This document summarizes several theories related to audiences, narratives, representation, and identity in media studies. It outlines key concepts from theories such as the magic bullet theory, audience gratification theory, two-step flow theory, encoding/decoding theory, genre theories, narrative theories, representation theories, and identity theories. Theories discussed include those proposed by Berger, Hoynes, Blumer, Katz, Lazarsfeld, Berelson, Gaudet, Hall, Ryall, Neale, Buckingham, Knight, Bordwell, Branston, Stafford, Levi-Strauss, Barthes, Propp, Todorov, Dyer, Jenkins, Merleau Ponty, Strinati, Fou

1. Audience Theories

2. The Magic Bullet Theory
• Berger 1995, Hoynes 1997
• Graphically assumes that the media's message
is a bullet fired from the "media gun" into the
viewer's "head“.

3. Audience Gratification Theory
• Blumer and Katz
• This approach also takes account of people’s
personalities and personal needs and suggests that
audience’s find different needs satisfied by different
texts.
• Escapism - Escape from everyday problems and
routine,
Personal Identity - Seeing yourself reflected in texts
Personal Relationships - Finding a connection with
someone in a text
Surveillance - Keeping up to date with news and
current information

4. Two Step Flow Theory
• Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel
Gaudet 1994
• That informal, personal contacts were
mentioned far more frequently than exposure
to radio or newspaper as sources of influence
on voting behaviour
• Word of Mouth

5. Encoding & Decoding Theory
• Stuart Hall
• The media encodes messages within texts for
audiences to decode. The audience does not
simply passively accept a text and decode
these messages according to their lives and
what is relevant to them to interpret it in the
way they want

6. Genre Theories
http://www.slideshare.net/HeworthMedia/g
enre-theory-6920670
Genre may offer various emotional
pleasures such as empathy and escapism.

7. Tom Ryall
• Genre provides a framework of structuring rules, in the
shape of patterns/forms/styles/structures, which acts as a
form of ‘supervision’ over the work of production of
filmmakers and the work of reading by the audience.
• If we expect to see certain codes and conventions from
certain genres then it is a way for producers meeting
audience expectations.
• Genres follow certain structures and elements in creating a
genre. Producers are known to be auteurs who are
recognised for the type of products produced, therefore
the elements to that genre remain unchanged.

8. Steve Neale
• Believes that genre is derived from 'repetition and difference‘
• He believes there would be no pleasure without difference.
• ‘genres are instances of repetition and difference’ and ‘difference
is absolutely essential to the economy of genre’ mere repetition
would not attract an audience.
Here he is saying that if genres were the same, it would be boring
however there are producers and companies who create the same
type of film because it is expected of them and they can continue to
be able to engage their audience every time. ‘Pleasure is derived
from repetition and difference’
Audiences like to enjoy the same type of film genre but also love an
element of difference. Time changes and therefore so does genre.

9. David Buckingham
• “genre is not simply given by the culture:
rather it is in a constant process of negotiation
and change.
• He believes that we make our own decisions
on what a genre is and we can always have a
degree of difference.

10. Deborah Knight
• ‘satisfaction is guaranteed with genre; the
deferral of the inevitable provides the
additional pleasure of prolonged anticipation.’

11. David Bordwell
• 'any theme may appear in any genre'
• 'could argue that no set of necessary and
sufficient conditions can mark off genres from
other sorts of groupings in ways that all
experts or film-goers would find acceptable'.
• He believes that genres have become
unpredictable and it has become harder to
define them.

12. Gill Branston & Roy Stafford
• Ideas derived from Neale. Believes that genres
are 'no longer fixed elements but repertoires
of elements'.
• Hybrid genres have come to change the way
we view cinema.
• Genre is often known to have simple
boundaries but there are always both
repetition and difference in genre products.
• Elements of both Neale and Ryall.

13. Narrative Theories

14. Claude Levi Strauss
• Constant creation of conflict/opposition.
Opposition can be visual (light/darkness,
movement/stillness) or conceptual (love/hate,
control/panic).
• Binary Oppositions.

15. Roland Barthes
• Enigma Code – The narrative will establish
enigmas or mysteries as it goes along.
• Unravelling the narrative from different angles
creating more than one meaning

16. Propp & Todorov
• Hero = protagonist
• Villain = antagonist

17. David Bordwell
• Audiences assume the film process within the
narrative – familiar objects and concepts.

18. Representation Theories

19. Richard Dyer
• “How we are seen determines how we are
treated, how we treat others is based on how
we see them. How we see them comes from
representation

20. Roland Barthes
• Semiotics theory explained that the use of
signs and signifiers contribute towards
representation

21. Collective Identity
Youth as rebels – morally accepted to
act this way in society, as it isn't
expected for adults to act this way.

22. David Buckingham
• “A focus on identity requires us to pay closer
attention to the ways in which media and
technologies are used in everyday life and
their consequences for social groups”.
• “Identity is an ambiguous and slippery term”

23. Henri Jenkins
• Teens are constantly updating and customising
their profiles online adding photos and songs
and posting to each other’s virtual ‘walls’.
While this could be interpreted as just playing
around, these activities could also be a means
to construct an experiment with their identity.
In particular, it can be a space for exploring
one’s gender identification and sexuality

24. Merleau Ponty
• We have an embodied experience and
anything in which we use our bodies to create,
we help builds our identity.

25. Post Modernism
• Our reality is constructed and led by the Mass
Media

26. Strinati
• Post modernism is said to describe the
emergence of a social order in which the
importance and power of the mass Media and
popular culture means that they govern and
shape all other forms of social relationships.
Popular culture signs and Media images
increasingly dominate our sense of reality and
the way we define ourselves in the world
around us. Now reality can only be defined by
surface reflections in a mirror

27. Michel Foucault
• We are born with a basic construction of
identity. Our identity mediates as we get older
and meet other people creating a collective
identity. However, it can be limited because a
stereotypical view is created and portrayed as
assumptions are made.

28. Jacques Lacan
• - Mirror Stage
• “we try to gain an understanding of ourselves
by looking through a mirror”
• Child begins to develop their identity by
‘mirroring’ what they see (media)
• ‘reflecting behaviour’ – the media being our
mirror.

29. • David Gauntlett
• Anthony Giddens
• Merleau ponty
• Michel foucault
• marxism
• Post Modernism
• Stranti -
http://rwash.wordpress.com/2010/01/09/strinati-
%E2%80%93-introduction-to-theories-of-popular-
culture/
•