Learning Objectives:

• Learn a variety of theories on audience.

• Understand how to answer question 1b on audience.

• Decide which of your productions you would write about for a question on audience.

The Hypodermic Needle Model

• 1920s attempt to explain how mass audiences might react to mass media

• Audiences passively receive the information

• Audiences do not process or challenge the data

so the information is unmediated .

The Hypodermic Needle Model

The Hypodermic Needle Model

• As an audience, we are manipulated by the creators of media texts, and our behaviour can be easily changed by media-makers

• Audience are passive and heterogenous

• This model is quoted during moral panics

Stuart hall and Stuart hall and reception theoryreception theory

McDonalds want you to think....

You may agree

Or.....

You may disagree

Or.....

You may think that big macs do taste good, but I’ll only have them every now and again

So here we have three separate readings of that one advert

The preferred or dominant reading is the reading media

producers hope audiences will take

from the text.

The audience may reject the preferred reading,

receiving their own alternative message. This is

an opposition reading.

Negotiated reading is when audiences

acknowledge the preferred reading, but modify it tosuit their own values and opinions – a compromise.

Stuart Hall – Encoding/Decoding

• Dominant – ‘flag waving patriot who responds to George Bush’s latest speech’.

• Oppositional – ‘the pacifist who understands the speech but rejects it’.

• Negotiated – ‘the viewer who agrees with the need for a response to Sept. 11th but doesn’t agree to the military means announced’.

Uses & Gratifications

• 1960s – generation had grown up with TV

• audiences make choices about what they do

when consuming texts

• audiences made up of individuals who

actively consume texts for different

reasons and in different ways

Uses & Gratifications

Blumer and Katz (1974) state a text might be used for the following purposes:

• Diversion - escape from everyday problems and routine.

• Personal Relationships - using the media for emotional and other interaction, eg) substituting soap operas for family life

• Personal Identity - finding yourself reflected in texts, learning behaviour and values from texts

• Surveillance - Information which could be useful for living eg) weather reports, financial news, holiday bargains

Audience

• How useful is the concept of audience in understanding your work?

• Who is your target audience? How did you develop your target audience?

• How does your production appeal to your target audience?

• What uses and gratifications will the target audience get from the production?

Sample Question

“Media texts will never be successful unless they are

carefully constructed to target established audience needs or

desires.”

Evaluate the ways that you constructed your media text to

target a specific audience.