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Audience Theory

The Hypodermic Model

Dating from the 1920s, this theory was the first attempt to explain how mass audiences might react to mass media. It suggests that audiences passively receive the information transmitted via a media text, without any attempt on their part to process or challenge the data.

The Hypodermic Needle Model suggests that the information from a text passes into the mass consciousness of the audience unmediated, ie the experience, intelligence and opinion of an individual are not relevant to the reception of the text. This theory suggests that, as an audience, we are manipulated by the creators of media texts, and that our behaviour and thinking might be easily changed by media-makers.

Task 1: Can you think of examples, from history as well as in more recent times, where this theory could be applied?

Programmes such as x factor and big brother are good examples of hypodermic model.

Two Step Flow Theory

This theory, written by Katz and Lazarsfeld in the1950s, asserts that information from the media moves in two distinct stages. First, individuals (opinion leaders) who pay close attention to the mass media and its messages receive the information. Opinion leaders pass on their own interpretations in

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addition to the actual media content, to their followers.

Task 2: Give examples of who opinion leaders, in society, might be….

Society leaders could be your parents who give you a influence of their own opinion. Also the government and their views as there level in society will influence everyone who watches tv.

Uses and Gratifications

Researchers Blumler and Katz expanded this theory and published their own in 1974, stating that individuals might choose and use a text for the following purposes, or uses and gratifications:

• 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

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Task 3: Give examples below of how each of these might relate to your own experiences of media texts:

• DiversionPeople use facebook to escape from everyday problems to relax and have a look what other people are presently doing. Also they can feel better by looking to see if other people put their problems on facebook which could be similar problems to you.

• Personal RelationshipsThe use of facebook is sometimes to makes friends with people and meet new people. However it can also be used to keep in touch or find childhood friends if you are an adult

• Personal IdentityOn facebook this is the ‘profile’ area where you can customize your own profile with your own status’, information, profile pictures and picture albums.

• SurveillanceAdvertisements are used on facebook which will pay them to put them on the side of the homepage for example.

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Encoding and Decoding (Hall)

The cultural theorist Stuart Hall wrote the encoding/decoding model in the 1970s. In this model the relationship between text and audience focuses on reception theory, where there is scope for "negotiation" and "opposition" on the part of the audience when viewing a media text. The audience interprets the meanings of the media text based on their individual cultural background and life experiences. Hall’s encoding and decoding model argued that

meaning is not simply fixed or determined by the sender the message is never transparent the audience is not a passive recipient of meaning.

In essence, the meaning of a text is not inherent within the text itself, but is created within the relationship between the text and the reader, or the producer and audience. This is therefore the exact opposite to the outdated Hypodermic model.

However, by using recognised codes and conventions, and by drawing upon audience expectations relating to aspects such as genre and use of stars, the producers of a media text can position the audience and thus create a certain amount of agreement on what the code means. This is known as a preferred reading.

Encoding................ the text is encoded by the producerDecoding................ and decoded by the audience

Therefore 3 different readings can then be decoded by the audience

Preferred

Negotiated

Oppositional

Audience positioning within a conventional narrative, in relation to Hall’s Encoding/decoding model

In a conventional fictional narrative the audience is likely to be positioned to take a particular viewpoint. For example, they may be positioned:

to share the pov with the protagonist ,or to be given an omniscient viewpoint by which they can see the threats and dangers to

be faced by the protagonist. In these instances the audience is likely to adopt a preferred reading of the text.

However, audiences may make a negotiated or oppositional reading, perhaps because they recognise and oppose the gaze employed in the film.For example:

a feminist response to a male gaze, or an oppositional response to the ideology represented in the film, eg an audience which

objects to the cultural or ethnic stereotyping in a number of US financed action films.

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Task 4: Write down from your own experiences of media texts, where you have taken a:

Preferred reading- magazine with favourite artists on the front page.

Negotiated reading- however cabin in the woods becomes clear when looking into depth at the film as it is clever with the approaches it takes.

Oppositional reading- media like cabin in the woods applies this as you do not understand the film.

To help you, think first of reasons why you have enjoyed a particular text thoroughly from the outset, ones where you have spent time deciding upon your opinion and ones that you have clearly disliked from the outset.

Task 5: Now watch Lovefield again and fill in the sheet on narrative conventions, (available under ‘Narrative’ on Moodle) paying attention to how the audience is positioned.

What is your reading of the text?