The document provides guidance for answering an exam question about analyzing a media production using audience theories. It summarizes five key audience theories: 1) The Hypodermic Needle Model which views audiences as passive receivers of media messages. 2) Stuart Hall's Encoding/Decoding model which sees audiences interpret media through dominant, oppositional, or negotiated readings. 3) Uses and Gratifications theory which views audiences as actively choosing media to fulfill needs like diversion or social interaction. 4) Effects theory which examines potential impacts of violent media on aggressive thoughts and behaviors. 5) Moral panics which argue media scares can reveal adult anxieties more than real threats. Students

1. Learning Objective:
• Understand how to plan an answer to
exam question 1b.
• Revise and understand a range of
audience theories.

2. Exam question 1b
Like question 1a, 1b is:
• about your coursework.
• 30 minutes
• 25 marks
However, it is different because:
• Only write about one production.
• Focus on analysing the product – not describing
how you made it.
• You must include at least two theorists.

3. Question 1B

4. Which concepts might we be
asked about?
Audience - how media products target audiences, which audiences
actually consume media products, how media audiences actually read
and consume. Critics?
Genre – how do we categorise media texts? How does your product
relate to other examples of the same genre? (consider print, audio,
video or online). Critics?
Narrative - Applying different models of narrative structure to your work
may reveal unconscious things that you did in the way you have
constructed it. Models and theories?
Media Language - genre, narrative, audience, techniques and
conventions of different forms of media (how shots are organised in
film, how text is laid out on a page)
Representation – how are social groups presented? What messages
are implied? What would particular types of criticism (e.g. feminism)
make of it?

5. Audience
• We are going to look at a variety of
theories relating to audience.
• Make notes on each one.

6. The Hypodermic Needle Model
• 1920s attempt to explain how mass audiences might
react to mass media
• Audiences passively receive the information
• Audiences do not process or challenge the data
so the information is unmediated .
The Hypodermic Needle Model

7. The Hypodermic Needle Model
• As an audience, we are manipulated by the creators of media
texts, and our behaviour can be easily changed by media-
makers
• Audience are passive and heterogenous
• This model is quoted during moral panics

8. Stuart hallStuart hall
andand
receptionreception
theorytheory

9. McDonalds want you to think....

10. You may agree
Or.....
You may disagree

11. Or.....
You may think that big macs do taste good,
but I’ll only have them every now and again …

12. So there are three possible readings of that
one advert.

13. The preferred or
dominant reading is
the reading media
producers hope
audiences will take
from the text.

14. The audience may reject
the preferred reading,
receiving their own
alternative message. This is
an oppositional reading.

15. Negotiated reading is when
audiences acknowledge the
preferred reading, but modify
it to
suit their own values and
opinions – a compromise.

16. Stuart Hall – Encoding/Decoding
• Dominant – ‘flag waving patriot who
responds to George Bush’s latest speech’.
• Oppositional – ‘the pacifist who
understands the speech but rejects it’.
• Negotiated – ‘the viewer who agrees with
the need for a response to Sept. 11th
but
doesn’t agree to the military means
announced’.

17. Uses & Gratifications
• 1960s – generation had grown up with TV
• audiences make choices about what they do
when consuming texts
• audiences made up of individuals who
actively consume texts for different
reasons and in different ways

18. Uses & Gratifications
Blumer and Katz (1974) state a text might be used for the
following purposes:
• 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

19. Effects Theory
(Anderson and Dill)
• study into violent videogames
• found that real-life violent video game play
was related to aggressive behaviour and
delinquency
• laboratory exposure to a graphically violent
videogame increased aggressive thoughts
and behaviour
• particularly strong impact on children
• studies like this are often cited in moral
panics

20. Moral Panics - SpringhallSpringhall
- a moral panic occurs when the official or press
reaction to a deviant social or cultural
phenomenon is out of all proportion to the
actual threat offered (1998)
- Springhall’s book “Youth, Popular Culture and
Moral Panics” points out that moral panics
have occurred in society since the nineteenth
century. He argues that moral panics give
more of an insight into adult anxieties (e.g. fear
of technology and the future).

21. Audience Theories
Hopefully you now have an understanding of
5 audience theories:
• Hypodermic needle
• Stuart Hall – Reception Theory
• Uses and Gratifications
• Effects Theory
• Springhall - moral panics

22. Applying audience theory to your
work
• Choose one of your coursework productions and answer the
following:
1) Who is your target audience? How did you develop your target
audience?
2) How does your production appeal to your target audience?
3) What effects could your product have on an audience, according to
the hypodermic needle theory?
4) What are the preferred, negotiated and oppositional readings that
could be made of your product?
5) What uses and gratifications will the target audience get from the
production?
6) Applying Effects Theory, are there any possible negative impacts of
your product?
• How useful is the concept of audience in understanding your work?