UNDERSTANDING MEDIA AUDIENCES• Researchers investigating the effect of media on audiences have considered the audience in two distinct ways.

Passive Audiences:

• The earliest idea was that a mass audience is passive and inactive.

• The members of the audience are seen as couch potatoes just sitting there consuming media texts – particularly commercial television programmes. 

• It was thought that this did not require the active use of the brain. 

• The audience accepts and believes all messages in any media text that they receive. This is the passive audience model.The Hypodermic Model:

• In this model the media is seen as powerful and able to inject ideas into an audience who are seen as weak and passive.

• It was thought that a mass audience could be influenced by the same message. This appeared to be the case in Nazi Germany in the 1930s leading up to WWII. Powerful German films such as Triumph of the Will seemed to use propaganda methods to ‘inject’ ideas promoting the Nazi cause into the German audience. 

• That is why this theory is known as the Hypodermic model.It suggests that a media text can ‘inject’ ideas, values and attitudes into a passive audience who might then act upon them. 

• This theory also suggests that a media text has only one message which the audience must pick up.

•In 1957 an American theorist called Vance Packard working in advertising wrote an influential book called The Hidden Persuaders. 

• This book suggested that advertisers were able to manipulate audiences, and persuade them to buy things they may not want to buy. 

• This suggested advertisers had power over audiences. In fact this has since proved to be an unreliable model, as modern audiences are too sophisticated.

• Basically this theory stems from a fear of the mass media, and gives the media much more power than it can ever have in a democracy. 

• Also it ignores the obvious fact that not everyone in an audience behaves in the same way. 

• How can an audience be passive – think of all the times you have disagreed with something on television or just not laughed at a new so called comedy, or thought a programme was awful, i.e The Voice, X factor, Jerry Springer.

Cultivation Theory:

• This theory also treats the audience as passive. It suggests that repeated exposure to the same message – such as an advertisement – will have an effect on the audience’s attitudes and values. 

• A similar idea is known as densensitisation which suggests that long term exposure to violent media makes the audience less likely to be shocked by violence. 

• Being less shocked by violence the audience may then be more likely to behave violently.The criticism of this theory is that screen violence is not the same as real violence. 

• Many people have been exposed to screen murder and violence, but there is no evidence at all that this has lead audiences to be less shocked by real killings and violence. 

• Also this theory treats the audience as passive which is an outdated concept.

Two Step Flow Theory:

• Katz and Lazarsfeld assumes a slightly more active audience. 

• It suggests messages from the media move in two distinct ways. First, individuals who are opinion leaders, receive messages from the media and pass on their own interpretations in addition to the actual media content.

• The information does not flow directly from the text into the minds of its audience, but is filtered through the opinion leaders who then pass it on to a more passive audience. 

• The audience then mediate the information received directly from the media with the ideas and thoughts expressed by the opinion leaders, thus being influenced not by a direct process, but by a two step flow.

• This theory appeared to reduce the power of the media, and some researchers concluded that social factors were also important in the way in which audiences interpret texts. This led to the idea of active audiences.

Active Audiences:

• This newer model sees the audience not as couch potatoes, but as individuals who are active and interact with the communication process and use media texts for their own purposes. 

• We behave differently because we are different people from different backgrounds with many different attitudes, values, experiences and ideas.

• This is the active audience model, and is now generally considered to be a better and more realistic way to talk about audiences.

Uses and Gratifications Model:

• This model stems from the idea that audiences are a complex mixture of individuals who select media texts that best suits their needs – this goes back to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

• The users and gratifications model suggests that media audiences are active and make active decisions about what they consume in relation to their social and cultural setting and their needs.

• This was summed up by theorists Bulmer and Katz in 1974;
‘Media usage can be explained in that it provides gratifications (meaning it satisfies needs) related to the satisfaction of social and psychological needs’.

• Put simply this means that audiences choose to watch programmes that make them feel good (gratifications) e.g. soaps and sitcoms, or that give them information that they can use (uses) e.g. news or information about new products or the world about them.

• Bulmer and Katz (1975) went into greater detail and identified four main uses:

• Surveillance – 

our need to know what is going on in the world. This relates to Maslow’s need for security. By keeping up to date with news about local and international events we feel we have the knowledge to avoid or deal with dangers.

• Personal relationships – 

our need for to interact with other people. This is provided by forming virtual relationships with characters in soaps, films and all kinds of drama, and other programmes and other media texts.

• Personal identity – 

our need to define our identity and sense of self. 

• Part of our sense of self is informed by making judgments about all sorts of people and things. This is also true of judgments we make about TV and film characters, and celebrities. 

• Our choice of music, the shows we watch, the stars we like can be an expression of our identities. 

• One aspect of this type of gratification is known as value reinforcement. This is where we choose television programmes or newspapers that have similar beliefs to those we hold.

• Diversion – 

the need for escape, entertainment and relaxation. All types of television programmes can be ‘used’ to wind down and offer diversion, as well as satisfying some of the other needs at the same time.

Reception Analysis:

• Reception analysis is an active audience theory that looks at how audiences interact with a media text taking into account their ‘situated culture’ – this is their daily life. 

• The theory suggests that social and daily experiences can affect the way an audience reads a media text and reacts to it.

• This theory about how audiences read a text was put forward by Professor Stuart Hall in ‘The television discourse – encoding/decoding’ in 1974 with later research by David Morley in 1980 and Charlotte Brunsden.

• He suggests that an audience has a significant role in the process of reading a text, and this can be discussed in three different ways:

1. The dominant or preferred reading. The audience shares the code of the text and fully accepts and understands its preferred meaning as intended by the producers (This can be seen as a hegemonic reading).

2. The negotiated reading. The audience partly shares the code of the text and broadly accepts the preferred meaning, but will change the meaning in some way according to their own experiences, culture and values EG These audience members might argue that some representations – ethnic minorities perhaps – appear to them to be inaccurate.

3 The oppositional reading. The audience understands the preferred meaning but does not share the text’s code and rejects this intended meaning and constructs an alternative meaning. EG This could be a radical reading by a Marxist or feminist who rejects the values and ideology of the preferred reading.

Other Considerations:

• Audience theories are crucial for A2 as are Representation, Genre and Narrative.

• Interactive audiences. The interactive role of audiences in programmes where audience participation is asked is increasing.Audiences are asked to be a voter (X factor) or as an on screen member of an audience (Children in Need) or as a participant (Who wants to be a millionaire). This can be seen as audience power, but is it really? Sometimes the power of the audience seems to lie in being able to take part in a media text. Newspapers have always invited a reader response via letters, some of which are published.Audience as producers:

• Television has been a late starter in the participation stakes but is rapidly catching up. • News is asking for CJs – Citizen Journalists – to send in pictures and stories. More and more documentary style programmes are made about so called ‘real’ people.

• There are also the ‘make over’, (60 min makeover, grand designs,DIY SOS)  programmes where ordinary people are invited to radically change their life with new clothes, new hair styles or by losing weight etc. 

• The audience is even more active than ever before. It is becoming part of the production. Big Brother, 

• Audiences seem to like seeing themselves on any genre of programme except drama. (Geordie shore, Only Way is Essex).

• Twenty first century audiences are creating their own distribution systems without mediation from institutions or companies. 

• Websites such as My Space, YouTube, and blogs offer new possibilities for audiences. In fact it is what we do and what we spend our money on that gives an audience its value, and to some extent its power, not just what we watch.

• Things that influence audiences include new technologies. 

• For example the way broadband and the internet has reduced TV audiences. Digital transmission and production means there are many new channels and ways of viewing media texts not just on television but also via the internet.