In Cultural Studies, the Three Ways Audiences Are Seen as Reading Mass Media Text Are:

Learning Objective:

to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of audience theory

Success Criteria:

- to understand the office audience plays in the media process of product, distribution and exhibition (AO1)

- to understand the relationship audience has with institutions (AO1)

- to explore audience theories (AO4)

- to expand and use  terminology  appropriately (AO1)

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Many theories try to make sense of the question: What furnishings do media texts have on audiences?

When you lot are studying audiences you volition discover that there are a lot of different theories about why some telly programmes have a large audience and others practise not, and why people buy sure things and not others.

At that place are also theories about the issue that 'media' has on audiences. This question has interested people ever since the invention of the printing press, and it became possible to make hundreds of copies of a document, and a 'bulletin' could attain a mass audience.

Hierarchy of Needs

An American psychologist, Abraham Maslow, suggested that we all have different layers of needs. We have to achieve certain needs earlier going on to the side by side layer.

His Hierarchy of Needs suggests that in one case people have their basic needs met like housing, food, rubber, shopping, engineering science, and a job, they can then continue to satisfy successively 'higher needs' that occupy a set bureaucracy or system of ranking.

Maslow studied well-respected people such as Albert Einstein, and American presidents, and he studied 1 percent of the healthiest college student population.

<<<He came up with this pyramid where bones needs are at the bottom and at the peak something called 'self actualisation'. This describes a person who has gained the respect of a lot of other people – maybe a prime minister – and has a high level of self-esteem and cocky-respect.

What has this become to do with media texts?

It is very relevant to advertisers, and institutions that comport advertising – newspapers, picture palace, television and radio channels.

Maslow'due south upper levels at the top of the pyramid are well-nigh self-esteem and gaining the respect of others. This can exist linked to the thought that consuming particular media texts fulfils cocky-esteem, as does buying certain products.

In a nutshell, Maslow is suggesting that if yous purchase a new pair of trainers of the correct brand, as shown to you lot on in the media, then you will feel ameliorate about yourself, because you have the respect of other people.

Tin can you prove or disprove this theory from your feel? Practice you accept whatever examples to share?

Needs: Activity

Describe a blank triangle. Fill in each level of with examples of media texts which try to fulfil that particular level of needs in Maslow's pyramid.

For example, accept the second from lesser layer – rubber needs. An advertisement for car insurance or life insurance offers a general level of rubber needs.

Some cars are sold on their condom features – what does this tell u.s. about the audience (people) who purchase a car for these reasons?

At present construct an audition for a particular product of your choice (east.g. perfume, soft drinks, smartphones, take abroad pizza, romantic comedy films, etc)using the bureaucracy of needs, and the psychographic system.

It is of import to exist able to 'read' or understand a target audience, and to understand if a media product has succeeded or not in getting across to its target audience.

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Passive Audiences

Researchers investigating the consequence of media on audiences accept considered the audition in 2 distinct ways.

The earliest idea was that a mass audience is passive and inactive . The members of the audience are seen as burrow potatoes just sitting there consuming media texts – specially commercial television programmes.

Information technology was thought that this did not require the active utilize of the brain. The audience accepts and believes all messages in any media text that they receive. This is the passive audience  model.

The Hypodermic Model

In this model, the media is seen as powerful and able to inject ideas into an audience who are seen as weak and passive. The hypodermic needle was proposed by Harold Lasswell in the 1920s. Besides known every bit the 'Magic bullet theory', it explains how the audience is direct affected by what they view and hear. It is said to bear upon the audience/viewer immediately or in the near future.

It suggests that a media text can 'inject' or 'fire' ideas, values and attitudes into a passive  audience, who might and then act upon them. This theory also suggests that a media text has only one message which the audience must selection up . This theory suggests that the audience is powerless towards resisting the touch of the message which, in some cases, could exist dangerous.

This appeared to be the case in Nazi Frg in the 1930s, leading upward to the second World War. Powerful German films, such as Triumph of the Will (Riefenstahl, Germany, 1935),seemed to use propaganda methods to 'inject' ideas pr omoting the Nazi cause into the German audition.

In 1957, an American theorist, Vane Packard, who was working in advertising, wrote an influential book called The Hidden Persuaders. This book suggested that advertisers were able to manipulate audiences and persuade them to buy things they may not want to buy. This suggested advertisers had power over audiences. In fact, this has since proved to be an unreliable model, as mod audiences are too sophisticated.

This theory stems from a fearfulness of the mass-media, and gives the media much more than ability than information technology can ever have in a commonwealth. Too, it ignores the obvious fact that non everyone in an audience behaves in the same fashion.

How tin an audience be passive?

Call up of all the times you have disagreed with something on goggle box, or just not laughed at a new comedy.

What do y'all think of this theory?

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Cultivation Theory

This theory also treats the audience every bit passive. It suggests that repeated exposure to the same bulletin – such as an advertizing – volition have an consequence on the audience's attitudes and values. A similar idea is known asdesensitisation, which suggests that long-term exposure to violent media makes the audience less likely to exist shocked by violence. Existence less shocked by violence, the audience may then be more probable to behave violently.

Tillage Theory

The criticism of this theory is that screen violence is not the aforementioned as real violence. Many people accept been exposed to screen murder and violence, but there is no show at all that this has led audiences to exist less shocked by existent killings and violence. As well, this theory treats the audience as passive, which is an outdated concept.

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Two Stride Period Theory

Katz and Lazarsfeld assumes a slightly more than agile audience. Information technology suggests messages from the media movement in two distinct ways.

First, individuals who are opinion leaders, receive messages from the media and laissez passer on their ain interpretations, in improver to the actual media content. The data does not menstruum directly from the text into the minds of its audience, but is filtered through the opinion leaders, who and then laissez passer it on to a more passive audition.

The audience and so mediate the information received direct from the media, with the ideas and thoughts expressed by the opinion leaders. They are non being influenced by a directly process, but by a two-step flow.

This theory appeared to reduce the power of the media, and some researchers concluded that social factors were also important in the way in which audiences interpret texts. This led to the idea of active audiences.

Active Audiences

This newer model sees the audience not as couch potatoes, merely every bit individuals who are agile and collaborate with the communication procedure and use media texts for their ain purposes. They are prosumers (producers and consumers).

We behave differently because we are different people from different backgrounds with many unlike attitudes, values, experiences and ideas.

This is the active audience model, and is now generally considered to be a better and more than realistic way to talk about audiences.

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Uses and Gratifications Model

This model stems from the idea that audiences are a complex mixture of individuals who select media texts that best suits their needs – this goes back to Maslow'due south Hierarchy of Needs above.

The users and gratifications model suggests that media audiences are agile and make active decisions virtually what they consume in relation to their social and cultural setting and their needs.

This was summed upwards by theorists .

This ways that audiences choose to picket programmes that make them experience proficient (gratifications), e.chiliad. dramas and sitcoms, or that give them data that they can use (uses), due east.g. news or information virtually new products or the world about them.

'Media usage tin be explained in that it provides gratifications (significant it satisfies needs) related to the satisfaction of social and psychological needs'. Blumler and Katz in 1974

Blumler and Katz (1975) identified iv chief uses:

• Surveillance – our need to know what is going on in the world. This relates to Maslow's need for security. By keeping up to date with news about local and international events, we experience we have the knowledge to avoid or deal with dangers.
• Personal relationships – our need for to collaborate with other people. This is provided by forming virtual relationships with characters in soaps, films and all kinds of drama, and other programmes and other media texts.
• Personal identity – our demand to define our identity and sense of self. Office of our sense of self is informed past making judgements about all sorts of people and things. This is also true of judgements we make about TV and film characters, and celebrities. Our choice of music, the shows we picket, the stars we like can be an expression of our identities. One aspect of this type of gratification is known as value reinforcement. This is where we cull television programmes or newspapers that have similar behavior to those we hold.
• Diversion – the need for escape, entertainment and relaxation. All types of television programmes can be 'used' to current of air downwards and offer diversion, likewise as satisfying some of the other needs at the same time.

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Reception Analysis

Reception Theory

Reception analysis is an agile audience theory that looks at how audiences interact with a media text taking into account their 'situated civilisation' – this is their daily life.

This theory was put forward by Professor Stuart Hall in 'The Television Discourse - Encoding/Decoding' in 1974, with after inquiry by David Morley and Charlotte Brunsden.

The theory suggests that social and daily experiences tin can impact the style an audience reads a media text and reacts to information technology.

Hall suggests that an audience has a meaning role in the process of reading a text, and this tin be discussed in iii dissimilar ways:

• The Dominant or Preferred Reading. The audition shares the code of the text and fully accepts its preferred meaning as intended by the producers .
• The Negotiated Reading. The audience partly shares the code of the text and broadly accepts the preferred pregnant but can change the meaning in some way co-ordinate to their ain experiences.
• The Oppositional Reading. The audition understands the preferred pregnant merely does not share the text'southward lawmaking and rejects this intended significant. This can be called a radical reading that may be, say Marxist or feminist or right wing

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Interactive Audiences

The net has opened upward new ways to receive and interact with data. Nosotros can 'read' texts that are downloaded to our computers, or mobiles, or sentry Tv-on-demand and non just when the broadcasters want united states to receive it. We can access music and moving picture wherever we are with an Internet connection. We accept access to media 24/7.

A prosumer is a person who consumes and produces media. It is derived from "prosumption", a dot-com era business term meaning "production by consumers". These terms were coined by American futurist Alvin Toffler, and were widely used by many technology writers of the time. It applies to the fact thatwe can CREATE our own media and contribute, generating our ain audiences. T he real power of the audience seems to lie in being able to take part in a media text.Xx-beginning-century audiences are creating their own distribution systems without mediation from institutions or companies. Websites such as  YouTube, Instagram and blogs offer new possibilities for audiences.

Information technology is what we practice and what nosotros spend our coin on that gives an audition its value, and to some extent its power. Things that influence audiences include new technologies. New technologies, in turn, influence audiences and institutions.

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Source: http://media-studies.mrshollyenglish.com/theory/audiences-institutions/audience-theory

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