1. Why do audiences choose to consume certain texts?
2. How do they consume texts?
3. What happens when they consume texts?
A Model of The Media
There are three theories of audience that we can apply to help us come to a better understanding about the relationship.
There are..
1. The Effects Model
2. The uses and Gratifications Model
3. Reception Theory
The Effects Model- Is the first theory.
The Hypodermic model is like a drug , the information which is usually negative is pumped through the brain, it is syringe like where the audience is addicted doped and duped.
Example's of Advertising which is Successful
Shake and Vac advert
Cilit Bang Advert
Go Compare
Compare the Meerkat
We Buy any Car Advert
All of these adverts apply to the theory of Audience because of the way we are influenced as an audience. The effects model explains that 'the hypodermic' effect is applied where the media text is injected into the audience.
Key Evidence For The Effects Model
1. The Frankfurt school theorised in the 1920's and 30's that the mass media acted to restrict and control audiences to the benefit of corporate capitalism.
2. The Bobo Doll experiment
This is a very contreversial piece of research that currently proved that children copy violent behaviour. In 1961 Albert Bandura did an experiment.
- In which children's reactions were recorded when showed an adult violently attacking a clown toy called a Bobo doll. The children were taken to a room with attractive toys afterwards that they were told not to touch.
- The children were then lead to another room with a Bobo doll.
- The results were that 80% of the children imitated the violent behaviour of the adult. 8 months later 40% of the children had the same violent behaviour.
- Conclusion - That childen copy violence.
However there are many problems and controversial elements to this experiment. There are flaws as the doll is made to push and spring back up, this could change the whole experiment as the doll itself could have frustrated the children and not the adults behaviour.
- The effects model with the Bobo doll experiment supports the ideas that politicians and organisations have had arguing that violent media texts cause corruption in people.
- Also the theory is old and may use the same techniques as in modern day.
The key examples of this were seen in
- The film Childs Play 3 in the murder of James Bulger in 1993. However there is no evidence to suggest that the killers murdered because of the film, when in fact there up bringing was poor and they didnt learn the meaning of morality due to there deprived upbringing.
- The game Manhunt in the murder of Stefan Pakeerah in 2004 by his friend Warren LeBlanc.
- The film A Clockwork Orange (1971) in a number of rapes and attacks and violent acts.
- The film Severence (2006) in the murder of Simon Everitt.
Subsequently it was found that no case could be proven to demonstrate a link between the text and the violent attacks as it couldnt be proven, despite the papers and government blaming the media.
The 2nd Theory - 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, and the audience is in control.
The audience uses the text for its own 'gratifications or pleasure'
- Here power lies with the audience NOT the producers.
- This theory emphasises what audiences do with media texts, how and why they use them
- Far from being duped by the media, the audience is free to reject, use or play with media meanings as they see fit.
- Audiences therefore use media texts to gratify needs for
- Diversion
- Escapism
- Information
- Pleasure
- Comparing relationships and lifestlyes with one's own
- Sexual stimulation
- learning
-emotional satisfaction
-relaxation
-help with issues of personal identity
-help with issues of social identity
-help with issues of aggression and violence
The Uses and Gratifications Model
- controversially the theory suggests the consumption of violent images can be helpful rather than harmful
-the theory suggests that audiences act our 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.
Given that the Effects Model and the Uses and Gratifications have their problems and limitations a different approach to the audiences was developed by the academic Stuart Hall, at Birmingham University in the 1970's.
Reception Theory- Third Theory
- This considered how texts were encoded with meaning by producers and then decoded by the audiences.
The theory suggests that
- 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 and 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
- Dominant or preferred
- Negotional
- Oppositional
2. Negotiated
3. Oppositional
Dominant Reading - Where the audience decodes the message as the producer wants them to do and broadly agress with it. e.g watching a political speech and agreeing with it.
Negotional reading- Where the audience accepts , rejects or refines elements of the text in light of previously held views. E.g neither agreeing or disagreeing with the political speech or being disinterested.
Oppositional Reading - Where the dominant meaning is recognised but rejected for cultural, political or ideological reasons. E.g , total rejection of the political speech and active opposition.
Audiences and Audience Theory
- Suture
- Femenist Film Theory and Audiences
Suture
- Classical Hollywood narrative, editing sound and mise en scene sutures or positions the audience in certain ways making the audience in certain ways making only one preferred reading (reception theory) possible, however unconscious the audience is of that position.
- The way that Hollywood films and made with a preferred reading so skilfully made, the music emotions are set and drawn in.
The film 'Crash' - the way in which its created makes the audience unable to control their reactions, for example the emotional music makes us sad.
Feminist Reading
- Laura Mulvey
- Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975)
Cinema reflects society
Therefore cinema reflects a patriarchal society
How does a patriarchal society manfiest itself in cinema?
The Gaze
- The Gaze of the camera is the male gaze.
The male gaze is active, the female is passive.
-Within the narrative male characters direct their gaze towards female characters.
-The spectator is made to identify with the male gaze, because the camera films from the optical as well as the libidinal point of view of the male character.
- Thus three levels of the cinematic gaze, camera, character and the cinematic spectator (audience) - that objectify the female character (the triple gaze).
- Therefore the audience is constructed as though everyone was male.
- Women are forced to look at the text as though they were a male member of the audience.
- This occurs through the process of 'Suture'.
Agency
- In the Agency the classical Hollywood cinema the male protagonist has agency, he is active and powerful in the text.
- He is the agent around whom the dramatic action unfolds.
- The female character is passive and powerless, she is the object of desire for protagonist and audience.
Erotic Desire
- Mulvey argues that women have two roles in a film.
1. As an object of erotic desire for the characters.
2. As an object of erotic desire for the audience.
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