Audience Theory

The Effects/Hypodermic Model:

• The original model for audience was the effects/hypodermic model which stressed the effects of the mass media on their audiences. This model owes much to the supposed power of the mass media to inject their audiences with ideas and meanings.
• Totalitarian states and dictatorships are similar in their desire to have complete control over the media, a way of controlling entire populations. An example of this the Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will.
• The effects model has several variants and despite the fact that it is an outdated model it continues to exert influence in present debates about censorship and control in the media.
• A less theoretical variant of the effects model was developed in response to the violent content of certain TV programmes. Groups such as the National Viewers and Listeners Association took issue with TV output that was deemed to be explicitly sexual, too violent or in other ways offensive. Their concerns were for those vulnerable members of the population who could be corrupted as a result of such material.

Inoculation or Culmination Model:

• This theory suggests that long-term exposure to repeated media messages makes audiences 'immune' to them. Thus, for example, prolonged exposure to media violence would desensitise the audience and therefore might be more likely to commit a violent act.
• However there are many criticisms of mass audience theories, and one of the problems with the effects model, in whatever form, have to do with its roots in behaviourist psychology. The behaviourist explanation of human behaviour (Skinner and Pavlov) is looking increasingly hard to justify as we have come to develop a fuller understanding of the complexities of human behaviour, which is not predictable nor is it controllable. There are also the difficulties of linking cause and effect in terms of how we engage with media texts. The large number of studies that have been done do not prove the case conclusively either way.
• Other criticisms of this model centre on the stress that it places on the audience as passive, whereas newer models suggest that the audience is much more active than was initially supposed.
• Mass audience theory can also be seen as elitist. The theorists who are analysing the masses see them as easily led and less perceptive than themselves.
• A less extreme interpretation of this model is to note that the media, especially TV, can influence general perceptions about public events and social trends.
• This model, it seems, is something of an anachronism but it is constantly revived by politicians and social commentators when moral panics are generated around issues such as 'video nasties' and their influence on children, such as the Jamie Bulger case of 1993. Such concerns often try to scapegoat parts of media output as if these were the sole relevant factor in anti-social behaviour. This approach ignores the other factors that work as a mix to influence behaviour such as home, school, peers and social interaction.

The Two Step Flow:

• The idea of this theory is that whatever our experience of the media we will be likely to discuss it with others and if we respect their opinion, the chances are that we will be more likely to be affected by it. The theory calls these people opinion leaders.

Uses and Gratifications Model:

• A more recent model of audience is that of uses and gratifications, which suggests that there is a highly active audience making use of the media for a range of purposes designed to satisfy needs such as entertainment, information and identification. In this model the individual has the power and they select the media texts that best suit their needs and their attempts to satisfy those needs. The psychological basis for this model is the hierarchy of needs identified by Maslow. Among the chief exponents of this model are McQuail and Katz.
• The main areas that are identified in this model are:
• a) The need for information about our geographical and social world (news and drama)
• b) The need for identity, by using characters and personalities to define our sense of self and social behaviour (film and celebrities)
• c) The need for social interaction through experiencing the relationships and interaction of others (soap lives and sitcom)
• d) The need for diversion by using the media for purposes of play and entertainment (game shows and quizzes).
• A criticism of this model is the assumption is that audiences are always active. It does not take account of the fact that a viewer may watch a TV programme because they can't be bothered to turn it off. Similarly they might look at an advertising poster because there is no other around. They do not have the choice of a poster that satisfies their desire for a particular representation.

Reception Analysis:

• This can be seen as an extension of the uses and gratifications model. It concentrates on the audience themselves and how they come to a text. The idea is that the audience themselves help to create the meaning of text and this depends on their social values, such as gender, age, class and context of time in which we are living.

The Active Audience:

• Stuart Hall's reception theory suggests that audiences take either dominant, negotiated and oppositional readings of texts. It is a semiological approach because it recognises the importance of the analysis of signs, particularly visual signs, that shape so much of modern media output.
• Dominant: The reader recognises what a programme's referred meaning is and broadly agrees with it.
• Negotiated: The reader accepts, rejects or refines elements of the programme in the light of previously held views
• Oppositional: The dominant meaning is recognised but rejected for cultural, political or ideological reasons.
• This model also takes into account the idea that we can never consider one example of the media on its own. Understanding of one text may be affected by our knowledge of another, for example a tabloid article about a soap opera.
• Morley looked at audiences and found that there are clear differences in the uses that people made of the media in their everyday lives depending on gender. He found that men prefer factual programmes, while women prefer fiction. Also, men prefer watching the programmes extensively whereas women tended to be doing something else at the same time. Finally he found that if someone had control over what the family was watching it tended to be the man, often with the remote control in his hand.
• Still in line with the active audience idea is the concept of mode of address. This refers to the way that a text speaks to us in a style that encourages us to identify with the text because it is 'our' kind of text. For example Friends is intended for a young audience because of the way it uses music and the opening credits to develop a sense of fun, energy and enthusiasm that the perceived audience can identify with. This does not mean that other groups are excluded, merely that the dominant mode of address is targeted at the young. Mode of address can even be applied to entire outputs, as in the case of Channel Four which works hard to form a style of address aimed at an audience which is informed, articulate and in some ways a specialised one. Newspapers, too, often construct their presentation to reflect what they imagine is the identity of their typical readers.

The Ethnographic Model:

• The researcher enters into the culture of the group and uses questions and interviews to try to understand media engagement from the perspective of the group. What seems to be emerging from this work is:
• a) The focus on the domestic context of reception of media texts
• b) The element of cultural competence
• c) Technologies
• The engagement with the media is often structured by the domestic environment because of the domestication of entertainment and leisure. It appears that the home is not a free space and there are issues about finance for purchase of media goods, control of the remote, the gendered nature of watching TV and the 'flow' of TV that fits alongside or within a set of domestic relationships. So TV viewing may not be the concentrated, analytical business that some theorists suggest.
• The second area is best understood in terms of texts that can be identified as belonging to a genre that has gender appeal. For example, soaps are usually seen to have a strong female bias in viewing audience. There is a selection of competencies that are brought to such texts so knowing about cliff-hangers, the role of the matriarch or the fluid nature of character relationships simply adds to the pleasures associated with the text.
• Competencies even include the very expectations that you have for the text. The male preference for news and more factual forms can be seen as a feature of cultural competence because men occupy more public space than domestic space and therefore feel the need to be aware of the public worlds reflected in such texts.
• The third area identified relates to the way people engage with the hardware in order to enjoy the output of the media. There seems to be a strong gender divide here with computers and complex technology having a strong association with males. If present trends in technology continue then there is a real danger that just as our society is dividing along lines of information-rich and information-poor then there will be a further demarcation along gender lines. This explains why schools and TV programmes need to present positive gender representations and good practice that supports females and technological expertise.