audience ppt

8/3/2019 Audience Ppt

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AUDIENCE

THEORY


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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?


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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


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The Effects Model

The consumption of media texts has an effect

or influence upon the audience.

It is normally considered that this effect isnegative.

Audiences are passive and powerless to

prevent the influence.

The power lies with the message of the text.


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The Effects Model

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 andthe audience is drugged, addicted, doped or

duped.


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The Effects Model

Key evidence for the Effects Model:

The Frankfurt School theorised in the 1920s

and 30s that the mass media acted to restrictand control audiences to the benefit of

corporate capitalism and governments.

The Bobo Doll experiment: a controversial

piece of research that apparently proved that

children copy violent behaviour.


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Bobo Doll Experiment

Albert Bandura (1961)


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Children watched a video where an adult

violently attacked a 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 where 88% of the children

imitated the violent behaviour that they had

earlier viewed.

8 months later 40% of the children recreated

the same violent behaviour.


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The conclusion reached was that children will

imitate violent media content. There are manyproblems with the experiment. What do you

think are the flaws with the methodology?

Does it prove that children imitate violent

media content?

The Effects Model (backed up by the Bobo Doll

experiment) is still the dominant theory used

by politicians, some parts of the media andsome religious organisations in attributing

violence to the consumption of media texts.


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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 StefanPakeerah in 2004 by friend Warren LeBlanc.

The film AClockwork Orange (1971) in a

number of rapes and violent attacks.

The film Severance (2006) in the murder of

Simon Everitt.


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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.

Can you blame the media? Have you ever

recreated a scene from a media text?


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The Effects Model

The EM contributes to Moral Panics whereby:

The media produce inactivity, make us into

students who wont pass exams or couchpotatoes who make no effort to get a job.

The media produces violent copycat

behaviour or mindless shopping in response

to advertisements.

Which is it? Are both right? Are both wrong?


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Other models/theories

It is still unclear if 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.

Perhaps other theories are needed to explain

the behaviour...


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Uses and Gratifications

The Uses and Gratifications Model is very

different from the Effects Model.

The audience is active. The audience uses the text and is NOT used by

it.

The audience uses the text for its owngratification or pleasure.

Why do you watch TV, Film, listen to music?


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Here, power lies with the audience NOT the

producers.

This theory emphasises what audiences dowith 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.


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Audiences therefore use media texts to gratify

needs for:

Diversion Escapism

Information

Pleasure

Comparing relationships/lifestyles with own

Sexual stimulation


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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


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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 diverted, and they are less likely to

commit violent acts.


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Issues with U & G

Each individuals actions and effects on those

actions will depend solely on the situation.

Are people really free to choose the mediaand the interpretations they desire?

How can you measure peoples feelings?

It focuses too narrowly on the individual andneglects the social structure and place of the

media in that structure.


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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 Stuart Hall at Birmingham

University in the 1970.

This considered how texts were encoded with

meaning by producers and then decoded(understood) by audiences.


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Reception Theory

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 saying.

In some instances the audience will either

reject or fail to correctly understand the

message.


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Reception Theory

Hall identified three types of audience

readings (or decoding) of the text:

Preferred, Negotiated,O

ppositional Preferred:

Where the audience decodes the message as

the producer wants them to do and broadlyagrees with it (e.g.: watching a political speech

and agreeing with it).


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Negotiated:

Where the audience accepts, rejects or refineselements of the text in light of previously held

views (e.g.: neither agreeing nor disagreeing

with the political speech or being apathetic).

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).


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How audience decodes meaning

PRODUCER

ENCODES

MESSAGE

PREFERRED

NEGOTIATED

OPPOSITIONAL

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