The discourse concerning audience interpretation of media, particularly music videos, has shifted to focus on individual understanding. The individual controls his or her final interpretation based on personal, cultural, and social experiences. This study, using a questionnaire and focus groups, looks at how visual music performance is interpreted, particularly how gender and race influences individual relevancy and understanding. Five music videos offering a variety of themes and levels of interpretation were reviewed by a diverse group of twentyfive college students. Personal, cultural, and social relevancy of the mediated themes and images, along with the racial and gender background of participants, significantly influenced interpretations and understandings. As music videos and other media gain prominence in our daily lives, this study adds insight into the connection between polysemous texts and polyvalent audiences.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Ang, Ien
. 1985. Watching Dallas. London: Methuen.
2.
Bowers, John Waite
, and John A. Courtright. 1984. Communication research methods. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman.
3.
Brown, Jane
, Kenneth Campbell, and Lynne Fischer. 1986. American adolescents and music videos: Why do they watch?Gazzette37: 19-32.
4.
Brown, Jane
, and Laurie Schulze. 1990. The effects of race, gender, and fandom on audience interpretations of Madonna's music videos. Journal of Communication40 (2): 88-102.
5.
Brown, Mary E.
1990. Motley moments: Soap opera, carnival, gossip and the power of the utterance and consumption and resistance—the problem. In Television and women's culture: Politics of the popular, edited by Mary Brown, 183-210. London: Sage.
6.
Brown, Mary E.
1994. Soap opera and women's talk: The pleasure of resistance. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
7.
Carey, James
. 1977. Mass communication and cultural studies: An American view. In Mass communication and society, edited by James Curran, Michael Gurevitch, and Janet Woollacott, 409-426. London: Edward Arnold in association with Open University Press.
8.
Christenson, Peter
. 1992. Preadolescents' perceptions and interpretations in music videos. Popular Music and Society16 (3): 63-73.
9.
Christians, Clifford
, and James Carey. 1981. The logic and aims of qualitative research. In Research methods in mass communication, edited by Guido Stempel and Bruce Westley, 342-362. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
10.
Cohen, Jodi R.1991a. Intersection and competing discourses in Harvey Fierstein's “Tidy endings.”Quarterly Journal of Speech77:196-207.
11.
Cohen, Jodi R.1991b. The relevance of cultural identity in audiences' interpretations of mass media. Critical Studies in Mass Communication8:442-454.
12.
Condit, Celeste Michelle
. 1989. The rhetorical limits of polysemy. Critical Studies in Mass Communication6 (2): 103-122.
13.
Donohue, George
, Clarice Olien, and Phillip Tichenor. 1989. Structure and constraints on community newspaper gatekeepers. Journalism Quarterly66:807-812.
14.
Evans, William
. 1990. The interpretive turn in media research: Innovation, iteration or illusion?Critical Studies in Mass Communication7 (2): 147-168.
15.
Fish, Stanley
. 1980. Is there a text in this class? The authority of interpretive communities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
16.
Fiske, John
. 1986. Television: Polysemy and popularity. Critical Studies in Mass Communication3:391-408.
17.
Fiske, John
. 1988. Critical response: Meaningful moments. Critical Studies in Mass Communication5:246-251.
18.
Greeson, Larry E.1991. Recognition and ratings of television music videos: Age, gender, and sociocultural effects. Journal of Applied Social Psychology21 (2/3): 1908-1920.
19.
Grossberg, Lawrence
. 1987. Rock and roll: In search of an audience. In Popular music and communication, edited by James Lull, 175-197. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
20.
Hall, James
, Chris Miller, and Jarice Hansen. 1986. Music television: A perceptions study of two age groups. Popular Music and Society10 (4): 17-28.
21.
Hall, Stuart
. 1980. Cultural studies in the center: Some problematics and problems: Working papers in cultural studies 1972-1979. In Culture, media, language, edited by Stuart Hall, Dorothy Hobson, Andrew Lowe, and Paul Willis, 15-47. London: Hutchison.
22.
Hall, Stuart
. 1982. The rediscovery of “ideology”: Return of the repressed in media studies. In Culture, society and the media, edited by Michael Gurevitch, Tony Bennett, James Curran, and Janet Woollacott, 56-90. London: Routledge.
23.
Hansen, Christine Hall
, and Ronald Hansen. 1990. The influence of sex and violence on the appeal of rock music videos. Communication Research17 (2): 212-234.
24.
Hansen, Christine Hall
, and Ronald Hansen. 1991. Constructing personality and social reality through music: Individual differences among fans of punk and heavy metal music. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media35 (3): 335-350.
25.
Hansen, Christine Hall
, and W. Krygowski. 1994. Arousal-augmented priming effects: Rock music videos and sex object schemas. Communication Research21 (1): 24-47.
26.
Hebdige, Dick
. 1979. Subculture: The meaning of style. London: Methuen.
27.
Hobson, Dorothy
. 1980. Housewives and the mass media. In Culture, media and language, edited by Stuart Hall, Dorothy Hobson, Andrew Lowe, and Paul Willis, 105-114. London: Methuen.
28.
Holsti, Ole R.
1969. Content analysis for the social sciences and humanities. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
29.
hooks, bell
. 1990. Yearning: Race, gender and cultural politics. Boston: South End.
30.
hooks, bell
. 1994. Outlaw culture: Resisting representations. New York: Routledge.
31.
Jenkins, Henry
. 1992. Textual poachers: Television fans and participatory culture. London: Routledge.
32.
Johnson, James
, Mike Adams, Leslie Ashburn, and William Reed. 1995. Differential gender effects of exposure to rap music on African American adolescents' acceptance of teen dating violence. Sex Roles33 (718): 597-604.
33.
Jones, Steve. Winter1989. Cohesive but not coherent: Music videos, narrative and culture. Popular Music and Society12 (4): 15-30.
34.
Larsen, Reed
, and Robert Kubey. 1983. Television and music: Contrasting media in adolescent life. Youth and Society15 (1): 13-32.
35.
Leming, James
. 1987. Rock music and the socialization of moral values in early adolescence. Youth and Society18 (4): 363-383.
36.
Lind, Rebecca A.1996. Diverse interpretations: The relevance of race in the construction of meaning in, and the evaluation of, a television news story. The Howard Journal of Communication7:53-74.
37.
Lindlof, Thomas
. 1987. Natural audiences: Qualitative research of media uses and effects. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
38.
Lindlof, Thomas
. 1988. Media audiences as interpretive communities. In Communication yearbook, edited by James Anderson. Vol. 11, 81-107. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
39.
Livingstone, Sonia
. 1990. Making sense of television: The psychology of audience interpretation. Oxford: Pergamon.
40.
Lull, James
. 1980. The social uses of television. Human Communication Research6 (3): 198-209.
41.
Lunt, Peter
, and Sonia Livingstone. 1996. Rethinking the focus group in media communication research. Journal of Communication46 (2): 79-98.
42.
Morley, David
. 1980. The nationwide audience: Structure and decoding. London: British Film Institute.
43.
Morley, David
. 1992. Television, audiences and cultural studies. London: Routledge.
44.
Morley, David
. 1993. Active audience theory: Pendulum and pitfalls. Journal of Communication43 (4): 13-20.
45.
Newcomb, Horace
. 1978. Assessing the violence profile studies of Gerbner and Gross: A humanistic critique and suggestion. Communication Research5 (3): 264-282.
46.
Newcomb, Horace
, and Paul Hirsch. 1984. Television as a cultural forum: Implications for research. In Interpreting television, edited by E. Roland and B. Watkins, 58-73. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
47.
Prinsky, Lorraine
, and Jill Rosenbaum. 1987. Leerics or lyrics: Teenage impressions of rock and roll. Youth and Society18 (4): 384-397.
48.
Radway, Janice
. 1984. Reading the romance: Women, patriarchy and popular literature. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
49.
Rubin, Rebecca
, Alan Rubin, Elizabeth Pease, Cameron Armstrong, Michael McHugh, and Noreen Faix. 1986. Media use and meaning in music video. Journalism Quarterly63 (2): 353-359.
50.
Silverstone, Roger
, and Eric Hirsch. 1992. Consuming technologies: Media and information in domestic spacesLondon: Routledge.
51.
Sun, Se-wen
, and James Lull. 1986. The adolescent audience for music videos and why they watch. Journal of Communication36 (1): 115-125.
52.
Thompson, Edward Palmer
. 1968. The making of the English working class. New York: Penguin.
53.
Thompson, Margaret E.1994. Cognitive activity and patterns of involvement among television viewers. Mass Communication Review21 (1/2): 36-48.
54.
Traudt, Paul
, and Cynthia Lont. 1987. Media-logic-in-use: The family as locus of study. In Natural audiences: Qualitative research of media uses and effects, edited by Thomas Lindlof, 139-160. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
55.
Walker, James
. 1987. The context of MTV: Adolescent entertainment, media use and music television. Popular Music and Society11 (3): 1-9.
56.
White, Robert
. 1994. Audience “interpretation” of media: Emerging perspectives. Communication Research Trends14 (3): 1-40.
57.
Williams, Raymond
. 1958. Culture and society 1780-1950. London: Penguin.
58.
Zelizer, Barbie
. 1993. Journalists as interpretive communities. Critical Studies in Mass Communication10:219-237.
