2. Audience
An audience is a group of people who participate in a show, encounter a work of art or media
There is a large variety of audiences depending on what is being viewed such as: viewers, readers, players, consumers and audience
participation
Implied audience- the audience pictured by the creator of the media. Similar to target audience.
Actual audience- the viewer of the media
Potential audiences can access media in a variety of ways such as through technology (phones, tablets, websites), radio, tv, theatre, film,
magazines and more.With greater access to different variety of media there is now mass media consumption by a variety of audiences.
In order to appeal to their target audience, media outlets often aim to appeal to certain audiences, these can be categorised into different
groups based on class and income :
Group A: those in a high profession, well paid e.g. doctors
Group B: lower income still fairly well paid e.g. teachers
Group C1: people in professions such as nurses and junior managers
3. Audience theory
There are three theories of audience that we can apply to help us come to a better
understanding about the relationship between texts and audience.
The Effects Model or the Hypodermic Model
The Uses and Gratifications Model
Reception Theory
4. The Effects Model
The consumption of media texts has an effect or influence upon the audience. It is
normally considered that this effect is negative
Audiences are passive and powerless to prevent the influence. The power lies with
the message of the text, Media influence and media effects are terms used in
media studies, psychology, communication theory and sociology referring to mass
media and media culture effects on individual or audience thought, attitudes and
behavior.
Example: BOBO doll experiment.
BUT…...
5. The Hypodermic model
The effects model can also be called the hypodermic model, here, the messages in media texts are injected into the
audience by the powerful, syringe-like, media.
The audience is powerless to resist therefore, the media works like a drug and the audience is drugged, addicted, doped or
duped.
History The "hypodermic needle theory" implied mass media had a direct, immediate and powerful effect on its audiences.
The mass media in the 1940s and 1950s were perceived as a powerful influence on behaviour change.
Several factors contributed to this "strong effects" theory of communication, including: * the fast rise and popularisation of
radio and television *the emergence of the persuasion industries, such as advertising and propaganda * the Payne Fund
studies of the 1930s, which focused on the impact of motion pictures on children * Hitler's monopolization of the mass media
during WWII to unify the German public behind the Nazi party
The theory suggests that the mass media could influence a very large group of people directly and uniformly by ‘shooting’ or
‘injecting’ them with appropriate messages designed to trigger a desired response.
6. Uses and gratification theory.
The Uses and Gratifications Model. It is still unclear that there is any link between the consumption of
violent media texts and violent imitative behaviour.
It is also clear the theory is flawed in that many people do watch violent texts and appear not to be
influenced. Therefore a new theory is necessary.
The Uses and Gratifications Model is the opposite of the Effects Model. The audience is active. The
audience uses the text & is NOT used by it. The audience uses the text for its own gratification or pleasure.
Here, power lies with the audience NOT the producers. This theory emphasises what audiences do with
media texts – how and why they use them. Far from being duped by the media, the audience is free to
reject, use or play with media meanings as they see fit.
7. Audiences therefore use media texts to gratify needs for:
Diversion
Escapism
Information
Pleasure
Comparing relationships and lifestyles with one’s own
Sexual stimulation
The audience is in control and consumption of the media helps people with issues such as:
Learning
Emotional satisfaction
Relaxation
8. Controversially the theory suggests the consumption of violent images can be helpful
rather than harmful
The theory suggests that audiences act out their violent impulses through the
consumption of media violence
The audience’s inclination towards violence is therefore sublimated, and they are less
likely to commit violent acts
9. Reception Theory
Given that the Effects model and the Uses and Gratifications have their problems and limitations a different
approach to audiences was developed by the academic Stuart Hall at Birmingham University in the 1970s.
This considered how texts were encoded with meaning by producers and then decoded (understood) by
audiences.
The theory suggests that:When a producer constructs a text it is encoded with a meaning or message that
the producer wishes to convey to the audience<br />In some instances audiences will correctly decode the
message or meaning and understand what the producer was trying to say.
In some instances the audience will either reject or fail to correctly understand the message
10. Stuart Hall
identified three types of audience readings (or decoding) of the text:
Dominant or preferred
Negotiated
Oppositional
Dominant
Where the audience decodes the message as the producer wants them to do and broadly agrees with it. E.g. Watching a political
speech and agreeing with it
Negotiated
Where the audience accepts, rejects or refines elements of the text in light of previously held views. E.g. Neither agreeing or
disagreeing with the political speech or being disinterested.
Oppositional
Where the dominant meaning is recognised but rejected for cultural, political or ideological reasons. E.g. Total rejection of the political
12. Key terms list
Audience - The assembled spectators or listeners at a public event such as a play, film, concert, or meeting.
Uses and Gratifications – ideas about how people use the media and what gratification they get from it. It assumes that
members of the audience are not passive but take an active role in interpreting and integrating media into their own lives.
Stereotype – representation of people or groups of people by a few characteristics eg hoodies, blondes
Representation – The way in which the media ‘re-presents’ the world around us in the form of signs and codes for audiences to
read.
Regulation – bodies whose job it is to see that media texts are not seen by the wrong audience (eg British Board of Film
Censors) or are fair and honest (EG Advertising Standards Association)
Popular Culture – the study of cultural artefacts of the mass media such as cinema, TV, advertising.
Multimedia – computer technology that allows text, sound, graphic and video images to be combined into one programme.
Mode of Address – The way a media product ‘speaks’ to it’s audience. In order to communicate, a producer of any text must
make some assumptions about an intended audience; reflections of such assumptions may be discerned in the text
(advertisements offer particularly clear examples of this).
13. Unlike most approaches to the mass media Marxism acknowledges the importance
of explicit theory. Marxist 'critical theory' exposes the myth of 'value-free' social
science. Marxist perspectives draw our attention to the issue of political and
economic interests in the mass media and highlight social inequalities in media
representations.
Theories - Marxism
14. Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, fictional, or
philosophical discourse. It aims to understand the nature of gender inequality. It
examines women's social roles, experience, interests, chores, and feminist politics in a
variety of fields, such as society, literature and media.
Theories - Feminist
15. Love me or leave me alone
The short film 'Love me or leave me alone' was directed and written by Duane Hopkins and produced by Samm Haillay. The
film was created in 2003, and is about two teenagers in a relationship. Set in a small rural village, the film is all about the two
young people understanding how to express their feelings for one another. A study of the limits and emotions of first love.
Love me or leave me alone was funded by FilmFour and the UK Film Council. The short film was shown at a number of
festivals including the Edinburgh Short Film Festival, the International Short Film Festival and the Oberhausen Short Film
Festival. The film has also won awards such as the Best Short Film award at the Edinburgh Short Film Festival and was
nominated by Best British Short at the BIFA awards in 2004. The short was distributed on DVD in a series of other well
known short films called 'Cinema Extreme Green Lit Projects' in 2008. The film also won a number of other awards. The
director and writer Duane Hopkins went on in 2008 to write and direct his first feature film called 'Better things'. The film won
one award and was nominated for another. Hopkins then went on to producer two other short films, one in 2008 which was
called 'Lamb' and another in 2009 called 'Jade'. The short Jade was nominated for a BAFTA , one other award and also won
one award. Love me or leave me alone depicts an average teenage relationship between a boy and girl. The short delves
into the hormonal rage of puberty that teenagers experience through how the two characters treat each other. The short
begins with the boy and girl arguing on what seems to be a school football field, evoking the teenage age of the two
characters due to the location being linked to education. In a medium shot a boy spits onto a girls face. The girl reacts by
shouting at the boy and pushing him in medium shot also. The girl then walks away from the teenage boy to a shelter. The
short then cuts to a wide shot communicating the sudden distance the two characters have made between each other.
