A2 Media Studies

AUDIENCE THEORY
Learning Objectives:
To understand the key
types of audience theory
To apply audience theory to
an example music video
 AFL Progress
Where would you place yourself on a
thermometer of understanding about
AUDIENCE?
 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?
WHY?
 Condense these theories onto paper/post-it

 Summarise the key points of each theory

 You will be using these notes to apply the theories to

a music video in your practical groups
 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
 The 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
 The 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.
 The 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
 The Effects Model

The Bobo Doll Experiment

 This was conducted in 1961 by Albert Bandura
 The 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
 The Effects Model What are
the flaws of
this theory?

 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
 The 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
 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
 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
 The Uses and Gratifications Model

 Audiences therefore use media texts to gratify needs

for:
 Diversion
Think about your initial
 Escapism responses in the starter
 Information activity: where any the same as
these ‘needs’?
 Pleasure
 Comparing relationships and lifestyles with one’s
own
 Sexual stimulation
 Maslow’s
Hierarchy of
Needs (1943)
 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
 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
 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
 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
 Reception Theory

 Stuart Hall identified three types of audience

readings (or decoding) of the text:

1. Dominant or preferred
2. Negotiated
3. Oppositional
 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
 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
 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
 Reception Theory

Audience Decodes Meaning/Message

Dominant or preferred

Producer
Encodes Negotiated
Meaning

Oppositional
 Watch the video

 Individually- make notes on

 What reasons are there for an audience watching the video?

 Who is the intended audience? How do you know?

 How are the following things used to engage /attract an

audience?
 Mise-en-scene
 Camera
 Sound
 Editing
 As your practical group:

Feedback and share your findings with

another group

Then be prepared to share your findings

with the whole class
AFL Progress AT THE END OF THE LESSON
Where would you place yourself now on a
thermometer of understanding about
AUDIENCE?