only Rappler’s registration has been revoked —
tellingly, six months after Duterte accused the news site of being U.S.-owned.

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 During the Marcos era, Filipino journalists and citizens used innovative ways to skirt censorship.
There was a robust underground press and above-ground media used allegory and allusion to
evade restrictions.

The new media landscape requires new strategies for ensuring that genuine news evades
encirclement by poisoned information. More cautious news outlets have taken the path of self-
preservation through self-censorship. Rappler, for one, has said it will not stand down, and it has
the support of major journalist groups in the Philippines and overseas. In the past, journalists, with
the support of outraged citizens, have successfully resisted gagging.

But the Philippine press has never been weaker. Media influence and market power soared after
Marcos fell in a 1986 popular uprising. There was a hunger for news and uncensored information
and crusading journalists and newspapers were feted for their role in the democracy movement.
Before long, powerful families bought newspapers and broadcast networks, using their media
clout to advance their interests. Sensationalism ruled in a crowded and competitive media market.

Like elsewhere, technology has disrupted the media business in the Philippines: Revenues have
fallen, and audiences have moved online, gravitating toward Facebook, which has become the
de facto news source for most Filipinos.

Duterte became president as the media were losing prestige and market power. He attacked the
press where it was most vulnerable: His tirades against sensationalist journalists and elitist media
owners resonated among many Filipinos.

This is a fraught time for the Philippine press. In the past, journalists and citizens have stood
together to defend the right to know. They may do so again, but they need a clear vision, an ark
that will see them through the Duterte era’s deluge of disinformation.

[Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/01/17/578610243/a-fraught-time-for-press-
freedom-in-the-philippines (Last accessed: June 25, 2020)]

Activity
Consider the challenges being faced by journalists covering a particular beat—the police,
Malacañan, or some national line agency of the executive branch of government, the Supreme Court,
or Congress and the Senate. The article of Sheila Coronel, “A Fraught Time for Press Freedom in the
Philippines,” will provide useful information on this issue.

These offices are all powerful institutions that are led by equally powerful individuals. Power does
not always equate with the promotion of the people’s welfare—that much is clear in our history as a
nation.

The duty of journalism is to uphold public interest at all costs.

What challenges do journalists face in these circumstances? How do you think journalists should
respond to these challenges? Do you know of any stories where the objectivity and integrity of the
journalistic profession were compromised because of powerful government functionaries?

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Values and Attitudes
Dowell (2012) defined values in various ways: It could be a special kind of belief that endures and
is very unlikely to change. As a belief, it can be prescriptive and can serve as a guide for a person’s
behavior. Values can also point what is right or wrong and what is desirable or undesirable.

Values are principles that we use to judge the worth of an idea or a practice. Values provide the
criteria by which we judge what is good or bad, what is right or wrong, and what is acceptable or not. It
drives or guides social behavior. When you declare that you will spend a good amount of time finishing
your term paper for a subject to make sure it is a well-researched and well-written piece, then you are
exhibiting your value for diligence and industry. Spiritual values direct your actions and decisions with
regards to a higher power, which many believe is a God who reigns supreme above humanity.

Value systems, on the other hand, are a coherent and consistently aligned set of values from where
you derive your sense of identity and integrity. Diligence, industry, studiousness, and attention to detail
may form part of a value system for work. Kindness, compassion, and empathy may form part of a
value system for dealing with other people.

Attitudes are the affective expressions of our responses to events, circumstances, or people. In
cognitive psychology, attitude may be described as a predisposition to react favorably or unfavorably
to a situation, event, or person.

Lifestyles

Lifestyles are ways of living and consist of the interests, hobbies, behavior, and opinions of an
individual, family, group, or even a community. Both tangible and intangible elements combine to render
the kind of lifestyle that an individual is predisposed to lead. Tangible elements could be the social
class, largely determined by income and other material possessions, as well as the spaces inhabited.
Intangible elements could come with the values and attitudes a person or a group is predisposed to.

For instance, high-income returns allow a person to live in a gated village, where privacy, family
leisure, and expensive hobbies are valued practices. Combine this with a person’s attitude favoring
leisure over work and we can actually describe what lifestyle this person is predisposed to live. Spaces
and places influence the kind of lifestyle a group would have. For instance, it is said that residents of
Northern Luzon are more prone to live a frugal lifestyle because the land is difficult to till.

Media exposes its viewers to lifestyles that may be different from what they know. Local television
programming has always valorized the lifestyles of the rich and powerful classes engendering
aspirational directions for its viewers. Mass advertising encourages people to patronize products
that encourage certain lifestyles. Social media today has enabled the sharing of information at an
unprecedented level and includes value propositions that can positively affect one’s well-being.

Activity
Media is not inherently positive or negative; however, media and information literacy education
encourages us to strike a healthy balance between exposure to media and information and other
equally rewarding experiences.

From your everyday media and information consumption, write a short essay tackling the following
themes. You can choose one from the four suggested themes:

1. What are the beauty and image standards that are being perpetuated in television, print,
radio, and the Internet right now? How do they affect me? Have I undertaken some behavioral
changes as a response to these media and information texts?

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 2. What are the means by which media and information texts from television, print, radio, and the
Internet glorify negative behaviors? What have I done to resist?

3. What are the media and information texts that have helped me raise my social, cultural,
and political awareness? Why do these media and information texts generate a heightened
awareness of society?

4. How do media and information texts from all sources help in the promotion of positive lifestyles
and social skills?

Activity
Advertising will do anything to grab our attention. Some of these creative techniques might seem
reasonable, but some can push the limits of reason and creativity. Think of some advertisements that
raise some unreasonable or unbelievable claims about their products.

Propaganda and Persuasion

In 1872, three Filipino priests Gomez, Burgos, and Zamora were sentenced to die because of their
alleged participation in the uprising in the Cavite Naval Yard. Feelings of anger were stoked. This event
inspired the Propaganda Movement, spurred by young men whose families could afford to send them
to study in Spanish universities in Madrid and Barcelona.

In Europe, a group led by Marcelo H. Del Pilar organized upper-class Filipinos to “awaken the
sleeping intellect of the Spaniard to the needs of our country” and to create a closer, more equal
association of the islands and the motherland. They aimed to seek reforms from the Spanish colonial
government right in the heart of the homeland, and the most notable were the following: representation
of the Philippines in the Cortes or Spanish parliament; secularization of the clergy; legalization of
Spanish and Filipino equality; creation of a public school system independent of the friars; abolition of
the polo (labor service) and vandala (forced sale of local products to the government); guarantee of
basic freedoms of speech and association; and equal opportunity for Filipinos and Spanish to enter
government service.

The leaders of the Propaganda movement used the power of the written and spoken word to
advance their causes. Lopez Jaena was an excellent orator. Marcelo H. del Pilar put up the newspaper
Diariong Tagalog and used it as a platform to speak about the abuses of the friars. Jose Rizal wrote
treatises, and his two famous novels, Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, were largely responsible
for stoking resistance to colonial authorities, ushering the Philippine Revolution in 1896. Thus, in our
history as a nation, the word propaganda had a positive connotation because it was associated with
the struggle against colonial oppression.

Today, the means of disseminating propaganda have evolved into more technologically advanced
channels. The advent of the moving image, first in cinemas and later on in television, gave propaganda
an even greater mileage.

The rise of the Internet transformed propaganda immensely, beyond what earlier propagandists
have ever imagined. In fact, with the rise of social media, every Internet user has been given access
to advance his/her personal opinion, thus making him/her a bit of a propagandist.

Propaganda means to disseminate or promote particular ideas. In Latin, it means “to propagate”
or “to sow.” It has been used extensively in history to advance religion and even justify conquest. In
1622, the Vatican established the Sacre Congregetio de Propahande Fide or the sacred congregation

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