AUDIENCE THEORIESBy Natasha Harding

Hypodermic Syringe

Media is like a syringe.

It injects ideas, attitudes and beliefs into the audience.

The audience who as a powerless mass have little choice other than to be influenced.

ExampleIf you see a women dusting on T.V then if you are a women then you might feel like you want to do some dusting. Men will see this as a women’s job.

Films like ‘Straw Dogs’ and ‘The Evil Dead’ have been banned for fear people will copy the violence in the film.

Thomas Hamilton watched violent films and he killed 16 children and one adult, he blamed the films.

Uses and Gratifications

We all have different uses for the media and we make choices over what we want to watch.

When we encounter a media text we hope to get some kind of gratification from it.

Information – we want to find out about society and the world. News and documentaries.

Personal identity – Watch televisions in order to look for character’s behaviors to model. When they succeed we feel good.

Entertainment – we use the media for enjoyment, relaxation or to fill time.

Integration and social interaction – find out about circumstances of other people. Helps us to empathise and sympathise with the others.

This theory is very popular.

Two Step Flow

Whatever our experience of the media.

We will be likely to discuss it with others.

If we respect the media’s opinion the more likely we are to be affected by it.

The theory calls these people opinion leaders.

Example A new film may come out and a person who sees it may discuss it with others.

Culmination Theory

Any one media text does not have too much of an effect.

However if you watch years and years of violent films then it will make you feel less sensitive about violence. Example

If you watch films about women being mistreated it will make you less bothered about it in real life.

It can be very difficult to prove the media affects us.

Researchers have spent lots of time trying to prove this theory – with no success.

Reception Theory

The meaning of the text is not the same for everybody or as the producer may have intended.

We as the audience infer the text differently due to our cultural backgrounds and our life experiences. Example

When an audience watch a television program it could bring in an audience of different ages. This means that the meaning of the text will be different for all viewers.

The reason that the audience will infer different meanings from the same text is because all of the audience have had either different cultural or life experiences.

Stuart Hall is one of the main ingredients of this theory and developed Hall’s theory of encoding and decoding.