Theory Of Audience

Theory of audience

Active vs. Passive Audience
Two step flow is a semi active model of audience reception because it implies some action on the part of the audience.
Hypodermic and inoculation models of
communication view the audience as
passive receivers of media output.

Approaches to the concept of Audience
No media product is put together without some idea of that audience that is going to see, read or hear it; hence, the concept of audience is at the heart of all media study and it would be a truism to say that the whole of this book is, in essence, discussing the interaction between media and audience.

Target audience
Demographics-the consumer is categorised in terms of concrete variables such as age, class, gender, geographical area.
Psychographics-the consumer is categorised in terms of their needs and desires such as those who aspire to a richer lifestyle or those who want to make the world a better place.

Hypodermic syringe model
Effects of media texts on audiences have been the subject of study for nearly as long as the initial research centred on the hypodermic model
This theory suggests that the audience receive an intravenous injection of a media text which could be negative or positive.
The weakness of this model is that audiences are seen as passive and malleable with no thought of their own.

Inoculation model
This suggests that long term exposure to repeated media messages makes audiences immune to them.
For example prolonged exposure to media violence would desensitise the audience to say that they are no longer shocked by it

Two step flow model
This study discovered that individual views were most affected by opinion leaders who played a key role in the communication process.
Opinion leaders both filtered and disseminated media messages, thus Lazarsfeld discovered a two-step communication flow from the medium through the opinion leader to the individual.

Uses and gratifications model
This suggested that what people do with the media was governed by what they need from the media.
The assumption within this model is that individuals are active participants in the mass communication process.
People are seen to be able to select and reject aspects of media output according to individual needs.
The problem is that the audience is always seen to be seeking gratification of specific needs when in fact this is not necessarily always the case.

Cultural effects
The thinking behind this theory centres on the long term effects of particular ideological representations on our beliefs and values.
Media representations of beautiful women, for instance, have been influential in giving both male and females a view of ideal women.

The encoding/decoding model
This is centred on the idea that audiences vary in their response to media messages, due to they are influenced by their social position, gender, age, ethnicity, occupation, experiences and beliefs.
In this model media texts are seen to be encoded in such a way as to present a preferred reading to the audience.

Theory Of Audience

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