1. AUDIENCE THEORY
A2 Media Studies

2. How to write an audience essay (Two Slides)

3. Cinematography Shot size WS, LS, MLS, MS, MCU, CU, ECU Isolation / chaos, emotion, costume, Body language, POV – effect? Angle Low/High: status, power, wealth. Canted, POV Camera Movement Pan, Track, Tilt, Crane, Steadicam Who / What are we following? Why? From whose POV? Framing Open/ Closed frame? Mirrors/ frames within frames Observational or POV? What’s central? What’s back/ foreground? Focus Shallow, Deep, Pull Pull – to switch attention. What’s in / out focus? Why?
Mise-en-scene
Setting, décor and props
naturalism, time period, symbolism,
Atmosphere, emotional response,
dramatic irony/ tension, colour symbolism
Body language & facial expression
Character status, emotion, stereotype,
Where characters look
Hair & Make Up and Costume
Characterisation, status, symbolism, colours,
Emotion, similarities/ differences, alliances/ enemies
Blocking & Composition
Conflicts / alliances, statuses,
centre of attention / outcast, spacing – positive.
Lighting
Shadows, spotlight on? High / low key –
Emotion, colour symbolism
Sound Source of sound Diegetic / Non-diegetic Relationship to image Parallel, Asynchronous / Synchronous Effects / Musical terms Reverb, Major /Minor keg, Staccato, motif, Instrumentation/ Genre
Editing
Continuity and realism
180 degree rule
How time is stretched/condensed
Freeze frames, fast / slow motion, ellipses, flashbk/fw
Pace
Fast / slow
Order of images – realism / montage
Editing transitions / effects –dissolve, wipe, fade
What you see
Technical
language
Link to Q

4. Demographics
Age range
Gender
Social Class [ABC1 C2DE]
Ethnicity
Sexual orientation/ disability/ religion
How a text attracts audience Relationship to protagonist Gaze Ideology Genre Playing on audience’s needs and desires Theme Colours /costumes/ time period
Psychographics (Young and Rubicam)
The Explorer
The Aspirer
The Succeeder
The Reformer
The Mainstream
The Struggler
The Resigned
Audience readings Dominant reading – understand and agree with the producer’s intended meaning Negotiated – Compromise between own Understand of world and producer’s message Opposition – Disagrees with the producer’s Intended meaning
Maslow’s
Hierarchy of needs
Audience theory Hypodermic needle – audiences are brainwashed Cultural effects theory – long, sustained belief Influenced by media i.e. guns are bad Uses and gratification- we select texts based on our needs and desires: INFORMATION, ENTERTAINMENT, IDENTITY, RELATIONSHIPS
Identify audience
Say how text
Attracts them
Explain how your audience
understand and relate to your
text

5. Have a look at the images on the next slide
Which questions should we ask when thinking about Audience Theory?

7. Audience Theory
Three questions:
1) Why do audiences choose to consume certain texts?
2) How do they consume texts?
3) What happens when they consume texts?

8. 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.
1.The Effects Model or the Hypodermic Model
2.The Uses and Gratifications Model
3.Reception Theory

9. The Effects Model
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

10. The Effects Model
This model is also 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.

15. The Effects Model
Key evidence for the Effects Model
1.The Frankfurt School theorised in the 1920s and 30s that the mass media acted to restrict and control audiences to the benefit of corporate capitalism and governments
2.The Bobo Doll experiment
This is a very controversial piece of research that apparently proved that children copy violent behaviour

16. The Effects Model
The Bobo Doll Experiment
This was conducted in 1961 by Albert Bandura

17. The Effects Model
In the experiment:
Children watched a video where an adult violently attacked a clown toy called a Bobo Doll
The children were then taken to a room with attractive toys that they were not permitted to touch
The children were then led to another room with Bobo Dolls
88% of the children imitated the violent behaviour that they had earlier viewed. 8 months later 40% of the children reproduced the same violent behaviour

18. The Effects Model
The conclusion reached was that children will imitate violent media content
There are many problems with the experiment. What do you think are the flaws with the methodology? Does it indeed prove that children imitate violent media content?

19. The Effects Model
The Effects Model (backed up by the Bobo Doll experiment) is still the dominant theory used by politicians, some parts of the media and some religious organisations in attributing violence to the consumption of media texts.

20. The Effects Model
Key examples sited as causing or being contributory factors are:
The film Child’s Play 3 in the murder of James Bulger in 1993
The game Manhunt in the murder of Stefan Pakeerah in 2004 by his friend Warren LeBlanc
The film A Clockwork Orange (1971) in a number of rapes and violent attacks
The film Severance (2006) in the murder of Simon Everitt

21. The Effects Model
In each case there was a media and political outcry for the texts to be banned
In some cases laws were changed, films banned, and newspapers demanded the burning of films
Subsequently, in each case it was found that no case could be proven to demonstrate a link between the text and the violent acts

22. The Effects Model
The Effects Model contributes to Moral Panics whereby:
The media produce inactivity, make us into students who won’t pass their exams or ‘couch potatoes’ who make no effort to get a job
The media produces violent ‘copycat’ behaviour or mindless shopping in response to advertisements

23. 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
This is called the:
Uses and Gratifications Model

24. The Uses and Gratifications Model
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

25. Uses and Gratifications Model is

28. The Uses and Gratifications Model
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

29. The Uses and Gratifications Model
Audiences therefore use media texts to gratify needs for:
Diversion
Escapism
Information
Pleasure
Comparing relationships and lifestyles with one’s own
Sexual stimulation

30. The Uses and Gratifications Model
The audience is in control and consumption of the media helps people with issues such as:
Learning
Emotional satisfaction
Relaxation
Help with issues of personal identity
 Help with issues of social identity
Help with issues of aggression and violence

31. The Uses and Gratifications Model
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

32. Summary of the Uses and Gratifications Theory
According to uses and gratification theory we all have different uses for the media and we make choices over what we want to watch. We are expecting something from our use of the media.
Basically, audiences use the media to gratify certain needs:
Information - we may want to find out about society and the world. We want to satisfy our curiosity.
Personal Identity - we may watch television for models for our behaviour. For instance - we may identify with soap characters or their situations.
Integration and Social Interaction - we use the media to find out more about the circumstances of other people perhaps through empathy or sympathy.
Entertainment - enjoyment, relaxation, fill the time.
CRITICISM
You don’t always choose what media you use - you may be a secondary or tertiary user. Your mum has the remote control! You have no control over what posters

33. Uses and gratifications model
This theory counteracts the ‘hypodermic effect’ model;
This theory gives the audience far greater reading powers;
According to this theory audiences resist the power of the dominant ideology ~ e.g. feminine readings of soap operas set within , yet against, patriarchy.

34. 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

35. Reception Theory
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
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

36. Reception Theory
Stuart Hall identified three types of audience readings (or decoding) of the text:
1. Dominant or preferred
2. Negotiated
3. Oppositional

37. Reception Theory
1.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

38. Reception Theory
2.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

39. Reception Theory
3.Oppositional
Where the dominant meaning is recognised but rejected for cultural, political or ideological reasons
E.g. Total rejection of the political speech and active opposition

40. Reception Theory
Audience Decodes Meaning/Message
Dominant or preferred
Producer
Encodes Negotiated
Meaning
Oppositional

41. How to structure your essay on audience theory
The Hypodermic effect theory states that...
The messages I want to ‘inject’ into my audience are...
I have achieved this through...
However, there are limitations to the Hypodermic effect theory, in that...
I would want my audience to question [this part] of my music video because…