Audience Theories

ZOE ANDERSON

Audience

Mass audience or broadcast audience are large

audiences who consume mainstream or popular
culture ie: sit-coms, soap operas, reality TV shows
etc...
However audiences have evolved and are nowadays not
a mass and therefore are no longer the unquestioning
consumers as they once were in the past. Audiences
now are complex and sophisticated in their response.

Audience Theory
The three theories that can be applied to better
understand the relationship that co-exists between
texts and audience are :
.Effects model or Hypodermic Needle Theory
.Uses and Gratifications Model
.Reception Theory

The Effects Model/Hypodermic Needle

Theory
The consumption of media texts has an effect or influence upon
the audience. It is normally considered that this effect is negative.
Audiences are passive and powerless to prevent this influence.
The power lies within the message of the text.
THIS CAN ALSO BE CALLED THE HYPODERMIC NEEDLE
THEORY
The audiences are passive and powerless to resist as the messages
in the media texts are injected into the audience.
Therefore the media works like a drug and the audience is
drugged, addicted, duped.

Evidence to support
the Effects Model/Hypodermic Needle Theory
The Frankfurt School theorised in the 1920s and
1930s that to benefit corporate capitalism and
governments the media was used as a tool to restrict
and control audiences.
The Bobo Doll experiment along with other recent
scientific experiments are all pieces of research that
prove or indefinitely show a strong correlation
between violent behaviour and violent media content

The Bobo Doll Experiment

Children watched a video where an adult violently
attacked a clown toy called a Bobo Doll.
The children were then taken to a room with attractive
toys that they were not permitted to touch.
The children were then led to another room with Bobo
Dolls.
88% of the children imitated the violent behaviour that
they had earlier viewed. 8 months later 40% of the
children reproduced the same violent behaviour

More evidence to support the Effects Model

These examples of violent media texts have been the cause
of debate in whether or not they were the contributing
factor in the violent behaviour that coincided with the
release of these media texts.
.Childs Play 3 (1991) in the murder of James Bulger in 1993
.Manhunt (2004) in the murder of Stefan Pakeerah in 2004
by his friend Warren LeBlanc
.A Clockwork Orange (1971) in a number of rapes and
violent attacks
.Severance (2006) in the murder of Simon Everitt

Uses and Gratifications Model

This model supports the idea that audiences are a complex mixture of
individuals who select media texts that best suit their need for
consumption and give them gratification.
This can be categorised into :
PERSONAL IDENTITY, INFORMATION, ENTERTAINMENT, SOCIAL
(PIES)
.PERSONAL IDENTITY: our need to define our identity and increase our
sense of self. We as an audience desire to project ourselves via the texts
we consume and the media texts we consume such as the music we
consume and the shows we watch are all an expression of our
identities. One aspect of this type of gratification is known as value
reinforcement ie, we choose television programmes/newspapers that
hold similar beliefs to us.

Uses and Gratification Model continued

.INFORMATION: our need to know what is happening in the
world. This relates back to Maslows need for security. By keeping
up to date with news about local and international events we feel
we have the knowledge to avoid or deal with dangers.
.ENTERTAINMENT: the need for escape, entertainment and
relaxation. All types of television programmes can be used for
diversion and relaxtion.
.SOCIAL: our need to interact with other people. This is provided
by forming virtual relationships with characters in soaps, films,
drams and other media texts.

Reception Theory
Stuart Hall in the 1970s also approached audience as active
and instead considered how texts were encoded with meaning
by the producers and then decoded by the audiences.
There are three types of audience readings or decoding of text:
.Dominant or preferred
.Negotiated
.Oppositional

Reception Theory
So to be more specific; a producer constructs a text and
encodes a meaning or message that the producer wishes
to convey to the audience.
In some cases audiences will correctly decode the
message and understand what the producer is trying to
say.
In some instance the audience will either reject, fail to
correctly understand the message or come away with a
different understanding.

Reception Theory- Dominant

This is where the audience decodes the message as the
producer wants them to and broadly agrees with it.
This typically would be the message behind the
majority of most mainstream media texts; easy to
grasp and appealing to the general audience.
Ie: the antagonist gets whats coming to them in the
most universal sense of justice and the protagonist is
well rewarded and lives happily ever after.

Reception theory- Negotiated

This is where the audience accepts, rejects or refines elements of the text in light of previously
held views.
The audience go through a negotiation with themselves to allow them to accept the way in
which the text is presented. The audience may or disagree or agree with some elements of the
text.
.An example of this can be found in both niche and mainstream movies where the ending is
left in a cliff-hanger and open to interpretation, ie Inception (2013) with the spinning die and
the debate if whether the protagonist is in the real world or in another layer of his imagination.
.Another example could be a producers choice to add a controversial back story to further
develop a character evoking empathy or hatred from the audience.
. A Clockwork Orange (1971), some audience members may feel empathy due to the cruel
treatment given to the main character for the majority of the film, while others feel it is well
deserved because of past heinous acts such as rape committed by the character. It is this
political ideology that divides the audience.

Reception Theory- Oppositional

This is where the dominant meaning is recognised by
the audience but is rejected for the cultural, political
or ideological reasons. More specifically, the audience
finds themselves in conflict with the text due to their
beliefs or experiences.

(Ie: media texts and films that are hard to watch,

devaluing human life, racist, openly sexist?)