Audience Theory'sBy: Mia Alexandra Jones

Audience Theory's

• Audience theory’s are theory's that apply to the relationship between texts

and audience.

Hypodermic Syringe Model• This model is the idea that there is a direct correlation between the violent behavior

shown on television, computer games etcetera and anti social and criminal behavior in real life. This models suggests that the audience passively accepts the message that is ‘injected’ into them by the mass media. For example, James Bulger was killed by two ten year olds after they had watched the film, Childs play.

• So the media works like a drug and the audience is addicted and drugged.• The Bobo Doll experiment: This was a controversial piece of research that ‘proved’

that children copy violent behavior, the children watched a video of an adult violently attacking the Bobo Doll, the children were then taken into a room with the dolls and 88% of the children imitated the violent behavior that they had watched earlier and 8 months later 40% of the children reproduced the same violent behavior. The conclusion was that children will imitate violent media content.

Cultivation Theory

• The primary proposition of the cultivation theory states the more time people spend ‘living’ in the television world, the more likely they are to believe in social reality portrayed on television.

Desensitization Theory

• The theory of media audiences reactions growing weaker according to the level/amount of exposure to violence, death and sex.

• A decrease in fear and sensitivity to extremely aggressive behavior and taboo subjects and possible introduction to every day life.

Copycat Model

• This relates to something which is publicized in the media that creates a lot of attention resulting in people to ‘copy’ this in order to gain the same level of attention.

• Audiences react differently to various situations as they have different interpretations for example, copying a celebrity's actions and behavior.

Uses And Gratification Theory

• This theory deals with how and why people adopt specific media to satisfy their needs for example, some people watch the television show, ‘QI’ for entertainment and others watch it to educate themselves. Another example of this is the Simpsons show, it had two audiences a primary and a secondary.

• The audience uses the text and is not used by it. They use the text for its own gratification or pleasure. The power lies with the audience and not the producers, opposite from the hypodermic needle theory.