The document discusses the Hypodermic Needle Theory, also known as the Effects Model, which assumes that audiences passively accept the messages that media producers intend to transmit. It notes this theory was more applicable before the rise of interactivity from Web 2.0. Examples are given showing how producers have used media to demonize certain groups. The document also discusses Theodor Adorno's views on popular culture and distraction, as well as an experiment by Albert Bandura which found that children will copy violent behaviors they see, supporting the theory that media can influence audiences.

1. {
The Effects Model
Hypodermic Needle Theory

2.  The Hypodermic Needle Theory depends on
the view that the audience is completely
passive.
 This largely refers to the days before Web 2.0
and media interactivity.
Passivity

3.  The hypodermic theory suggests that the
passive audience is ‘injected’ by the media
producers with a message
 This means that Media Text Producers can
encode whatever message they want the
audience to take from it and that the audience
will take the dominant reading.
Hypodermic?

4.  This means that the audience are powerless to
resist what the media producers want you to
think or feel.
 Subliminal messages were often put in by
producers to determine particular social groups
as the ‘Bad People’.
Danger…

5.  In Bond Films, one of England’s largest and
most popular media texts, why are the villains
until recent films always foreign?
 In many of them, the bad guy is an evil eastern
European mastermind, reflecting the previous
antipathy towards real life bad guys like Hitler
and Stalin.
 In this way, producers used their personal bias
to demonize the groups that they didn’t like,
passing on this hatred to the general public.
Examples

6.  A critical thinker realised that the media had
great power in social control
 He felt that not only was the power of the
Hypodermic theory a threat but more so that
Popular culture was too.
 His name was Theodor Adorno.
Theo DaWhoHa…?

7.  Adorno noticed how popular culture was the
only thing that distracted human beings from
the higher important issues such as political
events or societal change.
 Adorno suggested that culture industries
churn out a debased mass of unsophisticated,
sentimental products which have replaced
the more 'difficult' and critical art forms
which might lead people to actually question
social life.
Theodor Adorno
Adorno (1903-1969)
He was a German
philosopher,
sociologist,
musicologist and was
known for his critical
theory of society.

8.  The Frankfurt School found in the 1920s and
1930s that, in agreement with Adorno’s idea,
the mass media acted to restrict and control the
masses to the benefit of government and
capitalism.
 Shortly after, the Nazi Party utilised the use of
media control in the form of anti-semitic
Propaganda to horrific effect and with
disastrous consequences.
 Adorno and the Frankfurt school were proven
correct.
Frankfurt Findings

9.  The issue with the Hypodermic theory is that it
suggests the audience are wholly passive which
in modern day times we are not thanks to the
introduction of Web 2.0 through which we now
have the Two Way system in which we can now
dictate what happens within the media to a
larger extent than before.
 However, in the past this was not the case.
 Perhaps the most susceptible to this Effects
Theory were children as investigated by the
Bobo Doll experiment.
How so easily?

10.  This was a controversial investigation that
seemingly proved that children will copycat
violent behaviour that they see.
 Conducted by Albert Bandura in 1961.
The Bobo Doll experiment

11.  72 Children examined.
 3 groups of 24 children watched different
model videos of an adults behaviour in a play
room that they would later be left in
themselves.
 3 models for three groups.
 Two acted aggressiveley, swearing and hitting a
Bobo Doll, the other two played with the toys
nicely and completely avoided the Doll and for
the third group of children, no model was
shown at all. (See picture next slide)
The experiment

12. Image diagram

13.  The children were all shown a video as
explained in the previous diagram.
 Each child was then sent into the same room
alone to play and were examined through a one
way mirror by psychologists.
What happened?

14.  It was clear that the children who were exposed
to violent behaviour imitated this behaviour
and often with creative embellishments,
seeking to find their own individual ways in
which to hurts the Bobo Doll.
 Looking deeper, many findings were made
about the difference between gender and the
susceptibility however the point was proven.
 The Children copied the violent behaviour,
proving that what they see in video and media
will effect them.
Results?

15.  Although the experiment was carried out on
children, it would not be wrong to feel that this
experiment strongly and emphatically suggests that
Human beings with low maturity level or those who
are easily influenced can be just that.
 The Media can strongly influence a large amount of
the population to act, think, feel or behave in certain
ways towards certain people.
 The implications of this finding are astronomical –
The media, if not regulated and stopped could cause
atrocious behaviour and enforce Dominant
ideologies that could cripple equality and peace just
as was done by the Nazi Party in the 1930s.
And so…

16.  Hopefully, this has helped you to understand
the effects theory.
The Effects theory.