Ideology

Ideologies are messages and values. There are two kinds:

- Messages and values communicated through media texts

- Dominant Ideologies

Dominant ideologies are ideas or beliefs that circulate and are held by a society or culture e.g. England/UK (North or South)

E.g. Patriotism is a dominant ideology in America as is 'Love conquers all' and family values in our culture.

Our band the 'Torrents', follow the dominant ideologies of youth. Youth's are portrayed as rebellious, drug and alcohol users, criminals and are sexually active. The messages and values that will be pushed at the audience by our text is, "Live life to the full", "Out to have a good time" and "It's all about the talent and the music".

The Encoding - Decoding model was developed by Stuart Hall to examine the relationship between a text and its audience. Encoding is the process by which a text is constructed by its producers. Decoding is the process by which the audience reads, understands and interprets a text. Hall states that texts are 'polysemic' and so people read them differently depending on their identity, cultural knowledge and opinions.

The target audience will read our text as a normal everyday situation where teenagers and young adults are out to have a good time by drinking and taking drugs. However, alternative audiences such as the middle aged or older people will interpret the text and its characters as irresponsible, rebellious and criminals.

This is known as the 'Reception Theory' also devised by Stuart Hall. He termed these different readings of the ideologies within the media text as:

- the preferred reading

- the negotiated reading

- the oppositional reading

However the dominant ideology that the text follows is that "It's all about the music" and "Live life to the full". This is typical of the indie music video genre as they usually feature live performances to demonstrate their raw talent. Furthermore, they feature young characters out having a laugh and being unique individuals.

The Hypodermic Needle Effect assumes a 'passive audience'. It suggests that the media is like a drug - once in the body, we are powerless to resist its influence. If this were true, ideologies would have power over the audience to mould our attitudes and responses to the Torrents. However, the 'Active' audience is not passive and therefore can choose to respond to the media how they like. Audiences are able to become an Active Audiences as they are able to make their own opinions about our text and are not 'passive' where they simple believe what they are shown.

Amy.