Learning Objective:

• Understand how to plan an answer to exam question 1b.

• Revise and understand a range of audience theories.

Exam question 1b

Like question 1a, 1b is:• about your coursework.• 30 minutes• 25 marks

However, it is different because:• Only write about one production.• Focus on analysing the product – not describing

how you made it.• You must include at least two theorists.

Question 1B

Which concepts might we be asked about?

Audience - how media products target audiences, which audiences actually consume media products, how media audiences actually read and consume. Critics?

Genre – how do we categorise media texts? How does your product relate to other examples of the same genre? (consider print, audio, video or online). Critics?

Narrative - Applying different models of narrative structure to your work may reveal unconscious things that you did in the way you have constructed it. Models and theories?

Media Language - genre, narrative, audience, techniques and conventions of different forms of media (how shots are organised in film, how text is laid out on a page)

Representation – how are social groups presented? What messages are implied? What would particular types of criticism (e.g. feminism) make of it?

Audience

• We are going to look at a variety of theories relating to audience.

• Make notes on each one.

The Hypodermic Needle Model

• 1920s attempt to explain how mass audiences might react to mass media

• Audiences passively receive the information

• Audiences do not process or challenge the data

so the information is unmediated .

The Hypodermic Needle Model

The Hypodermic Needle Model

• As an audience, we are manipulated by the creators of media texts, and our behaviour can be easily changed by media-makers

• Audience are passive and heterogenous

• This model is quoted during moral panics

Stuart hall Stuart hall and and

reception reception theorytheory

McDonalds want you to think....

You may agree

Or.....

You may disagree

Or.....

You may think that big macs do taste good, but I’ll only have them every now and again …

So there are three possible readings of that one advert.

The preferred or dominant reading is

the reading media producers hope

audiences will take from the text.

The audience may reject the preferred reading,

receiving their own alternative message. This is an oppositional reading.

Negotiated reading is when audiences acknowledge the

preferred reading, but modify it to

suit their own values and opinions – a compromise.

Stuart Hall – Encoding/Decoding

• Dominant – ‘flag waving patriot who responds to George Bush’s latest speech’.

• Oppositional – ‘the pacifist who understands the speech but rejects it’.

• Negotiated – ‘the viewer who agrees with the need for a response to Sept. 11th but doesn’t agree to the military means announced’.

Uses & Gratifications

• 1960s – generation had grown up with TV

• audiences make choices about what they do

when consuming texts

• audiences made up of individuals who

actively consume texts for different

reasons and in different ways

Uses & Gratifications

Blumer and Katz (1974) state a text might be used for the following purposes:

• Diversion - escape from everyday problems and routine.

• Personal Relationships - using the media for emotional and other interaction, eg) substituting soap operas for family life

• Personal Identity - finding yourself reflected in texts, learning behaviour and values from texts

• Surveillance - Information which could be useful for living eg) weather reports, financial news, holiday bargains

Effects Theory (Anderson and Dill)

• study into violent videogames • found that real-life violent video game play

was related to aggressive behaviour and delinquency

• laboratory exposure to a graphically violent videogame increased aggressive thoughts and behaviour

• particularly strong impact on children

• studies like this are often cited in moral panics

Moral Panics - SpringhallSpringhall

- a moral panic occurs when the official or press reaction to a deviant social or cultural phenomenon is out of all proportion to the actual threat offered (1998)

- Springhall’s book “Youth, Popular Culture and Moral Panics” points out that moral panics have occurred in society since the nineteenth century. He argues that moral panics give more of an insight into adult anxieties (e.g. fear of technology and the future).

Audience Theories

Hopefully you now have an understanding of 5 audience theories:

• Hypodermic needle

• Stuart Hall – Reception Theory

• Uses and Gratifications

• Effects Theory

• Springhall - moral panics

Applying audience theory to your work

• Choose one of your coursework productions and answer the following:

1) Who is your target audience? How did you develop your target audience?

2) How does your production appeal to your target audience?3) What effects could your product have on an audience, according to

the hypodermic needle theory?4) What are the preferred, negotiated and oppositional readings that

could be made of your product?5) What uses and gratifications will the target audience get from the

production?6) Applying Effects Theory, are there any possible negative impacts

of your product?

• How useful is the concept of audience in understanding your work?