1. Audience investigation
What is an audience?
An audience is a group of people who are participating in a
showing or encounter, work of art, literature, theatre, music,
videogames or academics in any medium.
What audience theorists can you find?
1. Uses and gratification theory, emphasises what
consumers of media products do with them, the power
is considered to lie with the individual consumer of
media who is seen to use certain tests to gratify certain
needs and interests.
2. Hypodermic needle theory is a out dated model of
audience consumption, it place the power with the text
and institution that created the text.
What Audience theories can you link to the horror genre?
The uses and gratification theory can be linked to the horror
genre though entrainment and escapisms purposes, some
audiences will watch a horror film purely for entertainment
purposes some will watch it to escape from the world they
are leaving in for a period of time and travel to a place
where they know it isn’t real.
The hypodermic needle theory can be linked to the horror
genre as after seeing some horror films some members of
audiences may feel they may have to act on what they
have seen, for example a horror film bases on suicide can
often trigger post traumatic suicidal thoughts and on very
rare occasions lead to a fatality, this is why in the production
stage of a horror film the film makers must be very carful
what message they are conveying to their audience.