Abraham Maslow proposed a hierarchy of needs that suggests humans must fulfill lower level needs like physiological and safety needs before pursuing higher level needs like esteem. Media audiences seek to fulfill needs like esteem and socialization through activities like cinema-going or admiring on-screen behaviors. The uses and gratifications model views audiences as active in choosing media that provides gratification or useful information rather than passive receivers of media messages. Audiences can have dominant, negotiated, or oppositional readings of media texts depending on the extent to which their own experiences align with the producer's intended meaning.

1. 21/11/2018

2. • An American psychologist,
Abraham Maslow, suggested that
we all have different layers of
needs. We need to achieve lower
order needs before going on to
the next layer.
• This model suggests that once we
have our basic needs /
physiological needs (the bottom
layer), we can then seek to
satisfied higher level needs, such
as the need for esteem, which
means the respect of our friends
and society.
• Maslow’s terminology has helped
me to relate media audiences to
their needs: for example, their
needs for esteem and
socialisation when they share
experiences cinema-going or
admire certain behaviours on-
screen.
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3. 3
The term ‘passive audiences’ refers to the concept that an audience observes
and absorbs media information rather than challenging it. The idea was that a
mass audience is passive and inactive. It was thought that this did not require
the active use of the brain.
Media analysts have developed several effects models i.e. theoretical
explanations of how humans ingest the information transmitted by media texts
and how this might influence (or not) their behaviour. Hypodermic needle /effects
theory (also known as the Magic Bullet Model) is still a very hotly debated area of
media research, although audiences are now thought of as being more active
than passive, such as in the Uses and Gratifications Model,

4. 4
From 1920s, this theory explained how mass audiences might react to
mass media. It suggests that audiences passively receive the information
transmitted via a media text, without any attempt on their part to process
or challenge the data.
Governments had just discovered the power of advertising to
communicate a message, and produced propaganda to try and sway
populaces to their way of thinking.
The idea was to make the media into such a powerful force that is able to
inject information into the brains of their viewers in order to manipulate
them.

5. 5
This model suggests that the information from a text passes into the mass
consciousness of the audience unmediated. As an audience, our thinking,
behavior might be affected by media-makers. It assumes that the audience
are passive and heterogenous.
This model holds the view that the media is potentially a dangerous
means of communicating an idea because the audience is powerless to
resist the impact of the message.

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7. 7

8. Active
Audiences
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9. The uses and gratifications model suggests that media audiences are active. It
assumes that the audience chooses the media it wants to watch for different
reasons.
This was summed up by theorists, Blumer and Katz’s. This means that audiences
choose to watch programmes that make them feel good (gratifications), e.g.
dramas and sitcoms, or that give them information that they can use (uses), e.g.
news or information about new products or the world about them.
This model is linked with Hierarchy of Needs.
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10. What make us watch the media?
• Information and Education – our need to know what is going on in the world,
by looking at news e.g. BBC news and discovery, we feel we have the
knowledge to avoid or deal with dangers
• Personal Identity – our need to define our identity and sense of self. Part of our
sense of self is informed by making judgements about all sorts of people and
things
• Integration and Social Interaction – out need to interact with other people
• Diversion – the need for escape, entertainment and relaxation.
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11. Reception Analysis
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The theory suggests that social and daily experiences can affect the way an
audience reads a media text and reacts to it.
Professor Stuart Hall suggests that an audience has a significant role in the
process of reading a text, and this can be discussed in three different ways:

12. Reception Analysis
12
• The Dominant or Preferred Reading – the audience shares the code of
the text and fully accepts its preferred meaning as intended by the
producers.
• The Negotiated Reading – the audience partly shares the code of the
text and broadly accepts the preferred meaning but can change the
meaning in some way according to their own experiences.
• The Oppositional Reading – the audience understands the preferred
meaning but does not share the text’s code and rejects this intended
meaning. This can be called a radical reading that may be, say Marxist or
feminist or right wing

13. Audiences and Web 2.0
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• A prosumer is a person who consumers and produces media, they do both. It
is derived from “prosumption”, meaning “production by consumers”. To the
fact that we can create our own media and contribute, generating our own
audiences. 21st century audience are creating their own distribution systems
without mediation from institutions or companies.
• David Gauntlett published ‘Media Studies 2.0’ online in 2007, argues that
classic media studies fails to define when the categories of ‘audiences’ and
‘producers’ unite, therefore altered teaching methods are needed.
• Web 2.0 allows we as audience can become our own producers thanks to
websites such as Youtube. Through web 2.0 we can create our own identity
and even influence other people.