2. The Hypodermic Needle Model
(1920s)
Audience passively receive the information
unmediated via media text, without any
attempt on their part to process or challenge
the data.
The experience, intelligence and opinion of
an individual are not relevant to the reception
of the text.
We are manipulated by the creators of media
texts.
3. Two-Step Flow (1940s)
Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet suggested that
the information does not flow directly from the
text into the minds of its audience unmediated
but goes through “opinion leaders” who then
communicate it to their less active associates,
over whom they have influence.
Media
1
Opinion
Leader
2
Mass Audience
This diminished the power of the media and
concludes that social factors are also important
in the way audiences interpret texts.
4. Uses & Gratifications (19401960s)
Lasswell (1948) suggested that media texts had
the following function for individuals (who
actively consumed texts for different reasons and
in different ways) and society: Information, Social
Interaction, Entertainment and Personal
Identification.
Blulmer and Katz expanded this theory.
Individuals might choose and use a text for the
following purposes: Diversion, Personal
Relationships, Personal Identity and Surveillance
5. Reception Theory (19801990s)
Individual receive and interpret a text, and how their
individual circumstances (gender, class, age, ethnicity)
affect their reading.
Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model of the relationship
between text and audience –encoded by producer,
decoded by reader, major differences between two
different readings of the same code.
By using recognized codes (by the audiences
expectations of genres) the producers can create a
certain amount of agreement on what the code means.
