[Audience Theory]

►Audience theories...

►Theories which attempt to explain how an audience receives, reads and responds to a text. Theoretical explanations of how humans ingest the information transmitted by media texts and how this might influence (or not) their behaviour.

► The Hypodermic Needle Model...

►Dating from the 1920s, this theory was the first attempt to explain how mass audiences might react to mass media. It is a crude model and suggests that audiences passively receive the information transmitted via a media text, without any attempt on their part to process or challenge the data. It is important to keep in mind that this theory was developed in an age when the mass media were still fairly new - radio and cinema were less than two decades old. Governments had just discovered the power of advertising to communicate a message, and produced propaganda to try and sway populaces to their way of thinking. This was particularly rampant in Europe during the First World War and its aftermath.

►The Hypodermic Needle Model suggests that the information from a text passes into the mass consciouness of the audience unmediated, ie the experience, intelligence and opinion of an individual are not relevant to the reception of the text. This theory suggests that, as an audience, we are manipulated by the creators of media texts, and that our behaviour and thinking might be easily changed by media-makers. It assumes that the audience are passive and heterogenous. This theory is still quoted during moral panics by parents, politicians and pressure groups, and is used to explain why certain groups in society should not be exposed to certain media texts (comics in the 1950s, rap music in the 2000s), for fear that they will watch or read sexual or violent behaviour and will then act them out themselves.

►Linking to Investigation & Production...

► This theory links to my investigation and linked production as through this theory i will be able to look at whether the audience of each text I analyze is active or passive. Even more, do teenage girls act out the behaviour they are exposed to of celebrities they see on TV or read in magazines, in reality.

►Uses & Gratifications...

►During the 1960s, as the first generation to grow up with television became grown ups, it became increasingly apparent to media theorists that audiences made choices about what they did when consuming texts. Far from being a passive mass, audiences were made up of individuals who actively consumed texts for different reasons and in different ways. In 1948 Lasswell suggested that media texts had the following functions for individuals and society:

►surveillance

►correlation

►entertainment

►cultural transmission

►Researchers Blulmer and Katz expanded this theory and published their own in 1974, stating that individuals might choose and use a text for the following purposes (ie uses and gratifications):

►Diversion/ escapism - 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 e.g.) weather reports, financial news, holiday bargains

Since then, the list of Uses and Gratifications has been extended, particularly as new media forms have come along (eg video games, the internet).

►Linking to Investigation & Production...

► This theory links to my investigation and linked production as it allows me to determine which segments of the Uses & gratification theory do my targeted audiences relate with. This will allow me to draw conclusions on why teenage girls watch certain programmes or read certain texts and see what they gain out of it.