Feminist media studies 13 Liesbet van Zoonen Professor

Feminist media studies + 13 Liesbet van Zoonen Professor of Media and Popular Culture University of Amsterdam

Decoding/media reception • What is reception? – Use and interpretation – Reception is a collective process • Social context • Discursive context • Media context – Active audience • Fans, cultists, producers • Knowledge, interaction, alternative • Engaged and detached viewing styles – Not effects 6/9/2021 2

Famous reception studies • Janice Radway, Reading the romance, 1984 – Act of reading – Intepretation of romance • Tamar Liebes, Elihu Katz, The export of meaning, 1990 – Cultural specificity of interpretation • Marie Gillespie, Television, ethnicity and social change, 1995 – Cultural intermediaries • Method, qualitative – Observation, interviews, focus groups 6/9/2021 3

Big Brother • Intertextuality – Primary text? – Secondary text, about BB – Tertiary text, audience reception • Critical reception by journalists a. o. – Assumption of negative effects, moral panic • Voyeurism, exploitation • Audience reception – Massive – TV, internet 6/9/2021 4

Big Brother studies • Germany – Lothar Mikos, survey and interviews • England – Janet Jones, internet survey – Anette Hill, also qualitative • Finland – Minna Aslama, interviews, focus groups • Diversity of audience • Change in audience composition – From massive to niche, women 6/9/2021 5

BB reception • Use: collective – Family viewing – Source of conversation • Reception – Soap opera – Relations between housemates – Everyday problems – Not voyeurism • Authenticity, life lessons 6/9/2021 • Community building 6

Following up • Keeping the success – Spin offs, Celebrity BB – Adapting the format • Big Brother: the battle – Producers desire – Lack of audience knowledge • Enhanced marketing – New moral panics • Niche program – Youth – Sex 6/9/2021 – Women’s genre 7

Wrapping up • Tools and topics for feminist media studies – Feminism/postfeminism – Epistemology of media studies (2, 3) – Basic model (2, 3) – Quantitative and qualitative content analysis (5) – Encoding (4) – Decoding (7) – Calvin Klein, Big Brother, other examples in the book 6/9/2021 8