Audience theory powerpoint

• 1. Audience Theory
  A2 Media Studies
  

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.
The Effects Model or the Hypodermic Model
The Uses and Gratifications Model
Reception Theory
4. 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
5. 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.
6. The Effects Model
Key evidence for the Effects Model
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
The Bobo Doll experiment
This is a very controversial piece of research that apparently proved that children copy violent behaviour
7. The Effects Model
The Bobo Doll Experiment
This was conducted in 1961 by Albert Bandura
8. 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
9. The 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 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 Childs 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 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 Effects Model
The Effects Model contributes to Moral Panics whereby:
The media produce inactivity, make us into students who wont 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 ones 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 audiences inclination towards violence is therefore sublimated, and they are less likely to commit violent acts
20. 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
21. 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
22. Reception Theory
Stuart Hall identified three types of audience readings (or decoding) of the text:
Dominant or preferred
Negotiated
Oppositional
23. Reception Theory
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
24. Reception Theory
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
25. Reception Theory
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
26. Reception Theory
Audience Decodes Meaning/Message
Dominant or preferred
Producer
EncodesNegotiated
Meaning
Oppositional