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Audience theory
1.
2. INTRODUCTION
Audiences can respond to, use and interpret texts
in different ways. The relationship between text
and audience is fluid and will change at
different times.
The idea that meaning is embedded and
unchanging, and that all audiences respond the
same way is one that we have to get away from.
Audiences are not uniform, with different cultural
and social experiences, that use and interpret
different ways.
3. STUART HALL
Suggested three ways that an audience responds
to a text
PREFERRED or DOMINANT reading
NEGOTIATED readings
OPPOSITIONAL or RESISTANT readings
If this is true them one text cannot have a static
meaning as we do not know how it is going to
be read.
4. PREFERRED OR DOMINANT READING
This is where the audience reads it really closely
to what the producer intended. This is more
likely to happen when the reader’s social and
cultural experiences match that of the producer
5. NEGOTIATED READINGS
Where the audience goes through some sort of
negotiation with themselves to allow them to
accept the way the text is presented. It might be
that they agree with some bits but not others
6. OPPOSITIONAL OR RESISTANT READINGS
This is where the user is in conflict with the text
due to their beliefs. Such as a narrative who
portrays an adulter sympathetically will be in
conflict with a person whose culture says
adultery is wrong.
7. EFFECTS MODELS
There are four main effect theories which deal
with the way the media effect the audience that
uses them.
Hypodermic needle model
Two step flow
Uses and gratifications
Reception theory
8. CRITICISM OF EFFECTS MODELS
As we have seen with the different readings this
idea that mass audiences are affected in a
particular way by the contents and messages in
a text might be one that can be realistically
challenged.
9. HYPODERMIC NEEDLE
This was the first model, developed by The
Frankfurt School, and states that the audience
is completely passive and just accepts the
ideas and meaning s of the text.
Although it would seem to be outdated it is still
the base of governments wanting to control the
media in order to control its population. It also
still seems to cause a generalised concern
about how the media effects us.
10. HYPODERMIC NEEDLE
Sometimes called Silver Bullet Model. Never
seriously held by theorists.
But this idea that the media are so powerful that
they can inject their message into their
audience crops up repeatedly in popular media
in moral panics about excessive media violence
or sex by people who call for greater control of
media.
12. USE AND GRATIFICATIONS
The psychological basis for this more recent
model is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs,
It suggests that the audience is highly active and
will use the media for a range of their own
needs and wants. So gives the power to the
audience rather than the producers. Media likely
to reinforce rather than change opinion.
Among chief exponents of this model are McQuail
and Katz
13. ‘not what the media do with people but rather
what people do with the media’
The active audience is the term used although
somewhat overlooks the way people are
seduced by the media and will invent their
14. USES AND GRATIFICATIONS
The main areas identified in this model are
-need for information about geographical/social world
( news and drama)
- need for identify by using characters and
personalities to define our sense of self and social
behaviour ( film and celebrities)
- need for social interaction through experiencing
relationships and interaction of others (soap and
sitcom)
- need for diversion, play and entertainment ( game
show quizzes)
15. RECEPTION THEORY
This theory recognises the audience as an
essential element in the creative process.
States that the meaning is part of the
relationship between text and audience.
This is Stuart Hall amongst
others, encoding, decoding, different reading
types.
