The document discusses several theories about how audiences interact with and make meaning from media. It describes the direct effects model, which views audiences as passive receivers of media messages. It also covers uses and gratifications theory, which argues audiences actively seek out media to fulfill needs like surveillance, identity, diversion and social interaction. Additionally, it explains reception theory, where audiences decode media through their own experiences and social positions, which can lead to preferred, negotiated, oppositional or aberrant interpretations.

2.  Audience
 Representation
 Narrative
 Media Language
 Genre

3.  Audience Theories:1
 Direct Effects Model:
 The media is seen as a hypodermic syringe
 This means that the contents of the media are
injected into the thoughts of the audience
 The audience accept the attitudes, opinions and
beliefs expressed by the medium without question
 What is wrong with this model?
 Read the following quotation and see how far would
agree with it?
 “Audiences are not blank sheets of paper on which
media messages can be written; members of an
audience will have prior attitudes and beliefs which
will determine how effective media messages are.”

4.  Uses and Gratification Model:
 Four main needs that are satisfied by television:
 Can you sort them out
 Surveillance, Personal Identity, Diversion and Personal
Relationships
 A form of escaping from the pressures of every day)
 The viewer gains companionship, either with the
television characters, or through conversations with
others about television.
 The viewer is able to compare their life with the lives
of characters and situations on television
 The media are looked upon for a supply of
information about what is happening in the world.

5.  Reception Theory:
 Meanings were encoded by the producer into the
media text, using codes and conventions and
 The audiences decode the meaning from the text.
 The audience‟s interpretation, decoding, is dependant
on
 The socio/economic factors such as class, gender,
age, education and ethnicity.
 The individual‟s past experiences and also previous
knowledge and experience of the medium.
 There are four types of interpretations: preferred,
negotiated, oppositional and aberrant

6.  Representation is:
 The way in which ideas, objects, people, groups and life-
forms are depicted by the mass media.
 Is the method used by the mass media to create
meanings.
 Representations may be in speech or writing as well as still
or moving pictures.
 Representation is unavoidably selective, foregrounding
some things and backgrounding others.
 Representations which become familiar, through constant
re-use, come to feel 'natural' and unmediated.
 Media representation can do one or more of three things:
 it can reinforce stereotypes
 it can challenge them
 it can inform them

7.  The way in which a story is told in both
fictional and “factual” media texts
 Narrative is defined as “a chain of events in
a cause-effect relationship occurring in
time”

8.  Media texts are constructed using a creative language with its own
rules, codes and conventions.
 Language can be video, audio or text (verbal or NVC)
 For example, scary music heightens fear, close ups convey
intimacy, big headlines signal significance.
 It is argued that there is a difference between the story given to
the viewer through the narrative and the story communicated to
the audience through media language.
 For example, camerawork can often provide us with clues to the
story that the narrative won‟t reveal until later. Similarly, print
techniques, such as headlines, provide clues that the narrative will
reveal later.
 All media texts address their intended audience in a particular
way, establishing a relationship between the producer of the text
and the media‟s audience.
 Understanding the grammar, syntax and metaphor system of
media language, especially the language of sounds and visuals,
which can reach beyond the rational to our deepest emotional
core, is important
 It increases our appreciation and enjoyment of media experiences
as well as helps us to be less susceptible to manipulation.

9.  Genres may even function as a means of preventing a
text from dissolving into 'individualism and
incomprehensibility„
 From the point of view of the producers of texts within a
genre, an advantage of genres is that they can rely on
readers already having knowledge and expectations
about works within a genre.
 From the point of view of audiences, it helps them to
choose the products which fulfil their interest and
expectations
 In general discussions of television with children aged
from 8- to 12-years-old, David Buckingham 1993, found
'considerable evidence of children using notions of
genre, both explicitly and implicitly':
 Some critics suggest that 'readers learn genres
gradually, usually through unconscious familiarization'
 Familiarity with a genre enables readers to generate
feasible predictions about events in a narrative.