2. An audience is a group of people that a media text is aimed at, this is
called a target audience/target market.
Companies can aim their media texts at specific groups of people, this
happens through categorising audiences in to different categories.
Audiences can be categorised by Demographics and Psychographics.
Psychographics Demographics
Hobbies Age
Interests Religion
Personality Gender
Lifestyle Disability
Attitude Socio-economic group
Behaviour Education
Audiences
3. Two Step Flow
Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet analysed decisions made by voters
during the presidential election campaign in 1940, they then published
their results in ‘The People’s Choice’.
They found that the information didn’t flow directly from media texts
into the minds of the target audience unmediated, and that it was
already filtered through opinion leaders who communicated their ideas
to less active associates.
Theories
4. Hypodermic Syringe Model
Since the 1920’s this theory was the first attempt to explain
the way mass audiences react to media products. This
theory states the way that information is absorbed into the
brain without thought.
Consumers are vulnerable from being manipulated by
producers of media texts. Resulting in the consumer
accepting dominant ideologies as the norm.
Theories
5. The Male Gaze
The male gaze theory is one that deals with the ways audiences view
people presented. Laura Mulvey developed the term ‘Male Gaze’ in
1975. She believed that in film audiences have to ‘view’ characters from
the perspective of a heterosexual male.
Features of the male gaze:
Cameras linger around the curves of the female body, and events which
occur to women are presented largely in the context of a male reaction
to these events.
Theories
6. Bulmer and Katz
Bulmer and Katz developed the uses and gratification
theory in 1974.
This theory means that audiences use certain media texts for
the following reasons;
• Entertainment/Diversion
• Social relationships
• Personal identity
• Information/Surveillance
Theories
7. How these theories link to the horror genre
Audience theories such as the ones I have mentioned can be
relatable to the horror genre. This includes the ‘Hypodermic
Syringe Model’, ‘The Male Gaze’ and ‘Bulmer and Katz’. An
example of these applied to the horror genre are Laura
Mulvey’s ‘The Male Gaze’ in a typical horror film where a
male killer seeks out female’s audiences are inclined to watch
the film from a heterosexual male perspective and are
inclined to view females represented in the film as the weaker
sex.
Horror Genre
