This document explores various audience theories that can be applied to coursework, including: the hypodermic needle theory which views audiences as passive receivers; two-step flow theory where opinion leaders filter messages; uses and gratifications theory focusing on why audiences use media; hierarchy of needs; readings by Stuart Hall; Laura Mulvey's male gaze; and objectification frameworks by Martha Nussbaum and Rae Langton. It aims to help students prepare for an exam question on audience theory.

1. Audience Theory

2. Aim: to explore audience theory and apply to
coursework in preparation for exam question
Starter:
Look at the images. What do you see?

3. Aim: to explore audience theory and apply to
coursework in preparation for exam question
Do the producers influence the audience?
or
Does the audience influence the producers?

4. Aim: to explore audience theory and apply to
coursework in preparation for exam question
TEXT
PRODUCER AUDIENCE

5. Hypodermic Needle Theory
TEXT MESSAGE PASSIVE AUDIENCE
Audiences passively receive the ideology
transmitted via a media text, without any attempt
on their part to process or challenge the data.
Any problems with this theory?

6. Two-Step Flow Theory
The ideology is FILTERED
by ‘opinion leaders’ and
passed on to less active
associates.

7. Uses and Gratifications
Blumler and Katz:
• Diversion - escape from everyday problems and routine.
• Personal Relationships - using the media for emotional and
other interaction, eg) substituting soap operas for family
life
• Personal Identity - finding yourself reflected in
texts, learning behaviour and values from texts
• Surveillance - Information which could be useful for living
eg) weather reports, financial news, holiday bargains

8. Hierarchy of needs- Maslow

9. Stuart Hall’s Reading the Media
• Dominant, or Preferred Reading
how the director/creator wants the audience to view the
media text;
• Opposition Reading
when the audience rejects the preferred reading, and creates
their own meaning of the text;
• Negotiated Reading
a compromise between the dominant and opposition
readings, where the audience accepts parts of the
director's views, but has their own views on parts as well.

10. Laura Mulvey’s Male Gaze

11. Objectification
Martha Nussbaum:
(1) instrumentality: the treatment of a person as a
tool for the objectifier's purposes;
(2) denial of autonomy: the treatment of a person
as lacking in autonomy and self-determination;
(3) inertness: the treatment of a person as lacking in
agency, and perhaps also in activity;

12. Objectification
(4) fungibility: the treatment of a person as interchangeable
with other objects;
(5) violability: the treatment of a person as lacking in
boundary-integrity;
(6) ownership: the treatment of a person as something that is
owned by another (can be bought or sold);
(7) denial of subjectivity: the treatment of a person as
something whose experiences and feelings (if any) need
not be taken into account.

13. Objectification
Rae Langton:
(8) reduction to body: the treatment of a person as
identified with their body, or body parts;
(9) reduction to appearance: the treatment of a person
primarily in terms of how they look, or how they
appear to the senses;
(10) silencing: the treatment of a person as if they are
silent, lacking the capacity to speak.

14. Aim: to explore audience theory and apply to
coursework in preparation for exam question
Other theories you might want to research:
Marxism
Postmodernism
Structuralism
Abercrombie and Langhurst-Hegemony
Richard Dyer- genre and escapism
Fandom