2. Audience Theory
Three questions:
1) Why do audiences choose to
consume certain texts?
2) How do they consume texts?
3) What happens when they
consume texts?
3. Audience Theory
There are three theories of audience that we
can apply to help us come to a better
understanding about the relationship
between texts and audience.
1. The Effects Model or the Hypodermic
Model
2. The Uses and Gratifications Model
3. Reception Theory
4. The Direct Effects Model
The Effects Model
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 the influence
The power lies with the message of the text
5. The Direct Effects Model
This model is also called:
The Hypodermic Model
Here, the messages in media texts are injected
into the audience by the powerful, syringe-like,
media
The audience is powerless to resist
Therefore, the media works like a drug and the
audience is drugged, addicted, doped or duped.
6. The Direct Effects Model
Key evidence for the Effects Model
1. The Frankfurt School theorised in the 1920s and
30s that the mass media acted to restrict and
control audiences to the benefit of corporate
capitalism and governments
2. The Bobo Doll experiment
This is a very controversial piece of research that
apparently proved that children copy violent
behaviour
7. The Direct Effects Model
The Bobo Doll Experiment
This was conducted in 1961 by Albert Bandura
8. The Direct Effects Model
In the 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
9. The Direct Effects Model
The conclusion reached was that
children will imitate violent media
content
There are many problems with the
experiment. What do you think are the
flaws with the methodology? Does it
indeed prove that children imitate
violent media content?
10. The Direct Effects Model
The Effects Model (backed up by the
Bobo Doll experiment) is still the
dominant theory used by politicians,
some parts of the media and some
religious organisations in attributing
violence to the consumption of media
texts.
11. The Effects Model
Key examples sited as causing or being contributory
factors are:
The film Child’s Play 3 in the murder of James
Bulger in 1993
The game Manhunt in the murder of Stefan
Pakeerah in 2004 by his friend Warren LeBlanc
The film A Clockwork Orange (1971) in a number
of rapes and violent attacks
The film Severance (2006) in the murder of Simon
Everitt
12. The Direct Effects Model
In each case there was a media and political outcry
for the texts to be banned
In some cases laws were changed, films banned, and
newspapers demanded the burning of films
Subsequently, in each case it was found that no
case could be proven to demonstrate a link between
the text and the violent acts
13. The Direct Effects Model
The Effects Model contributes to Moral
Panics whereby:
The media produce inactivity, make us into
students who won’t pass their exams or
‘couch potatoes’ who make no effort to get a
job
The media produces violent ‘copycat’
behaviour or mindless shopping in response
to advertisements
14. The Uses and Gratifications Model
It is still unclear that there is any link between the
consumption of violent media texts and violent imitative
behaviour
It is also clear the theory is flawed in that many people do
watch violent texts and appear not to be influenced
Therefore a new theory is necessary
This is called the:
Uses and Gratifications
Model
15. The Uses and Gratifications Model
The Uses and Gratifications Model is
the opposite of the Effects Model
The audience is active
The audience uses the text & is NOT used
by it
The audience uses the text for its own
gratification or pleasure
16. The Uses and Gratifications Model
Here, power lies with the audience NOT the
producers
This theory emphasises what audiences do with
media texts – how and why they use them
Far from being duped by the media , the audience
is free to reject, use or play with media
meanings as they see fit
17. The Uses and Gratifications Model
Audiences therefore use media texts to gratify needs
for:
Diversion
Escapism
Information
Pleasure
Comparing relationships and lifestyles with one’s
own
Sexual stimulation
18. The Uses and Gratifications Model
The audience is in control and consumption of the
media helps people with issues such as:
Learning
Emotional satisfaction
Relaxation
Help with issues of personal identity
Help with issues of social identity
Help with issues of aggression and violence
19. The Uses and Gratifications Model
Controversially the theory suggests the
consumption of violent images can be helpful
rather than harmful
The theory suggests that audiences act out their
violent impulses through the consumption of
media violence
The audience’s inclination towards violence is
therefore sublimated, and they are less likely to
commit violent acts
20. The Uses and Gratifications Model
This theory is supported by American psychologist,
Abraham Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs’…
22. Reception Theory
Given that the Effects model and the Uses and
Gratifications have their problems and limitations a
different approach to audiences was developed by
the academic Stuart Hall at Birmingham
University in the 1970s
This considered how texts were encoded with
meaning by producers and then decoded
(understood) by audiences
23. Reception Theory
The theory suggests that:
When a producer constructs a text it is encoded
with a meaning or message that the producer
wishes to convey to the audience
In some instances audiences will correctly decode
the message or meaning and understand what the
producer was trying to say
In some instances the audience will either reject or
fail to correctly understand the message
24. Reception Theory
Stuart Hall identified three types of audience
readings (or decoding) of the text:
1. Dominant or preferred
2. Negotiated
3. Oppositional
25. Reception Theory
1. Dominant
Where the audience decodes the
message as the producer wants them
to do and broadly agrees with it
E.g. Watching a political speech and
agreeing with it
26. Reception Theory
2. Negotiated
Where the audience accepts, rejects or
refines elements of the text in light of
previously held views
E.g. Neither agreeing or disagreeing
with the political speech or being
disinterested
27. Reception Theory
3. Oppositional
Where the dominant meaning is
recognised but rejected for cultural,
political or ideological reasons
E.g. Total rejection of the political
speech and active opposition
29. Homework – due Friday
Create a presentation on a film of your choice, using
audience theory to explain its appeal to audiences
Apply the 3 key audience theories
Include evidence form the film to support each
audience theory
Explain which audience theory you think best
explains the films appeal
