Description

1. PR2: Audience Theory
In this report I will explain in detail the different audience theories and how they have been
used in media. I will also discuss the film Fight Club and analyse reviews that both use the
hypodermic model and the encoding and decoding model. I will also discuss and analyse the
results of my survey asking people questions about the film.
The Hypodermic Model
The Hypodermic Model was the first theory of how people took in media they saw. It states
that people take in information passively. It suggests that we take in media without thinking
about it and that audiences are easily manipulated. An example is if somebody owns an
iPhone and sees an ad for the next IPhone, they will passively think to buy the phone
despite the changes being insignificant. The audience don’t need the new tech, but they see
something new and respond to it by thinking its better and just buy it. An another example
is the way the media talk about violence. The news can often slander violent video games
and films for example, and claimthat it insights violence in people. They will blame murders
and terrorist attacks and other crimes on these media, and people will blindly believe it,
without looking into deeper causes e.g. the perpetrators metal state.
Encoding and Decoding Model
The Encoding and Decoding Model was a theory proposed by Stuart Hall in the 1970’s.
Encoding is the text that has been put in by the producer to spread a message to an
audience. Decoding is how people react to and how they express their opinions on the
media text. Somebody’s reaction is different based on different variables:
- Age
- Gender
- Social Background
- Cultural Background
- Political Views
- Circumstances of Exhibition
People have a reading of the text. The text is either:
- Preferred
- Negotiated
- Oppositional
An example of this theory is when we watched Miley Cyrus’s music video of wrecking ball.
The music video is very controversial, so obviously the class was divided as we all came from
different groups within society.
Uses of Gratifications Theory
This theory states that people all have different reasons for why they consume media. Them
being:
- Diversion
- Personal relationships
- Personal
- Surveillance

2. This theory suggests that we have reasons to why we consume media. The reasons for
diversion is for escaping from everyday life, personal relationships for liking the same media
as other people, personal identity for trying to express yourself in media form and
surveillance is used for gathering information. We could discuss for example, how different
social media websites fall under which uses. Facebook is a social media website that would
fall under all uses.
Uses and Gratifications
I will analyse a piece of media to give a more in depth look at how the uses and
gratifications theory works. The media I will analyse is the video game Team Fortress 2.
Team Fortress 2 is a multiplayer first person shooter developed by Valve. The game is aimed
towards a mature audience because of its violence and towards people who like multiplayer
and/or shooting games. I would put the game into all uses:
Diversion – The game is unrealistic and very over the top. Because of the nature of the game
it has become very popular. Because the game is multiplayer, people might play the game
either often or every now and again.
Personal Relationships – Because the game is multiplayer, friends are able to play together,
thus people interact with each other.
Personal – For a lot of people this game has had an effect on them. My personal experience
with this game is that it got me interested in video games again, and also cemented
shooters as my favourite games. No doubt that this game has had an effect on many other
people, which is pretty evident by the passionate community.
Surveillance – This game has been a major success. For a nine year old game it is still
popular, even being more popular than some of the latest triple AAA titles that are being
released. For surveillance purposes, other video game developers should look at the game
and think of how they can make their own games interesting fun and successful.
Fight Club BBFC Case Study
Fight Club is an action filmreleased in 1999. It follows the story of a man known only as
“The Narrator”, who joins another man called Tyler Durden set up a fighting club called
“fight club”. The group becomes so big that they end up doing loads of crimes.
On a side note “The Narrator” doesn’t tell us his name and he talks as a narrator by
narrating the story of the filmto the audience. This helps give off the feel that the film is a
novel, because the filmis actually based off of a novel.
There are two versions of the film; one that is censored and one that is uncut. The reason
for the censored version was because the film was extremely violent and had elements of
terrorist ideas in the film, and there wasn’t any other filmlike it at the time.
The filmdid not receive certification at first from the BBFC, as they felt that if people
watched the film then they start practising the things in the filmin real life.

3. When the film was released, it was bashed by some critics. Many of those critics believed
that the hypodermic model would go into full effect, and people would go off and commit
atrocious crimes. One of those critics was Alexander Walker, who described the film as
being “a toxic experience” and claiming that the film “promotes pain and suffering” and that
“it resurrects the Fuhrer principle”. He basically claimed that people would go and commit
crimes on the level that was shown in the film, and that it would invoke a lot of far right
movements. Alexander Walkers claims are absurd. So why did he make the claims in the
first place? The potential reason behind it is because Alexander Walker is a right wing
conservative, and the filmdoes have some left wing themes to it, primarily causing trouble
in places where the establishment are. Obviously you can tell that Alexander Walker has a
bias, so instead of giving an informed neutral opinion, he decided to promote his ideology
and way of thinking to slander the filmand keep people away from the left wing themes in
the film.
The BBFC said that “adults should be free to choose their own entertainment”, so for this
reason the film was released. Adults should be able to watch whatever media they want
because they can choose because of the uses and gratifications theory. They also choose
media based on their way of encoding and decoding media.
After watching this film, I would say that this filmis a diversion because all of the things that
happen in the film are unrealistic and are unlikely to happen in real life. I would also argue
that the filmpotentially be part surveillance, because even though the film is unrealistic,
some of the things that did happen in the film have sort of happened similarly to events that
have happened in real life. For example, 9/11 shares an uncanny resemblance to the ending
of Fight Club.
Fight Club Exit Poll Results
I created an exit poll to send to the people in the class to see what everybody’s opinions
were on the film.
This shows that most of the people
that watched the film were young. I
needed to know what the age of the
audience was, so that I know how
different the audiences would
opinions would be

4. This tells me that more females
watched the film. Gender is a lot
like age as a variable for encoding
and decoding.
This tells me that most people heard
about this film before we watched it in
class. I was very vague and didn’t ask
how they found out about the film, so
that is an observation I need to make if I
ask about whether somebody has heard
of a film.
Most people seemto have heard of the
film by word of mouth. I would theorize
and say the reason it was spread around
by word of mouth is because the filmis
old, and is being talked about by young
people.

5. This tells me that most people enjoyed the
film, so most people had a
preferred/negotiated reading of the film.
This question was put in because
I needed to hear about what
people thought about the
violence, since there was a lot of
violence. From what I have from
the results, the people I asked
seemed rather happy with the
amount of violence in the film.

6. People liked the film because they
liked the narrative, ending,
violence, plot twist, Easter eggs and
that it reminded somebody of the
Vietnam War for whatever reason.
People disliked the filmof the
sexual nature and at time the
violence was a bit too excessive.
This shows me that there was a
50/50 split. Half of the audience
understood the text, whilst the other
half took in some parts while
rejecting others.

7. Applying uses and gratifications,
most people didn’t really connect
to the filmon a higher level. Like
the men fighting in the film, they
were fighting because it was
there diversion from life. There
really isn’t anyone else that
connects to it except for one
vague answer and apparently the
Vietnam War.
Some people liked the
soundtrack whilst one other
person apparently admired Brad
Pitts fashion sense and
somebody else randomly brought
up The Vietnam War again. Some
people didn’t really feel like there
was anything that they could pick
up.

8. In conclusion, I can match my results to encoding and decoding and uses and gratifications.
From encoding and decoding, people came up with their reasons as to why they liked or
disliked the film. From uses and gratifications, People could hint at their reasons as to why
they would watch the film.