media audiences and narritive code

1. Audiences

2. Hierarchy of
Needs An American psychologist, Abraham Maslow, suggested that we
all have different layers of needs. We have to achieve certain
needs before going on to the next layer. Basically we all need to
be able to eat and sleep in safety before we can go on to more
complex social needs, such as getting married.
He created a pyramid where he ranked basic needs
from bottom to top, at the top lies something called
‘self actualisation.’ This describes a person who has
gained a lot of respect from other people- perhaps a
president or a prime minster, some one of a high status
who has a high level of self esteem and self respect.
His Hierarchy of Needs suggests that once people have
their basic needs met like housing, food, safety,
shopping, technology, and a job they can then go on to
satisfy successively ‘higher needs’ that occupy a set
hierarchy or system of ranking.

3. Passive Audiences
Media analysts have developed several
effects models, ie theoretical
explanations of how humans ingest the
information transmitted by media texts
and how this might influence (or not)
their behaviour. The hypodmeic needle
effect suggest that a media text can
‘inject’ or ‘fire’ ideas, values and
attitudes into passive audiences heads.
Dating from the 1920s, this theory was the first
attempt to explain how mass audiences might
react to mass media. Governments had just
discovered the power of advertising to
communicate a message, and produced
propaganda to try and sway populaces to their
way of thinking. 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.

4. The History of The
Hypodermic Effect
The Hypodermic effect was first
started in Nazi Germany in the
1930s leading up to the second
World War. They used
propaganda to ‘inject’ Hitler's
ideas into the Germans heads.
Powerful German films such as
Triumph

5. Cultivation Theory
This theory also treats the audience as passive. It suggests that
repeated exposure to the same message-such as an advertisement- will
have an effect on the audience’s attitudes and values. Desensitisation is
a similar idea which suggest that exposure to violent media makes the
audience more climatised to the idea of violence when they see it on
the media they will be less shocked. Cultivation Theory suggests
Television influences its audience to the extent that their world view
and perceptions start reflecting what they repeatedly see on TV.
The idea was developed by Georg Gerbner and his colleague at
Annenberg school of communication in 1977.
Cultivation theorists argue that television changes a person slowly
little by little over time, they are consistently influenced by what they
see on the media. Georg was concerned that the constant violence
that we are exposed to on TV is contributing to the rise of violence
within the world that we live in.

6. More on Cultivation theory
Many people think its far to
simplistic it doesn’t take in peoples
backgrounds not all audiences are
the same as each other, we all have
different attitudes towards life. It
doesn’t acknowledge
demographics and physiographic,
in the 70s they where very limited
to certain shows so proportionally
they were more exposed to
cultivation.
The drawbacks of Cultivation
Theory
Cultivation theory reinforces what it is
already there instead of changing it. For
example, a man really likes oranges, he then
sees loads of advertisements for eating
apples making him feel obliged to eat apples,
he starts eating apples and ends up really
liking them the adverts then began to
promote oranges and he remembered that
he really liked oranges so rather then
changing his opinion they’ve reinforced it.

7. Two Step Flow Theory
Katz and Lazarsfeld’s approach came about from there studies
on how voters made choices in political elections. When, for
instinct, Kate Middleton wears a certain dress, the world sees
this and immediately want to purchase this, she is known as a
influencer. Opinion leaders interpret the information from the
media and passes it on to others the information does not
flow directly from the text into the minds of its audience, but
is filtered through the opinion leaders, who then pass it on to
a more passive audience, this is known as the two step flow.
It assumes a slightly more active audiences. It suggest
messages from the media move in two distinct ways.
What is the Two Step Flow
Theory:
The two-step flow of communication model says that most
people form their opinions under the influence of opinion
leaders, who in turn are influenced by the mass media

8. The Two Step Flow Theory: Strengths and
Limitations
Limitations
- More than two steps in the flow of
communication?

9. Uses Of Gratifications Model
This model stems from the idea that audiences are a complex mixture of individuals who select media texts that
best suites there needs. The users and gratifications model suggests that media audiences are active and make
active decisions about what they consume in relation to their social and cultural setting and their needs.
There are limitations suggesting that we get all are needs from televisions but actually we get a lot of our traits from
out family and our loved ones. This theory explains that it is now thought that audiences now choose what they
want to watch on media, we know can watch crime films and not turn into murders. Some people go a bit further
saying that we suffer from media dependency, we base are lives on media and many say that we can’t live without
it.
Active Audiences
This newer model sees the audience not as couch potatoes, but as
individuals who are active and interact with the communication process
and use media texts for their own purposes. They are prosumers
(producers and consumers). We behave differently because we are
different people from different backgrounds with many different
attitudes, values, experiences and ideas. This is the active audience
model, and is now generally considered to be a better and more realistic
way to talk about audiences.

10. Reception Theory
This theory was put forward by Professor Stuart Hall
in ‘The Television Discourse - Encoding/Decoding’ in
1974, with later research by David Morley and
Charlotte Brunsden. Reception analysis is an active
audience theory that looks at how audiences interact
with a media text taking into account their ‘situated
culture’ – this is their daily life.
The theory suggests that social and daily experiences
can affect the way an audience reads a media text and
reacts to it.
The producer encodes messages
and values into their media
which are then decoded by the
audience. However, different
audience members will decode
the media in different ways and
possibly not in the way the
producer originally intended