Audience theories explained

1. A2 MEDIA STUDIES.
Audience theory.

2. THREE MAIN AUDIENCE THEORIES.
• The Effects model/ Hypodermic model.
• Uses and gratification theory.
• Reception theory.

3. THE EFFECTS MODEL.
• The Effects Model, also known as the Hypodermic Model. This is the consumption
of media texts which has an effect or influence upon the audience, it is normally
considered that this effect is negative. The audiences are passive and are powerless
which means they cant prevent the influence it has on them.
• Another way to describe the hypodermic model is that the messages in the media
texts affect you straight away, an example of this is injecting yourself with a drug,
this drug will affect you straight away as its been injected directly to the veins.
Therefor the media works just like a drug and the audience is addicted to watching
it.

4. KEY EVIDENCE OF THE EFFECTS MODEL.
• The Frankfurt school created a theory in the 1920’s and 30’s that the mass media acted
to restrict and control audiences to the benefit of corporate capitalism and governments.
• The Bobo Doll experiment is a very controversial piece of research that proved children
copy violent behaviour. An example of this is the Jamie Bulger case.
• The Bobo doll experiment was conducted in 1961 by Albert Bandura, in this experiment
children watched a video where an adult violently attacked a clown toy called a Bobo
doll, the children were then taken into another room with attractive toys that they wernt
allowed to touch, they were then led into another room with Bobo dolls, 88%/ of the
children imitated the violent behaviour, 8 months later 40% of children reproduced the
same violent behaviour;.

5. THE USES AND GRATIFICATION MODEL.
• The uses and gratification model is the opposite of the effects model, the audience is
active and the audience uses the text and they are not used by it, the audience uses
the text for their own pleasure. Within this theory the power lies with the audience
not the producers, this theory emphasises what audience do with media texts, the
audience is free to reject, use or play with the media, they choose what they want to
watch and when.
• Controversially the theory suggests the consumption of violent images can be
helpful, this suggests that audiences act out their violent impulses through the
consumption of media violence, if the audience witness violence and its
consequences on TV they are less likely to commit violent acts.

6. THE RECEPTION THEORY.
• This theory considered how texts were encoded with meaning by producers and then
decoded by audiences. The theory suggests that when a producer constructs a text it
is encoded with a meaning or message that the producer wants to convey to the
audience, in some instances audiences will correctly decode the message and
understand what the producer was trying to say and in other cases the audience
will reject the message.