Handbook of media theorists

1. THEORY
HANDBOOK
N I A M H T H O R N E

2. ADORNO – THE HYPODERMIC MODEL
• The key concept that theorist Adorno uses is the hypodermic model.
• He sees the media as very powerful and influential.
• He believes that the media injects its message into the audience.
• This approach sees the audience as passive and controlled by the media.

3. MULVEY – THE MALE GAZE
• Mulvey believes that in cinema, males are represented and portrayed differently to
females.
• She sees males as active and females as passive
• She also believes that females are styled often to provide visual pleasure to male
characters, connoting ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’.
• She also sees that the audience generally identify more with the male characters as
they are active characters.

4. DYER - STEREOTYPES
• Stereotypes are now mostly seen as negative
• Dyer sees stereotypes as a ‘shortcut to meaning’ and a ‘simple, striking, easily-grasped
from of representation’.
• He also sees stereotypes as an expression of values and believes that they invoke
consensus about what we think about different groups of people.
• In his opinion, these stereotypes maintain boundaries between groups of people and
establish what is acceptable and what is not.

5. SAUSSURE- SIGNS
• Saussure looks at signs. He believes that they are made up of 2 parts; the signifier and
the signified.
• The signifier is the form the sign takes, the signified is the concept it represents.
• Saussure was one of the first to develop a semiotic theory.

6. PIERCE – ICON, SYMBOL, INDEX
• Pierce also focuses mostly on signs.
• He categorises signs into 3 types. The Icon, the symbol and the index.
• Icon – A signifier that physically resembles the signified, e.g. women and men signs on toilets.
• Symbol – A signifier that cannot exist without the signified e.g. a stop sign, a recycling sign.
• Index – A signifier that represents the signified and is culturally learned e.g. a clock.
• Pierce defines a sign as ‘something which stands to somebody for something.

7. BLULMER & KATZ – USES AND
GRATIFICATIONS MODEL
• Blulmer and Katz look at the uses and gratifications model, this approach is an audience active model
meaning the audience uses the media to satisfy their needs in relation to four areas; Diversion, personal
relationships, personal identity and surveillance.
• Surveillance: finding out about relevant events and conditions in immediate surroundings, society and the
world, seeking advice on practical matters or opinion and decision choices, learning self-education, satisfying
curiosity and general interest and gaining a sense of security through knowledge.
• Personal identity: finding reinforcement for personal values, finding models of behaviour, identifying with
valued others in the media and gaining insight into one’s self.
• Personal relationships: gaining insight into circumstances of others; social empathy, identifying with
others and gaining a sense of belonging, finding a basis for conversation and social interactions, helping to
carry out social roles, enabling one to connect with family, friends and society and having a substitute for real
life companionship.
• Diversion: escaping, or being diverted, from problems, relaxing, getting intrinsic cultural or aesthetic
enjoyment, filling time and emotional release.

8. HALL- ENCODING/DECODING
• Hall argues that media producers encode their preferred readings through the use of
technical codes & conventions. The audience then uses their understanding to decode
the meaning.
• This is an active audience model
• Preferred reading: the meaning/message that producers want to communicate to
the audience.
• Encoding: the process of constructing meaning through the use of
codes/conventions.
• Decoding: the way in which an audience makes a sense of media text.