Audience Theories

On the 11th of September we learnt about the history of Media. There are 4 different theories as to why people watch television, these theories have been adapted and change over time to produce a new, more recent theory.

Theory 1 - The Hypodermic needle Model.

Dating from the 1920's, this theory was the first attempt to explain how mass audience might react to mass media. It suggests that audience passively receive whatever they are told without having to process it or question what they are being told. This theory was produced when media was still relatively new, things like cinema and radio were less than two decades old. The idea that the government could use advertising and propaganda to sway people to their way of thinking was still new.

The model suggests that the information from a text passes through the audiences consciousness unmediated. It also proposes that the audiences opinions and behaviour were easily changed by media-makers and that we are easily brain washed by media texts. It assumes that the audience are passive and heterogeneous. This theory is still brought up during moral panics by parents, politicians and pressure groups as it is still believed that media can brain wash certain groups on society. And there is still a fear that people will watch sexual or violent behaviour and try to repeat it.

e.g. comics in the 1950's and rap music in the 2000's

Theory 2 - Two-step flow

The hypodermic theory was soon proved wrong when researchers realised that the audience wasn't as passive as they first thought.
In the 1930's Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson and Hazel Gaudet decided to interview people who voted in the presidential election to see why they voted for certain people. This will have helped them to see what methods of media and advertising worked best and why. They found that people only filtered what they liked .

They concluded that everyone is different and so we choose what we want to watch. This took power away from the media.

(This was also known as the 'Limited affects Paradign')

Theory 3 - Uses and Gratifications

In the 1970's Bulmer and Katz came up with the theory that people have a choice to watch what they want and came up with four main reasons why they would watch TV

• Diversion - to escape from everyday problems and routines
• Personal Relationships - for emotional support
• Surveillance - finding out information (news and weather)
• Personal Identity - Relating to what you find yourself with in the programme

In the future this list will multiply due to the media expanding (video games and technology)

Reception Theory

In the 1980's to 1990's Stuart Hall researched how the audience receive media.

They found that media was produced for certain genders, class and ethnicity. This was called preferred reading. The theory is that media texts were encoded by the producers and decoded by the audience.

They realised that media should be produced to give people what they want and to get a bigger audience.

For a more detailed description of reception theory look at this link
http://www.filmreference.com/encyclopedia/Independent-Film-Road-Movies/Reception-Theory.html