Theory/ Research: Audience Theories

3 QUESTIONS

1. Why do audiences choose to consume certain texts?
2. How do they consume texts?
3. What happens when they consume texts?

There are three theories of audience that we can apply to help us come to a better understanding about the relationship between texts and audience.

1. The Effects Model or the Hypodermic Model - 

• The consumption of media texts has an effect or influence upon the audience
• It is normally considered that this effect is negative
• Audiences are passive and powerless to prevent the influence
• The power lies with the message of the text

Hypodermic Syringe…

> The messages in media texts are injected into the audience by the powerful, syringe- like, media

> The audience is powerless to resist

> Therefore, the media works like a drug and the audience is drugged, addicted, doped or duped.

The Bobo Doll Experiment… 

• Children watched a video where an adult violently attacked a clown toy called a Bobo Doll
• The children were then taken to a room with attractive toys that they were not permitted to touch
• The children were then led to another room with Bobo Dolls
• 88% of the children imitated the violent behaviour that they had earlier viewed. 8 months later 40% of the children reproduced the same violent behaviour

2. The Uses and Gratifications Model

• The Uses and Gratifications Model is the opposite of the Effects Model
• The audience is active
• The audience uses the text & is NOT used by it
• The audience uses the text for its own gratification or pleasure

• Controversially the theory suggests the consumption of violent images can be helpful rather than harmful
• The theory suggests that audiences act out their violent impulses through the consumption of media violence
• The audience’s inclination towards violence is therefore sublimated, and they are less likely to commit violent acts

3. Reception Theory

• Given that the Effects model and the Uses and Gratifications have their problems and limitations a different approach to audiences was developed by the academic Stuart Hall at Birmingham University in the 1970s
• This considered how texts were encoded with meaning by producers and then decoded (understood) by audiences
• When a producer constructs a text it is encoded with a meaning or message that the producer wishes to convey to the audience
• In some instances audiences will correctly decode the message or meaning and understand what the producer was trying to say
• In some instances the audience will either reject or fail to correctly understand the message

Stuart Hall identified three types of audience readings (or decoding) of the text:

1. Dominant or preferred - Where the audience decodes the message as the producer wants them to do and broadly agrees with it

2. Negotiated - Where the audience accepts, rejects or refines elements of the text in light of previously held views

3. Oppositional - Where the dominant meaning is recognised but rejected for cultural, political or ideological reasons