Audience

Different audiences can understand a media message but can have

different responses to it. Some people believe and accept the message,
others reject it using knowledge from their own experience or can use
processes of logic or other rationales to criticise what is being said.
There are different ways of consuming media:
Primary media texts demand close and concentrated attention from
audience e.g. Films in cinemas.
Secondary media texts provide a background for an audience who are
often doing something else at the same time and are distracted e.g. Radio
and some TV programmes.
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
EFFECTS MODEL

The consumption of media text has an effect or influence upon the

audience. It is normally considered that this effect is negative. Audience
are passive and powerless to prevent the influence. The power lies with
the message of the text.
The Effects model also refers to the Hypodermic model. The message in
media texts are injected into the audience by the powerful, syringe like,
media. The audience becomes addicted. The Hypodermic model suggests
that the information from a text passes into the mass consciousness of the
audience unmediated, i.e. the experience, intelligence and opinion of an
individual are not relevant to the reception of the text. This theory
suggests that, as an audience, we are manipulated by the creators of
media texts, and that our behaviour and thinking might be easily changed
by media-makers.
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.

The Uses and Gratification model is opposite of the Effect model. The
audience is active. The audiences uses the text and is not used by it. The
audience uses the text for its own gratification or pleasure. The audience
is in control and consumption of the media helps people with issues such
as:

Learning
Emotional satisfaction
Relaxation

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 the
decoded by audiences.
The theory suggests that:

When a producer constructs a text it is encoded with a meaning or

message that 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.

Stuart Hall identified three types of audiences:

Dominant or preferred
Negotiated
Oppositional