This document discusses various theories about how audiences interact with and make meaning from media, including: - The hypodermic needle model which sees audiences as passive receivers of media messages. - Two-step flow theory which proposes people discuss media with opinion leaders before accepting messages. - Uses and gratifications theory which views audiences as active in choosing media to fulfill needs. It also covers technological convergence and how this has changed audience consumption habits, making them more interactive in both consuming and creating media content. The effects of representing groups in media and how this relates to ideology are examined.

1. Media Institutions
 You will understand how the proliferation in
technology has affected audience patterns of
consumption and production of media
 You will be able to explain some of the issues raised in
the targeting of national and local audiences
(specifically, British) by international or global
institutions.

2. How to think about Audiences
• The Hypodermic needle model
• Two-step flow
• Uses and Gratifications
• Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
• Reception theory
• Cultural hegemony, representation and
ideology

3. Effects theories

4. The hypodermic needle model (1920s)
• This theory was the first attempt to explain how mass audiences
might react to mass media. It is a crude model and suggests that
audiences passively receive the information transmitted via a media
text, without any attempt on their part to process or challenge the
data.
• Basically, 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. It assumes that the
audience are passive.

5. Two-step flow
• Is a basic extension of the hypodermic needle model. It
differs because:
– It assumes that the audience are not as passive as they are in
the hypodermic needle model
– It suggests that the audience members will discuss the ideas
that are transmitted in the media with an “opinion leader” –
someone they trust
– After discussing with an opinion leader, it assumes the audience
are passive enough to accept the message at this point.
– It seems simplistic, but think about the number of TV critics that
audiences base their opinions of films on…is criticism of your
films going to be relevant in your exam answer and in an
application of the two-step flow theory?

6. Uses and Gratifications: Blumler and Katz (1974)
• “The audience is conceived as active”
• “In the mass communication process much initiative in linking need
gratification and media choice lies with the audience member.” (The
receiver determines what is going to be absorbed and does not allow the
media to influence them otherwise).
• “the media competes with other sources of need satisfaction.”This focuses
on the idea that each individual has several needs. In response to
this, they have created a wide range of choices that will meet these
needs. The strongest rival to media based sources include face-to-face
communication.
• “Many of the goals media use can be derived from data supplied by the
individual audience members themselves.”
• It is the individual audience members who make the decision to view the
media; therefore, they place the value on it by their individual decision to
view it.

7. Melvin DeFleur & Sandra Ball-Rokeach:
The Dependency Theory (1976).
It was, in a sense, an extension or addition to the Uses
and Gratifications Approach brought about a few years
earlier.
The theory is in essence an explanation of the
correlating relationship between the media content,
the nature of society, and the behaviour of the
audiences.
It states that people in an urban society have become
dependent on mass communication to assist them in
receiving the information that they need, in order to
make a variety of decisions concerning their everyday
lives.

8. Reception theory
Assumes that individual members of an audience will
have different responses to media texts.
Roland Barthes famously claimed that meaning from
text rested with the audience rather than creators.

9. Is the audience always going to read things in the
same way?
• Preferred reading
The preferred reading is when the audience accepts the message the clip
is trying to give. So if a Sitcom is supposed to be funny, the preferred
reading of a whole episode is that it is funny.
• Oppositional reading
An oppositional reading is the opposite to a preferred reading. If the
preferred reading is that the Sitcom is funny, then an oppositional reading
says that it isn’t. The fact some people find it funny proves that the “one
hat fits all” approach of the hypodermic needle theory cannot work.
• Negotiated reading
Is somewhere between the two. In the Sitcom example, a negotiated
reading would suggest that it is supposed to be funny, but not all the jokes
are successful. A good negotiated reader might suggest canned laughter
is trying to prove a part of the Sitcom should be funny.

10. Would it be right to show this advert to children?
The fact that we say something different to each other is proof that
we each read differently.

11. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

12. Cultural hegemony,
representation and ideology

13. How does your film industry represent groups and how
does this reflect or promote an ideology?
• Ideology is a set of dominant values or beliefs.
• Examining ideology in the film industry is
concerned with how your film presents or
seems to enforce a set of values.
• Does your film set up an idealisation –
perhaps an ideal of beauty (the beauty myth)
or an ideal about what true love is?

14. Technological convergence and its
impact targeting local, national and
international audiences.

15. Convergence
• What is convergence?
• Convergence has an impact on both institutions
and audiences:
– For institutions, diversification means they are able to
distribute across several media (e.g. a newspaper with
online versions)
– For audiences, it means the coming together of
technology that creates new ways to access and
produce media content.
For audiences, technological convergence changes consumption habits
that, inevitably, produces a new kind of “audience”. Audience are active
users.

16. How do we categorise a British film?
• Category A: films made with British money, personnel and
resources.
• Category B: films co-funded with money from Britain and from
foreign investment, but the majority of finance, cultural content
and personnel are British.
• Category C: films with mostly foreign (but not USA) and a small
British input, either financially or creatively.
• Category D: films made with the UK with (usually) British cultural
content, but financed fully or partly by American companies.
• Category E: American films with some British involvment.

17. ‘Anticipated for almost as long as the second
coming, the digital media era is finally upon us
and that much misused word ‘convergence’
has become meaningful. Newspapers are
talking about video journalism; broadcasters
are talking downloads and web companies?’
(Gibson, 2007)

18. ‘You can’t be expected to feel the pace of
change as you will have grown up with online
media as the norm, but for this part of your
studies you do need to acquire a sense of how
rapidly institutions and audiences are being
transformed by digital technology’.
(McDougall, 2008: 124)

19. Technological convergence
• How has technological convergence changed
audience’s consumption habits?
• How do audiences now interact with media?
• To what extent are audiences involved in the
creation of media rather than simply its
consumption?

20. Homework
Successful media products depend as much on
audience consumption habits as they do good
production practices. To what extent do you
agree with this statement?