Audience Theory

Blumler and Katz uses the gratification theory.
       My sisters keeper:

• Sad but happy
• A bit angry
• Greatful

Passive audience- Just take it in, cant choose what is on the news.
Active audience Can choose what we want to watch. (Watch horror movies to make us scared, watch comedys to make us laugh)

4 different needs:

• Surveillance (awearness)
• Personal Identity (rolde models, who we are)
• Perosnal relstionships (We can form relationship with media, characters)
• Diversion (Escapism)

Stuart Hall- Media texts are encoded by the producer meaning that whoever produces the texts fills the product with values and messages.

Dominant- Audience agree with the message and ideology. Will view the message in the way the producer wanted them to.

Negotiated- Compramise between the dominant and oppositional readings. Audience agrees with the producer but also have thier input.

Oppositional- The audience rejects the preffered reading and creates thier own reading. Audience rejects the meaning fully.

How may an audience have a dominant undertanding of your product?

• Clear messages
• Audience is the same age so relates to product
• From the same culture
• Easy to understand the narrative.

How may and audience have a negotiated reading of your product?

• Audience may not have had the same life experiences
• May not understand the narrative

How may an audience have an oppositional understanding of your product?

• Product has controversial themes
• Disagree with messages in the video
• Dislike the genre

Hypodermic Needle Theory

Misinterpretation- miss the point.

• We have choice now
• We have opinions
• Earliest theory
• propaganda of WW1(effects)
• Influences
• More channels on TV now
• Mass hysteria

Mass media has had a direct, immediate and powerful effect on its audiences.

1930's radio broadcast 'War of the worlds' was performed like a real news broadcast to heighten the effect of the story, people thought it was real and assumed mars had come to invade the world. (Passive audience)

Not everyone consumes media in the same way. Audiences are not simply passive as proved by up to date theories.