1. Audience Theory
Studying audience theory is basically studying theories or ideas about audiences,
theories form the basis or the argument and discussion. It’s the study of who the
audience is, where they are, how old they are, what they want, and how the media
producers give them what they want so they can make a profit.
To begin with, I am going to go through a short gallop through the history of audience
and the media.
The History Gallop:
From the 1920’s the media started to reach mass audiences through politics, they
did this through something called ‘propaganda’. For example the Russians and the
Nazi’s mostly used the media through cinema, radio, newspapers. They use these
different media platforms to manipulate the audience for ideological and political
purposes.
A couple more years after this, advertising began to rise, with the media
manipulating audience by persuasive means, through the cinema and radio. One
theory that comes from this is that an audience is vulnerable and can be made to
believe all sorts of things if the idea is presented persuasively. For example back in
those days the ‘Persil’ advert was presented to make children’s clothes whiter and
if it wasn’t used by the mothers, they came across as bad mothers and a failure as
a woman.
Moving on to the younger audience, the children and teenagers. These particular
audiences are very susceptible to the harmful influences of popular entertainment
through crime films, music and music videos. In 1994 the British Board of Film
Censors began to monitor films that deal with crime, drugs, violence and harmful
behaviour. This is to reduce the amount of influence the younger audience are
getting from the media/films
There are three main theories that apply to audience that can be used to help in gaining
a better understanding about the relationship between the audience and the text. These
theories are:
The Effects Model or the Hypodermic Model
The Uses and Gratifications Model

2. Reception Theory
The Effects Model or the Hypodermic Model
TV and video games act on audiences like a direct drug injection. The audience is seen
as passive and addictive. The media-makers ‘inject’ a kind of ‘instant fix’ into the viewer.
The addiction is very strong, this leaves the audience powerless to resist therefore, the
media works like a drug and the audience is drugged and hence they become an addict.
The Hypodermic Syringe is largely flawed in by the contemporary audience; this is
because it suggests that audience passively receive the information transmitted via
media text, without little or no attempt to challenge the method of communication or
data.
In a nutshell, the Hypodermic Needle Model suggests that information is absorbed into
the human brain without thought. By doing this the audience is therefore vulnerable
and easily manipulated by the producers of that text. The audience accept dominant
ideologies as the norm. Some politicians and parental groups react to events in the
media with the idea that audiences don’t have control over what they should and
shouldn’t absorb.
The media can be a positive influence which brings education, play values, realism
differentiation and understanding to young audiences.
The Uses and Gratifications Model (Blumler & Katz 1974).
This model is the opposite of the Hypodermic Needle, in this model the audience is
active. The audience uses the text instead of being used by. The audience uses the text
for its own gratification or pleasure. This theory emphasizes what audiences do with
whatever media text that is before them. With this theory the audience is free to reject,
use or play with media meanings however they please.
With this theory the audience is in control and consumption of the media helps the
audience with basic needs such as:
Diversion: this is when the audience uses the media for escapism or emotional
release from everyday pressure.
Personal relationships: the idea behind this is that the audience needs
companionship with ‘known’ TV programmes or characters as well as the
interaction with other people who can discuss the TV programmes. For example

3. colleagues at work asking each other about soaps that was on TV the previous
night.
Personal Identity: this is the ability for the audience to compare their life with
the character’s lives and situations, by doing this they gain perspective on their
own life as well.
Surveillance: this gives the audience an opportunity to see what else is going on
in the world. For example the weather report.
Reception Theory
This theory is based on the idea that media speaks for business of the relationship
between media content and audience. The idea behind it is that, with this theory the
media text can be seen as being structured according to the defined codes and
conventions, this is also known as Semiology(this is the study of signs, symbols, and
signification. It is the study of how meaning is created, not what it is). The Semiology
does something to the audience and the audience is positioned by the text.
This theory is like a communication cycle between the producers of the text and the
audience. The theory suggests that: when a producer constructs a text, the text is
encoded with a meaning/message this is what the producer wishes to convey to the
audience. In some cases the audiences will decode the message or meaning effectively
and understand the message the producer was trying to convey, but in some situation
the audience will either discard or fail to correctly understand the message.
Stuart Hall identified three types of audience decoding of a text: Dominant or preferred
Negotiated and Oppositional.
Dominant: this is where the audience decodes the message as the producer
wants them to and they agree with it. E.g. watching a political speech and
agreeing with it.
Negotiated: the audience accepts, rejects or refines elements of the text due to
previously held views E.g. the viewer neither agreeing or disagreeing with the
political speech or simply being uninterested.
Oppositional: this is where the audience recognise the dominant meaning, but
they reject it due to cultural, political or ideological reasons. E.g. Total rejection
of the political speech and active opposition.

4. Through all this the audience is ‘Sewn in’ to the narrative. The technique is called
Suture (like stitching up the skin). The cinematic techniques work for TV as well,
although they may be scaled down a little to suit the producer’s budget and format.