Audience Theories

There are 3 main audience theories:

Effects Model (Hypodermic Needle Model)

The effects theory is a rather outdated model of audience consumption. It places the power with the film and the production company who created the film. The audience is seen as a single mass that passively receives the messages of the film. It implies that the powerful media ‘inject’ messages into an unquestioning audience. Although, this is considered to be an oversimplified model, it is certainly true that the media can have an enormous effect on people, people can be ‘addicted; to computer games and certain uses of the internet, governments use media propaganda to further their aims and advertising is known to be so powerful that certain products cannot be advertised on television. E.g. cigarettes.

BASICALLY: The effect or influence the media text has upon the audience. Normally considered that the effect is negative. Audiences are passive and powerless to prevent the influence. Power lies with the message of the text.

The Uses and Gratification Model

Emphasises what consumes of media products do with them, the power is considered to lie with the individual consumer of the media who is seen to use certain tests to gratify certain needs and interests. Theorists Blumler and Katz postulated that there were five main reasons why audiences consumed media texts:

·      To be informed or educated

·      In order to identify with characters and situations

·      To be entertained

·      To enable themselves to socially interact with others (watching, listening or reading)

·      To escape from their daily troubles or woes

BASICALLY: The audience is active. The audience uses the text and is not used by it. The audience uses the text for its own gratification and pleasure. Here, the power lies with the audience and not the producers. Theory emphasises what the audience do with the text. Free to reject the media text.

Controversially, theory suggests the consumption of violent images can be helpful. Audience may act upon violent impulses through the media. However, audience’s inclination towards violence is sublimated and less likely to commit violent acts.

The Influence Model

Emphasises the subtler, less direct capacity of the media to influence perceptions. It recognises that people respond to other influences, such as opinion leaders, who may mediate the message of the media. Thus, media effect can be seen as one of reinforcement – closer to ‘influence; than ‘brainwashing’. Research by Stuart Hall found that rather than the autonomous individualised audience members of the uses and gratification approach, that audience members shared certain frameworks of interpretation and that they work at decoding media texts within these frameworks. Hall proposed three types of audience readings:

·      Dominant: the viewer recognises what the film’s preferred meaning is and broadly agrees with it

·      Oppositional: where the dominant meaning is recognised by rejected for cultural or ideological reasons

·      Negotiated: where the viewer accepts, rejects or refines elements of the film in light of previously held views

REMEMBER:

What are the reasons for the audience watching the video?

Who is the intended audience? How do you know?
How are the following things used to engage/attract the audience? Mise-en-scene, camera, sound, editing.