The document discusses theories of audience in media studies. It describes three main theories: the effects model which sees audiences as passive, the uses and gratifications model which sees audiences as active, and the reception model which examines how media texts are encoded and decoded. It also provides context on these theories and notes they were developed before modern media so may be outdated today.

1. AUDIENCE
for those that consume….

2. Audience
 Can be described by the following factors
 Location - where they consume it, ,home,
cinema etc
 Consumption – by what they consume, eg
genre
 Size – mass or niche
 Subjectivity – what membership of pre-
existing groups will have e.g gender ethnicity,
age, sexuality ,religion etc

3. Why is audience important?
 Metz (1975) brings to our attention that no
one is forced to go to the cinema and pay for
a ticket.Yet without that money the
institutions would not have the money to
make other films. So what has to be set up is
a system where the spectator has a desire to
visit the cinema and pay for his ticket.

4. TV
 Has the same issues around audience
 Ien Ang “ It is not surprising then that a
constant need is felt within the institution to
‘catch’, ‘ capture’ or ‘lay hold of an audience’.
Audiences must be constantly seduced,
attracted , lured”
 Raymond Williams (1974) there is a ‘deep
contradiction between centralised
transmission and privatised reception’

5. Audience theory – overview
 There are 3 main theories
 The Effects Model
 Uses and Gratifications Model
 Reception Model

6. Effects Model
 The consumption of media texts has an effect
or influence upon the audience.
 Normally considered to be negative.
 This models considers the audience to be
passive and powerless to resist media
message.
 That messages are injected into the audience
and that’s why also called the Hypodermic
Model

7. Evidence
 Comes form two sources
 The Frankfurt School who theorised in the
1920s and 30s that media acted to control
audience for benefits of capitalism and
governments. Marxist approach.
 The Bobo Doll experiment- apparently
showed children copying violent behaviour
that they had seen in media

8. The Frankfurt School
 Herbert Marcuse thought that the mass media defined the
terms in which we may think about the world ( Bennett
1982)
 The means of... communication..., the irresistible output of
the entertainment and information industry carry with
them prescribed attitudes and habits, certain intellectual
and emotional reactions which bind the consumers... to the
producers and, through the latter to the whole [social
system].The products indoctrinate and manipulate; they
promote a false consciousness which is immune against its
falsehood...Thus emerges a pattern of one-dimensional
thought and behaviour. (Marcuse, cited in Bennett 1982:
43).

9. Marcuse in a nutshell
 The media, the advertisers and institutions
work together to quieten any opposition to
the dominant system, to the way things are.
So there is no intellectual debate on the big
issues which then leads to a very one
dimensional society.

10. Frankfurt School - critique
 I think it is hard to contradict this idea of
agenda setting back in the day but now with
so many means of expression it becomes
weaker, but not completely discreditied.
 Many critics of this school feel that this
represented a reintroduction of Marx’s ideas
about mediation, or media as purveyors of a
dominant ideology that destroyed the
possibility that audiences for mass media
were able to work against these ruling ideas.

11. Effects Model blamed
 The film Childs Play 3- murder of James Bulger
1993
 The film Clockwork Orange 1971 for a series of
rapes and violent attacks
 The film Severance ( 2006) in the murder of
Simon Everitt
 Turning us into couch potatoes mindlessly
consuming its output
 Producing ‘copycat’ behaviour eg violence,
shopping

12. Uses and Gratifications Model
 This is in contradiction to Effect Model
 A term coined by Blumler and Katz in the 1970s
 Considers the audience to be active
 The audience uses the text and not the other
way round
 The audience uses the text for its own needs and
will gain gratification or pleasure from it
 The audience is free to reject ,use or play with
the texts meaning

13. Denis McQuail(1987) in Mass
Communication Theory- Uses
 Information – finding out about the world, seeking
advice and opinion, general interest, learning,
gaining security through knowledge
 Personal Identity – reinforcement for personal
values , models of behaviour, identifying with valued
other, gaining personal insight
 Integration – social empathy, identifying with others
sense of belonging, basis for conversation, enabling
one to connect with family, friends and society
 Entertainment – diversion, ,relaxing, cultural or
aesthetic enjoyment, time filler, emotional release,
sexual arousal

14. Denis McQuail
 Argues that a persons social circumstances
and psychological disposition together
influence a persons general habits of media
use…beliefs and expectations about the
benefits offered by media, will shape
consumption followed by an assessment of
the value of the experience with
consequences for further media consumption

15. Ien Ang
 Argues that the dominant ideology can
organise social debate and individual
evaluation of popular culture even though it
can not determine the U&G the audience puts
it to.

16. Maslow – Hierarchy of needs

17. implication
 Audience use it to help with
 Learning
 Emotional satisfaction
 Relaxation
 Help with issues around personal identity
 Help with issues around social identity

18. U&G Model - violence
 This model suggests that rather than cause
copycat violence, the media can help
audience act out their violent impulses
through consumption of media violence and
are therefore less likely to act out their urges.
 Controversial!!

19. Reception Model
 Developed by Stuart Hall in the 1970s
 Considered how texts were encoded with a
meaning or message by producers and then
decoded ( understood) by audience which
will sometimes be what the produced
intended, or sometimes be misunderstood.

20. Classic Communication model
 A message
 Encoded for medium - interference
 Transmitted over medium
 Decoded ready for receiving – interference
 Message received

21. Three different readings
 According to Stuart Hall there are three ways a
media text can be decoded
 Dominant or preferred reading – audience
decode message as producer intended and
broadly agrees with it
 Negotiated reading – audience accepts, rejects
or refines elements in light of held views
 Oppositional reading – dominant meaning
recognised but rejected for cultural, ideological
or political reasons

22. News Values – a slight diversion
 London Riots
 To understand the dominant reading you
should understand the ideology
 BBC – national station with large audience
 Selected these as one of the most important
stories of the day
 The dominant reading therefore constructs
youth as out of control

23. Outdated
 All of these models are old and constructed
at least thirty years ago when
 TV 4 free to air channels
 Analogue radio
 Press and magazines
 Cinemas andVHS
 Home video games consoles

24. Reception
 Where and how do you receive media texts?
 Are there times when you receive more than one
at a time?
 What are the different platforms you use to
receive media?
 Does the emphasis on interactive technology
make the audience more or less likely to be
passive?
 Do the new media technologies provide
alternative uses and gratifications?

25. Putting it all together
 What reasons do the audience have to
consume your product?
 Who is intended audience? How do you
know?
 What did you do to attract an audience?
 How did you take into account the views of
your potential audience?
 Include your management of the micro
elements in your answer.