This document summarizes several audience theory models: - Uses and Gratification Theory examines audience motives for media consumption and views audiences as active in choosing media to fulfill social and psychological needs. - Reception Theory holds that media texts encode producer messages but audiences can decode meanings differently, such as preferred, negotiated, or oppositional readings. - The Hypodermic Needle Theory sees audiences as passive receivers of media messages that directly influence behaviors, but this view is now outdated given more active audience roles.

1. Audience Theory

2. Bulmer & Katz – Uses & Gratification
Theory
Effects of the media from the POV of audiences
The theory…
• Looks @ motives of the people who use the media, e.g. why we watch the
TV programmes we do
• Makes the audience active – they choose and have control over what they
consume
• Explains that audience has social & psychological needs which generate
certain expectations about mass media & what they’re exposed to
People are motivated by a desire to gratify certain needs – the 4 different
needs:
• Surveillance – aware of what is going on in the world
• Personal Identity – confirm the identity & positioning of ourselves within
society
• Personal Relationship – we form a relationship with the media & we use
media within relationships with real people
• Diversion – forget about our own lives & problems (escapism)

3. Stuart Hall – Reception Theory
The reception theory…
• States that media texts are encoded by the producer – whoever
produces the text fills the product with values & messages
• The text is then decoded by spectators
• Different spectators will decode the text in different ways – not always
the way the producer intended
Producer encodes message/meaning
Dominant/Preferred
Reading
Negotiated
Reading
Oppositional
Reading
Audience view the media
text in the way the producer
intended & agree with the
message
Audience accepts the view of
the producer but also has
their own
input/understanding of the
text (don’t agree or disagree)
Audience rejects the
preferred reading, as
they don’t agree with
the message & create
their own reading of the
text

4. Hypodermic Needle Theory
Creator  Audience
Whatever the creator says, the audience will believe…
• Assumes audience will understand the message
• Audience = passive – we soak up the media like a sponge
• We don’t challenge – no individual differences
Implies media had a direct, immediate & powerful effect on audiences – mass
media in 40s & 50s were perceived as a powerful influence on behaviour change
Several factors contribute to this “strong effects” theory of communication
including:
• Fast rise & popularisation of radio & TV
• Emergence of the persuasion industries, such as ads & propaganda
Suggests that…
• Mass media could influence a large group of people directly & uniformly by
‘shooting’ & ‘injecting’ them with appropriate messages designed to trigger a
desired response
• There’s a direct flow of info from sender  receiver
• Media = a dangerous means of communicating an idea because receiver is
powerless to resist the impact of the message
This theory is outdated & invalid – more up to date theories have proved that
audiences aren’t simply passive