Audience Theories

The potential for negative effects on audiences has been a matter for general concern since the earliest days of the media.

Many hundreds of studies have been conducted to examine the effects of the media on audiences. Early research concluded that the mass media were powerful enough to have a direct influence on audiences.

The Hypodermic Needle/Syringe Model

Conceived by the Frankfurt School it is also known as the ‘direct effects’ approach.

The Frankfurt School were Marxists who conducted research into the effects of Nazi propaganda.

Dating from the 1920s, this theory was the first attempt to explain how mass audiences might react to mass media.

It is a crude model and suggests that audiences passively receive the information transmitted via a media text, without any attempt on their part to process or challenge the data.

Mass Media

= Isolated individuals constituting a mass

Media are seen as STRONG/ACTIVE

Audience are seen as WEAK/PASSIVE

Don't forget that this theory was developed in an age when the mass media were still fairly new - radio and cinema were less than two decades old.

Governments had just discovered the power of advertising to communicate a message, and produced propaganda to try and sway populaces to their way of thinking.

1. What emotions does the poster appeal to?2. What methods are used by this poster to encourage recruitment?3. How can we apply the Hypodermic Needle Model to analysing this poster?

This was particularly evident in Europe during the First World War and its aftermath.

An example of a poster from WW1 designed to encourage men to join the army.

Origin: A British recruitment poster which would have come out before conscription was introduced in January 1916.Motive: To encourage men in Britain to enlist in the New Armies.Audience: Men who are eligible to enlist and who are in the right age group. This changed over time but ranged from 19-40 years. This poster would not be aimed at skilled workers in occupations required by the Government.Content: The symbol - John Bull represents the British people, note the Union Jack waistcoat.Personal appeal - Use of Question -'Who's Absent? Is it You?'The finger pointing at the reader -'You'.Soldiers waiting in the background for 'your' response.Other features to note:Brevity of language.Simple message - easy to comprehend by a reader walking past. The poster's message is obvious because many people would not stop to read a poster.

This model also owes much to the supposed power of the mass media - in particular film - to inject their audiences with ideas and meanings.

Such was the thinking behind much of the Nazi propaganda that was evident in Triumph of the Will and similar films.

It is worth noting that totalitarian states and dictatorships are similar in their desire to have complete control over the media, usually in the belief that strict regulation of the media will help in controlling entire populations.

Here is a still from Triumph of the Will.

How can we apply the Hypodermic Needle Model to this?

CLUE: Look at the angle of the shot. Audience positioning.

CLUE: Is Hitler here seen as weak or strong to the audience?

Early conclusions about Early conclusions about this model were based on this model were based on methodological research. methodological research. For example the ‘Bobo For example the ‘Bobo Doll Experiment’ which Doll Experiment’ which was conducted by was conducted by sociologist Albert Bandura sociologist Albert Bandura in 1963.in 1963.

Early conclusions about Early conclusions about this model were based on this model were based on methodological research. methodological research. For example the ‘Bobo For example the ‘Bobo Doll Experiment’ which Doll Experiment’ which was conducted by was conducted by sociologist Albert Bandura sociologist Albert Bandura in 1963.in 1963.

Bobo Doll Experiment

Albert Bandura believed that aggression must explain three aspects:

1.How aggressive patterns of behaviour are developed

2.What provokes people to behave aggressively

3.What determines whether they are going to continue to resort to an aggressive behavior pattern on future occasions.

In this experiment, he had children witness a model aggressively attacking a plastic clown called the Bobo doll. There children would watch a video where a model would aggressively hit a doll. ‘...the model pummels it on the head with a mallet, hurls it down, sits on it and punches it on the nose repeatedly, kick it across the room, flings it in the air, and bombards it with balls...’

After the video, the children After the video, the children were placed in a room with were placed in a room with attractive toys, but they could attractive toys, but they could not touch them. not touch them.

The process of retention had The process of retention had occurred. Therefore, the occurred. Therefore, the children became angry and children became angry and frustrated. frustrated.

Then the children were led to Then the children were led to another room where there were another room where there were identical toys used in the Bobo identical toys used in the Bobo video.video.

The motivation phase was in occurrence. Bandura and many other researchers founded that 88% of the children imitated the aggressive behaviour.

Eight months later, 40% of the same children reproduce the violent behaviour observed in the Bobo doll experiment. (Isom, 1998)

The Bobo Doll Experiment

What events in the news can we relate this to?

What has shown that media may have had direct effect on audiences?

Warning over Jackass copycats

Police have warned people about copying stunts from television programme Jackass after four people were charged with staging a hoax kidnapping.

Officers were called after members of the public thought they were witnessing a real abduction in a supermarket car park in Dalkeith, Midlothian.

Four men were later charged with breach of the peace. They told officers they were re-enacting a scene from Jackass. A police spokesman warned others not to copy stunts which could alarm others. The incident took place outside a Tesco store on Sunday afternoon.

Shoppers saw a man with a black plastic bag tied over his head stumble from a car in an apparent attempt to escape. He was bundled into the boot by two others before the car sped away. Summer holidays Two 20-year-old men, a 24-year-old and a 26-year-old were later charged with breach of the peace by police. A report will be sent to the procurator fiscal. Lothian and Borders Police warned people about the dangers of attempting to repeat some of the things they have seen on Jackass, the controversial MTV and Channel 4 series.

A police spokesman said: "This Jackass programme is very popular among teenagers and being the summer holidays there will be a lot of youth about with time on their hands who could attempt to copy some of the stunts on the programme.

"We would advise them to be very careful not to do anything which causes fear and alarm to other members of the public or indeed might even end up with themselves being injured."

Violent videos and violent childrenNewson's report begins, "Two year old James Bulger was brutally and sadistically murdered on 12 February 1993 by two 10 year old children". Harrowing details of the murder set the scene for a different explanation than that the children were simply 'evil freaks'. She argues "...already the most cursory reading of news since then suggests that it is not a 'one-off", concluding that what is now different is "the easy availability to children of gross images of violence on video". This section comprises one third of her report and seems to be based entirely on accounts in the popular press. Of course readers of the report might reasonably assume that a professor of Child Psychology might be expected to know more about the cases described than the average citizen.The attribution of motives such as 'sadistically', 'the expectation and satisfaction of deliberate and sustained violence'; the implied familiarity in the use of 'Jamie' (instead of the preferred family name 'James') provide an illusory independent verification of press speculation.Press speculation on the influence of video violence has begun to bear more than a passing resemblance to a medieval witch-hunt. Despite police evidence that there appeared to be no link with video violence in the James Bulger case, parallels with Child's Play 3 were fancifully drawn.

Journal of Mental Health (1994) 3, 485-494

On November 25th 1993 The Sun newspaper organised a public burning of the film. While Newson does not cite Child's Play in the context of the Bulger case, she later links it to a murder: "In England an adolescent girl was tortured by her 'friends' over days, using direct quotations from a horror video (Child's Play 3) as part of her torment".However, just as with the Bulger murder, police evidence that videos were not implicated is ignored by Newson as it was in the considerable press speculation about the Capper case. The 'link' in the murder of Suzanne Capper was not to a film but to the lyrics of a heavy metal band whose music had been recorded off a local radio station. This police evidence seems to have been as much as a surprise to the Home Affairs Committee (22nd June 1994) as it was to Newson as the following exchange reveals:

Professor Newson: "The Suzanne Capper case is another example of a very explicit imitation of video and the use of a video and that was Child's Play 3."Sir Ivan Lawrence (chair): "We were told this morning that that had been looked into and that the Earl Ferrers in the House of Lords has denied - I have not got the evidence we heard this morning - that there was a basis in the Capper case of Child's Play 3".Professor Newson: "The soundtrack was actually played".Sir Ivan Lawrence (chair): "Can I read from an analysis of this from Mr Ferman of the British Board of Film Classification of course. What was played to her was a rock version of the music from the first Child's Play film recorded on Manchester Piccadilly Pop Radio Station. That is all-music, not video?"Professor Newson: "In that case it depends. That has been widely misreported, I think in that case".Sir Ivan Lawrence (chair): "Yes, it has". Professor Newson: "That would depend then on whether that particular girl had seen that film and whether she was able to identify the film from the music".Sir Ivan Lawrence (chair): "There were no videos in the houses that this young lady was held in, apparently.’

1984 by George Orwell

How can we apply the Hypodermic Needle Theory to this novel?

Clue: how are the people of the dystopia controlled?

Josie and the

Pussycats

Watch this very exaggerated clip of the media and its effect on the teenagers of this film!

What do you think are the strengths of this model?

What do you think are the weaknesses of this model?

• Problems with the theory• The assumptions that mass audience theory makes about the members of the

audience.• The audience has no role in the creation of meaning-there is textual determinism. • Elitism- in other words that it suggests a value judgement about these masses- that

they are easily led and not so perceptive and self- aware as the theorists who are analysing them.

• §         The media are often experienced by people alone.• §         Wherever they are in the world, the audience for a media text are all receiving

exactly the same thing. That is the text is understood in the same way by anyone watching.

•  • These assumptions lead to certain methodological conclusions-if the media has an

effect then it can be measured. These measurements can then be displayed numerically. Thus a quantitative methodology is used.

•  • A development of the direct effect approach is to argue that media effects are

mediated and that the texts themselves only provide the potential for certain types of behaviour.

Clearly there are a wide variety of supporters to this approach, from those who believe in strengthening censorship and regulations, to elements within the media who create moral panics about the forms of media output.

It is also worth remembering that some areas of the media do seem to affect us all; advertising is a good example of this, and some aspects of news coverage.

Now let’s have a look at the advertisements you found for your homework.

How can we apply the Hypodermic Needle Theory to the advertisements?