This document discusses several theories of audience reception of media texts: 1. The Hypodermic Model suggests audiences passively receive information from media without processing or challenging it. 2. Two Step Flow Theory asserts that information moves from media to opinion leaders who influence their followers. 3. Uses and Gratifications Theory states that individuals choose media texts for diversion, relationships, identity, and information. 4. Encoding/Decoding Theory argues meaning is created between text and audience, who can take preferred, negotiated, or oppositional readings based on their own experiences.

1. Brandon Fry
Audience Theory
The Hypodermic Model
Dating from the 1920s, this theory was the first attempt to explain 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.
The Hypodermic Needle Model suggests that the information from a text passes into the mass consciousness
of the audience unmediated, ie the experience, intelligence and opinion of an individual are not relevant to
the reception of the text. This theory suggests that, as an audience, we are manipulated by the creators of
media texts, and that our behaviour and thinking might be easily changed by media-makers.
Task 1: Can you think of examples, from history as well as in more recent times, where this theory could be
applied?
Programmes such as x factor and big brother are good examples of hypodermic model.
Two Step Flow Theory
This theory, written by Katz and Lazarsfeld in the1950s, asserts that information from the media
moves in two distinct stages. First, individuals (opinion leaders) who pay close attention to the mass
media and its messages receive the information. Opinion leaders pass on their own interpretations in

2. Brandon Fry
addition to the actual media content, to their followers.
Task 2: Give examples of who opinion leaders, in society, might be….
Society leaders could be your parents who give you a influence of their own opinion. Also the
government and their views as there level in society will influence everyone who watches tv.
Uses and Gratifications
Researchers Blumler and Katz expanded this theory and published their own in 1974, stating that
individuals might choose and use a text for the following purposes, or uses and gratifications:
• 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
Task 3: Give examples below of how each of these might relate to your own experiences of media texts:
• Diversion
People use facebook to escape from everyday problems to relax and have a look what other people
are presently doing. Also they can feel better by looking to see if other people put their problems
on facebook which could be similar problems to you.
• Personal Relationships
The use of facebook is sometimes to makes friends with people and meet new people. However it can also
be used to keep in touch or find childhood friends if you are an adult
• Personal Identity
On facebook this is the ‘profile’ area where you can customize your own profile with your own
status’, information, profile pictures and picture albums.
• Surveillance
Advertisements are used on facebook which will pay them to put them on the side of the
homepage for example.

3. Brandon Fry
Encoding and Decoding (Hall)
The cultural theorist Stuart Hallwrote the encoding/decoding model in the 1970s. In this model the
relationship between text and audience focuses on reception theory, where there is scope for
"negotiation" and "opposition" on the part of theaudience when viewing a media text. The audience
interprets the meanings of the media text based on their individual cultural background and life
experiences. Hall’s encoding and decoding model argued that
meaning is not simply fixed or determined by the sender
the message is never transparent
the audience is not a passive recipient of meaning.
In essence, the meaning of a text is not inherent within the text itself, but is created within the
relationship between the text and the reader, or the producer and audience. This is therefore the exact
opposite to the outdated Hypodermic model.
However, by using recognised codes and conventions, and by drawing upon audience expectations
relating to aspects such as genre and use of stars, the producers of a media text can position the
audience and thus create a certain amount of agreement on what the code means. This is known as a
preferred reading.
Encoding................the text is encoded by the producer
Decoding................and decoded by the audience
Therefore 3 different readings can then be decoded by the audience
Preferred
Negotiated
Oppositional
Audience positioning within a conventional narrative, in relation to Hall’s Encoding/decoding
model
In a conventional fictional narrative the audience is likely to be positioned to take a particular
viewpoint. For example, they may be positioned:
 to share the pov with the protagonist ,or
 to be given an omniscient viewpoint by which they can see the threats and dangers to
be faced by the protagonist.
In these instances the audience is likely to adopt a preferred reading of the text.
However, audiences may make a negotiated or oppositional reading, perhaps because they
recognise and oppose the gaze employed in the film.
For example:
 a feminist response to a male gaze, or
 an oppositional response to the ideology represented in the film, eg an audience which
objects to the cultural or ethnic stereotyping in a number of US financed action films.

4. Brandon Fry
Task 4: Write down from your own experiences of media texts, where you have taken a:
Preferred reading- magazine with favourite artists on the front page.
Negotiated reading- however cabin in the woods becomes clear when looking into depth at the film as it is
clever with the approaches it takes.
Oppositional reading- media like cabin in the woods applies this as you do not understand the film.
To help you, think first of reasons why you have enjoyed a particular text thoroughly from the outset, ones
where you have spent time deciding upon your opinion and ones that you have clearly disliked from the
outset.
Task 5:Now watch Lovefield again and fill in the sheet on narrative conventions, (available under
‘Narrative’ on Moodle) paying attention to how the audience is positioned.
What is your reading of the text?