Chapter 13
Question of genre
Genre= type of text. Often applied to any distinctive category. Fiske: genre is means of constructing
the audience, in that appeal to certain genre produces certain type of audience with expectations.
Genres are not just defined by industries audiences tend to have their own conception of genres as
well. Difficult to make clear cut distinctions between genres, they overlap.
Classification of genres is not neutral procedure, concept of genre is useful to study of mass media
content. Genre can refer to any category of content with following characteristics:
- Collective identity is recognized more or less equally by its producers and consumers
- Identity relates to purposes and form
- Identity has been established over time and observes familiar conventions
- Particular genre will follow an expected structure of narrative or sequence of action
Andrew: genres are specific networks of formulas that deliver certified product to customer. They
ensure production of meaning by regulating the viewer’s relation to narrative construction for him.
This view overrates extent to which media can determine response of audience, but is consistent
with aspirations of media themselves to control the environments in which they operate.
Roles of genre in mass media:
- Provides template for production decisions facilitating the rapid delivery of products
- Offers method of product differentiation and promotion as generic identification
- Describes standard patterns and expectations of audience involvement
Consideration of Miller on genre as form of social action: genres produce meaning. By formatting text
in certain way, likelihood that certain audience likes it increases. Genre as practical device for helping
mass medium to produce efficiently and to relate its production to expectations of audience.
Genre examples
Kaminsky: genre study of film is based in the realization that certain popular narrative forms have
cultural and universal roots. Hall: B-movie western: genre depends on use of particular code which
can draw on consensus about meaning among users of the code in given culture. Strength of western
genre: generate many variant forms that can be readily understood in relation to original basic form.
Meaning of variant forms depends on reversal elements of original code. Altman developed
theoretical approach based on distinction between semantic and syntactic elements. Semantic
approach: focus on analyzing list of building blocks. Syntactic approach: determined on relationships
between culture and nature, individualism and community and civilization and frontier.
Developments in media-cultural studies have given prominence to several familiar television genres
as well as emerging online and multi-platforms storytelling genres. New modes of multi-platform
storytelling are emerging that combine, mix and remix genre elements:
- Multimedia: single story has many forms, distributed via single media channel.
- Crossmedia: one story is told across multiple channels, designed to meet the requirements of
each medium separately
- Transmedia: instead of one story, elements of a story develop across multiple media
platforms to constitute a larger story world.
Jenkins: Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of fiction get
dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and
coordinated entertainment experience. Transmedia is an emerging area for both storytelling and
research, and some conceptual confusion is to be expected Four strategies for expanding fictional
world, creation of…:
- Interstitial microstories: short narratives with a connection to the macrostory
- Parallel stories: other stories that unfold at the same time as the macrostory that can evolve
and transform into spin-offs.
, - Peripheral stories: other stories that take place within the macrostory that usually involve
other characters or contain elements of origin narratives
- User-generated content platforms: environments that can be considered more or less open-
source story-creation platforms that allows users to contribute to fictional world
Strength of genre idea: capacity to adapt and extend to cope with dynamic developments.
Four theses about genre analysis:
- Genre is multimodal, providing an analytical framework across semiotic modes and media
and thus across communication technologies
- Genre is multidisciplinary, of interest across traditions of rhetoric, film and television studies
- Genre is multidimensional, incorporating many perspectives on situated, mediated and
motivated communicative interaction
- Genre is multimethodological, yielding to multiple empirical and interpretative approaches
Typology of genres
Berger made meta-analysis, who suggests that all television output can be classified according to 4
basic types, produced by 2 dimensions: degree of emotionality and degree of objectivity. Terms:
- Contests (strong emotionality and high objectivity): programs with competition
- Actualities (weak emotionality and high objectivity): news, documentary and reality tv
- Persuasions (weak emotionality and low persuasions): reflect an intention by sender to
persuade, advertising.
- Dramas (strong emotionality and low objectivity): fictional storytelling and many genres
Application of this scheme is complicated by fact that new and mixed genres are continually being
created that do not belong to unique category. More comprehensive typology of key properties of
genre is summarize by Chandler:
- Narrative: similar plots and structures, predictable situations, conflicts etc.
- Characterization: similar types of character, roles, motivations, goals etc.
- Patterns: basic and recurring themes, topics, matter etc.
- Settings: geographical and historical
- Iconography: familiar stock of motifs, the connotations of which have become fixed; visual
- Techniques: stylistic or formal conventions of camera work, sound-recording etc.
- Tone, mood and mode of address: elements that involve inbuilt assumptions about audience
- Audience relationships: specific genres come with expectations about audience involvement
Principles of genre analysis
Genre analysis shows how a given text communicates to its environment. The approach serves as
operationalization of the assumption that media content only exists through their production and
reception. Mittell: genre definitions are always partial and contingent, emerging out of specific
cultural relations, rather than abstract textual ideals. He offers 5 principles:
- Medium specificity: researcher should attempt to account for the specific ways in which a
medium operates at particular moment
- Medium context: analysis should recognize broader context of industry and audience
practices
- Medium genealogy: one should collect as many discursive instances surrounding a given
instance of generic process as possible
- Medium as cultural practice: distinction between theoretical genre (useful for academic
categorization) and genre as cultural practice (looks at how genre work for audience)
- Medium as power relationship: genre is not just a ‘thing-in-itself’ it is also the outcome of a
complex process of cultural hierarchies and power relations
Media format
Genre concept has been useful for analyzing media formats. Media logic: set of implicit rules and
norms that govern how content should be processed in order to take advantage of characteristics of
,medium. Media format: sub-routines for dealing with specific themes within a genre. Format for
crisis in television news e.g. Concept from Altheide and Snow.
Genres can cut across the conventional content categories of media output. Fiske underlines
intertextuality: theoretical concept alerting researcher to how media texts tend to reference each
other and build on earlier work, but in an age of digital convergence, intertextuality has become
deliberate media strategy to develop properties across media channels.
Framing analysis and the news
News is most systematically researched category of content. News exhibits a stable overall pattern
when measured according to conventional categories of subject matter.
Goffman is originator of idea that a frame is needed in order to organize otherwise fragmentary
items of experience. Idea of frame in relation to news has been widely used in terms of frame of
reference or context. In journalistic context: stories are given meaning by reference to news value
that connect event to rest. Needs to be done with precision, content frame has to be compared with
the frame of reference in mind of audience member. Entman: framing involves selection and
salience. Framing studies have demonstrated effects on evaluative direction of thought, issue
interpretations, attitudes, perceptions of an issue and levels of policy support and political behavior.
Framing is a way of giving some overall interpretation to isolated items of fact. Frames are useful to
journalists to put facts in meaningful context, as they can be helpful to audience to make sense of
news. But, frames can exclude voices and aspects. Awareness of this can make audience distrustful. It
is impossible not to frame, creating bias. Entman distinguishes between deliberate falsification
(content bias) where reality of news seems to favor one side of conflict, and decision-making bias,
where the motivation and mindset of journalists are unintentionally influential (framing).
Framing undergoes changes that reflect the goals of sources as well as changing realities. For
instance, an issue that is treated as problematic in news may lead to alternative framing of solutions,
while framing of an issue itself as a problem is unquestioned (e.g. homosexuality).
Framing analysis is not just study of particular piece of media content, it is a systematic consideration
of interaction between journalists and news organizations etc. influencing how frame takes shape.
The format of the news support
Strength of news is attested to by extent to which certain basic features are found across the
different media, despite the very different possibilities and limitations of each. Striking: extent to
which unpredictable universe of events seems open to incorporation into much the same temporal,
spatial and topical frame.
News format provides indications of relative significance of events and of types of content.
Significance is indicated by sequencing of content and by relative amount of space or time allocated.
Viewers’ maxims: first-appearing items in tv are most important, items receiving more time are more
important. Tv news bulletins are constructed with view to arousing initial interest by highlighting
some event, maintaining interest through diversity, holding back vital information to the end. Hidden
purpose is to reinforce a primary framework of normality and a view of world that is ideological.
News of narrative
Text as narrative has long been object of study, and narrative concept has proved useful in
understanding variety of media contents. Basic narrative forms span wide range of types. Most
media content tells stories, which take patterned forms. Main function narrative: help make sense of
reports of experience. It does this in 2 ways: by linking actions and events in logical way, and by
providing the elements of people and places that have a fixed and recognizable character.
Darnton: our conception of news results from ancient ways of telling stories.
The cultural text and its meanings
Genre analysis and framing analysis have common goal: to provide systematic way of analyzing
media content in its cultural context, helping us to find out how both media makers and users find
, attribute meaning to any given text. Textual analysis can be considered more general approach to
analyzing media content, whereas genre and framing analysis look for particular structures. Textural
methodology involves understanding texts to understand how people make sense in the world.
Concept of text
Text used in two basic senses: 1) physical message itself, 2) meaningful outcome of the encounter
between content and reader. E.g. tv program becomes text at moment of reading. Program is
produced by industry, text by its readers (Fiske).
This is central point in what is essentially theory of media content looked at from point of view of its
reception. Other essential elements to this approach are to emphasize that the media text has many
potential alternative meanings that can result in different readings. Mass media content is polysemic.
Fiske argues that this is necessary feature of popular media culture since the more potential
meanings there are, the greater the chance of appeal to different audiences.
Multiplicity of textual meaning has additional dimensions according to Newcomb: texts are
constituted of many different languages and systems of meaning.
Differential encoding and decoding again
Despite polysemic character, the discourses of particular examples of media content are often
designed to control taking of meaning, which may be resisted by reader. Relates to
encoding/decoding model (Hall) according to which there is preferred reading encoded. The
preferred readings are identified by analysis of overt content – the literal meaning plus ideology.
Process by which this works has been called interpellation or appellation and refers to theories of
Althusser. Interpellation: way any use of discourse hails the addressee. In responding we accept the
discourse’s definition of ‘us’ or we adopt the subject position proposed for us by the discourse. This
feature is exploited in advertising.
Intertextuality
Text as produced by reader is not confined in its meaning by boundaries that are set on production
side between programs. Reader can combine experience of program with advertisements inserted in
it. This is one aspect of intertextuality. Codes are systems of meanings whose rules are shared by
members of culture. Codes help to provide links between media producers and media audiences by
laying foundations for interpretations. We make sense of world by drawing on our understanding of
codes.
Open versus closed texts
Content may be considered open or closed in meanings. Open text- discourse does not try to
constrain the reader to one particular meaning. Different kinds of media text can be differentiated
according to their degree of openness: news reports are intended not to be open but to lead to
uniform informational end. Distinction between open and closed texts has potential ideological
significance. More open portrayal leads to alternative viewpoints. Another distinction: tight or loose
storyline (Murdock and Elliot), reinforcing the tendency of closed versus open choice. Fiction, the
larger the audience the more closed and tighter the representation of terrorism, thus converging
on the official picture of reality as portrayed on the news = ideological control.
Seriality
Continuing interest in narrative theory as result of television drama and series. In contemporary
context this is because of developments in multi-platforms storytelling and world building efforts by
media corporations in order to keep a franchise going to sustain audience interest. Seriality =
focusing on gradual unfolding and serially repetitious forms of a story across novels and multi-media
properties in cross-media production.
Narrative theory, from Propp, who uncovered basic similarity of narrative structure in Russian
folktales. Figure on page 424.
