Thoughts and Reflections

my thoughts

-an image is given a meaning when it is created
-the meaning can change/develop when it is put in a certain environment
-people will read the meaning differently depending on their backgrounds and the context of the image

the point of putting meanings into things is to get people to respond/react to it

no point in putting meaning if no one understands or you can't tell if no one has reacted to it because there is no feedback

meaning based on shared agreement

meaning is learned - not natural

if meaning is learnt then surely it becomes natural to decode meanings and not everyone will agree on the meaning so does that mean that those few are wrong and the majority is right or is everyone right but the majority decision becomes what everyone immediately associates with the image/text but people are still right to argue with it?

I don't think that mas media is lacking in audience response because people will see something on the tv news or an article in a newspaper or a blog on the internet and then they will talk about it and how they feel - face-to-face communication, facebook posts, tweets, comments on the online article etc. - all of which can be lead to the original piece of media - you can '#' a tweet with the news channels name to include them in your post or show others where you read the article, most mass media outlets have a facebook page, twitter account, blog or their own website so there are plenty of ways that viewers can get their points across
- so there are plenty of ways that people can respond to mass media even if it is just recommending it to their friend, because the number of views something receives is one type of response - on youtube it lets viewers know that a video is popular so may be worth watching - for a company it can let them know what type of thing people like to see on their website - the number of newspapers or magazines sold is an indication that people are enjoying what they have to say so keep buying them 
yes there is a gap between sender and receiver but as time goes on there are an increasing amount of ways that they can communicate, so it is hardly a one way process