Learning outcomes

• Will be able to describe audience theory• Will be able to describe audience responses• Will be able to described the effects debate

Audience

– No media product is put together without some idea of that audience that is going to see, read or hear it; hence, the concept of audience is at the heart of all media study .

• Target audience – Demographics-the consumer is categorised in terms of

concrete variables such as age, class, gender, geographical area.

– Psychographics-the consumer is categorised in terms of their needs and desires such as those who aspire to a richer lifestyle or those who want to make the world a better place.

• Read attached PDF for extended understanding of audience theory, before reading this.

Audience theory remember these key points

• 1. Audience theory is to do with how we understand the audience

• 2. How we believe the audience mediates and understands the media texts i.e. how the audience interprets what it reads, hear and sees.

• 3.It also questions what effects the media has on the audience if any?

• 4. If there is such a thing as a heterogeneous audience• 5. how the audience has changed due to web 2.0• 6. You must quote David Gauntlett here, as he disagrees with the

effects debate, OCR love him.

Point 1• How we understand the audience is based on whether we see the audience as a

heterogeneous mass i.e. meaning we are all the same or as individuals. These two theories are linked to whether we agree with the following theories discussed in the next few pages. What is important to remember is the media classify audiences into categories

• i.e. demographics age, gender, sexuality, soc, ethnicity they do this through audience research i.e. NRS for magazines, and even films i.e. horror is often aimed at men and constructed for me.

• Psychographics: to do with your personality type i.e. a traditional people would not go and see a horror film, but a thrill seeker might do.

• So whether we agree with heterogeneous or seeing people as individuals it is clear that some sort of media profiling is taken place, this is because the media rely on advertising, consider Xfactor on a Saturday night who is the target audience for this. The media collect this date from audience research boards, focus groups and other audience research agencies.

Audience theories Point 2• Over the years there has been different theories about how the audience

mediate and interpret the text, this again is linked to how you view the audience. The theories include:

• Hypodermic Needle• Two Step Flow• Uses and Gratification• Reception theory.

Hypodermic needle This model came about in the 1920s read attached PDF, it is largely redundant now because of web 2.0 , i.e. people choose to watch things when they want. However, it is a good model to highlight the ‘effects debate’, as theorists used this model to suggest that the Nazis could use the media to inject ideas into people’s minds. In a nutshell, the Hypodermic Needle Model suggests that information is absorbed into the human brain without thought. We are therefore vulnerable from consuming media texts and easily manipulated by producers. We accept dominant ideologies as the norm.

What the model says

– This theory suggests that the audience receive an intravenous injection of a media text which could be negative or positive.

– The weakness of this model is that audiences are seen as passive and malleable with no thought of their own.

Two step flow model• The 'Multistep Flow Model says that most people form their

opinions based on opinion leaders that influence the media. Opinion leaders are those initially exposed to a specific media content, interpret based on their own opinion and then begin to infiltrate these opinions through the general public who then become "opinion followers" These "opinion leaders" gain their influence through more elite media as opposed to mainstream mass media. In this process, social influence is created and adjusted by the ideals and opinions of each specific "elite media" group and by these media group's opposing ideals and opinions and in combination with popular mass media sources. Therefore, the leading influence in these opinions is primarily a social persuasion.

• The two-step flow of communication model suggests that ideas flow from mass media to opinion leaders, and from them to a wider population i.e celebrities. It was first introduced by sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld et al. in 1944 and elaborated by Elihu Katz and Lazarsfeld in 1955 and subsequent publications

• Unlike the hypodermic needle model which considers mass media effects to be direct, the two-step flow model stresses human interaction in the process, from one to another.

• According to Lazarsfeld and Katz, mass media information is channeled to the "masses" through opinion leadership. The people with most access to media, and having a more literate understanding of media content, explain and diffuse the content to others

Contrasting viewpoint: Active V’S Passive audience

Uses and gratification• Uses and Gratifications Theory is a popular

approach to understanding mass media and mass communication. The theory discusses how users proactively search for media that will not only meet a given need, but enhance knowledge, social interactions. It assumes that members of the audience are not passive but take an active role in media conception. The theory also holds that audiences are responsible for choosing media to meet their needs. This approach suggests that people use the media to fulfil specific gratifications. This theory would then imply that the media compete against other information sources for viewers' gratification. (

• Katz, E., Blumler, J. G., & Gurevitch, M. 1974)

Give some examples of why we watch television

• Information • finding out about relevant events and conditions in immediate surroundings, society and the world • seeking advice on practical matters or opinion and decision choices • satisfying curiosity and general interest • learning; self-education • gaining a sense of security through knowledge • Personal Identity • finding reinforcement for personal values• finding models of behaviour• identifying with valued other (in the media) • gaining insight into one's self• Integration and Social Interaction gaining insight into circumstances of others; social empathy• identifying with others and gaining a sense of belonging• finding a basis for conversation and social interaction• having a substitute for real-life companionship• helping to carry out social roles• enabling one to connect with family, friends and society

•Entertainment • escaping, or being diverted, from problems

• relaxing

• getting intrinsic cultural or aesthetic enjoyment

• filling time

• emotional release

• sexual arousal

(McQuail 1987: 73)

Reception theory• StuarytHall is the main theorist for this.

• Thirty years ago, much research was conducted on how individuals received and interpreted a media text, and whether their individual circumstances (age, gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality) affected their reading. I.e. think about how an Indian audience and a western audience interpreted Slumdog millionaire is it the same response? Think about their individuals differences not just ethnicity, but class, age, gender and even sexuality.

• Stuart Hall addressed this in the video on representation, that though a process of encoding/decoding, that audiences take on their own readings of a text they negotiate and interpret that meaning.

• Producers (media) are able to engineer their products to position audiences to accept the preferred reading of a text. However, people are all different and have different sets of ideals, beliefs and values (ideology), which can create oppositional or negotiated readings.

• This links nicely to genre and how we accept and categorise a text or group of texts i.e if we take on the preferred reading we understand the genre and accent the dominant hegemonic code.

• Stuart Hall also developed Hall's Theory of encoding and decoding, focusing on the communication processes.

Reception Theory

• How audience receive and understand media has been heavily research, in the 1980s and 1990s a lot of work was done on the way individuals received and interpreted a text, and how their individual circumstances (gender, class, age, ethnicity) affected their reading.

• This work was based on Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding model of the relationship between text and audience - the text (media product) is encoded by the producer, and decoded by the reader. Hall believed media texts encoded based on a dominant code, where social, cultural and political ideology was shared by media producers. If the audience understood this they were decoding the dominant code. Hall put foward the idea that there were major differences between two different readings of the same code.

• He suggested media producers use recognised codes and conventions, and by drawing upon audience expectations relating to aspects such as genre and use of stars, the producers can position the audience and thus create a certain amount of agreement on what the code means. This is known as a preferred reading, where you accept the dominant code. Hall suggested there are three main ways an audience can understand a text or media product: Negotiated, Preferred or oppositional

Audience positioning• Stuart Hall, in his research [19731, suggested that texts were

'encoded' by the producers of the texts to contain certain meanings related to the social and cultural background of the creator of the text. However, once the reader of the text 'decoded' that text then the meanings intended by the producer may change. Hall then went on to suggest three main perspectives involved in the way in which an audience responds to a particular text. This involves how the audience is positioned by the text.

• Hall’s work is important because he moved away from the idea that that the media can have a direct effect on people he extended the notion of an active audience and offered three different ways that the audience can interpret media texts.

Preferred reading

• The preferred reading also known as the dominant hegemonic reading where the audience accepts the meaning created by a producer. It is called a hegemonic meaning as hegemonic is the dominant viewpoint produced by the ideology of society, here dominant viewpoint is male, white, elite and well educated.

• One theory of the way a media text is understood by the audience is called the preferred meaning. In this model, the meaning which is created through encoding by the codes and conventions is accepted by the audience and they interpret the meaning the producer enclosed.

• In this model the audience is passive and follows the hyperdermic needle model

Negotiated

• The negotiated or negotiated hegemonic position is established when the audience member negotiates with the media text i.e. You agree with aspects of the production, but disagree with other. In this model you understand the preferred reading, but rather than be passive, you negotiate and adapt the preferred meaning. This model places emphasis on the audience in the process of constructing a meaning i.e. You are asked to sympathise with a character in that film, which you dislike, but you enjoy the film. You are negotiating your own understanding this is an active response.

Oppositional meaning

• The oppositional hegemonic position is established when the audience member understands the preferred meaning, but disagrees with it due to their own set of attitudes and beliefs. For instance this could be seen where a Palestinian watches the American news, they have a conflict with the text itself due to their beliefs or experiences of the trouble.

• This theory is important as it can challenge the effects model and the hypodermic needle model because it challenges that all the audiences are the same, and that they will have the same experience from a text.

Moral panics and the effects debate

Moral panics• A moral panic is a term used to describe a sudden flurry of

attitudes towards the media (usually film or music) when something which is perceived as too shocking or graphic is released to the public. For example when the film Reservoir Dogs was released in the UK there was a "Moral Panic" because many thought that it was too violence, and in particular the way the violence was treated by director Quentin Tarantino was offensive. This moral panic spread and the film was banned until an edited version was released years later.

• Moral panics are usually inspired by real life events and tragedies for which the media, and usually the director of the most violent film of the moment, receive blame. The Columbine High School massacre sparked a moral panic into two areas of the media, violent films and violent music

• Most moral panics in media focus around the role of violence in the media as a whole instead of against any particular film.

The problems•

"The first problem is that there is too much of it (violence) the glut of media violence desensitises viewers and contributes to 'Mean World Syndrome' (a wholly negative view of the world)

• secondly much of it (media violence) can be easily imitated, especially by young children a third problem is the manner in which violence is depicted. It is one thing to show a shooting or a stabbing; it is another to show it in sadistic slow motion with the bullets actually penetrating the body

• The fourth problem is Hollywood's infatuation with guns, instead of portraying guns as, at best, a necessary evil, handguns especially are portrayed as a means of empowerment"

The effects debate

• The effects debate is linked to moral panics because some in society worry that violence, graphic films and music can have an effect on people. This view is often linked to the hypodermic needle model or where the audience is viewed as passive, and heterogeneous i.e the same and can be directly influenced by the media, or whether we agree with individual differences i.e reception theory.

• There are others including David Gauntlett who disagree with this view and say other issues such as peoples experience and background play a role with how we interact with the media text.

The effects model• The Frankfurt school, set up in 1923, were concerned about the possible effects of

mass media. They proposed the "Effects" model, which considered society to be made up of individuals who were susceptible to media messages. The Frankfurt school envisioned the media as a hypodermic syringe, and the contents of the media were injected into the thoughts of the audience, who accepted the attitudes, opinions and beliefs expressed by the medium without question. This model was a response to the German fascists use of film and radio for propaganda uses, and later applied to American capitalist society. The followers of the hypodermic model of Effects adopted a variant of Marxism, emphasising the dangers of the power of capitalism, which owned and controlled new forms of media. Researchers in the fifties also supported the Effects model when exploring the potential of the new medium of television. Researchers were particularly concerned over increases in the representation of violent acts on television, which correlated with increases in violent acts in society. In the nineties, there was considerable concern over what were called "video nasties". The tabloid papers created a moral panic over whether particular violet films could influence child behaviour – and whether Childs Play 3 influenced the child killers of Jamie Bulger.

Media effects Point 3:

• What effect does the media have on the audience if any. This is linked to whether the audience is seen as passive, where they soak up the violence, or whether it has no effect on them at all.

Media violence• Media Violence -• The debate is dominated by one question—

whether or not media violence actually causes real-life violence. But closer examination reveals a political battle. On the one hand, there are those who blame media violence for problems in societal and want to censor violent content to protect children. On the other hand there are those who see regulation as the slippery slope to censorship or a smokescreen hiding the root causes of violence in society.

• This again comes down to the question of whether we believe in the hypodermic needle or follow a uses and gratification view point.

Research• Laval University professors Guy Paquette

and Jacques de Guise studied six major Canadian television networks. Paquette and de Guise also identified a disturbing increase in psychological violence, especially in the last two years. The study found that incidents of psychological violence remained relatively stable from 1993 to 1999, but increased 325 per cent from 1999 to 2001. Such incidents now occur more frequently than physical violence on both francophone and anglophone networks.

Graphical• Other research indicates that media violence

has not just increased in quantity; it has also become much more graphic, much more sexual, and much more sadistic.

• Explicit pictures of slow-motion bullets exploding from people's chests, and dead bodies surrounded by pools of blood, are now commonplace fare.

• Millions of viewers worldwide, many of them children, watch female World Wrestling Entertainment wrestlers try to tear out each other's hair and rip off each other's clothing. And one of the top-selling video games in the world, Grand Theft Auto, is programmed so players can beat prostitutes to death with baseball bats after having sex with them.

American research

• Busy parents who want to protect their children from media violence have a difficult task before them. The CMPA found that violence appears on all major television networks and cable stations, making it impossible for channel surfers to avoid it.

• Nightly news coverage has become another concern. In spite of falling crime rates across North America, disturbing images of violent crime continue to dominate news broadcasting. As news shows compete with other media for audiences, many news producers have come to rely on the maxim: "If it bleeds, it leads." Violence and death, they say, keep the viewer numbers up. Good news

Films

• As well, movie ratings are becoming less and less trustworthy in terms of giving parents real guidance on shows with unsuitable content. PG-13 movies tend to make more money than R-rated films, and as a result, the industry is experiencing a "ratings creep": shows that the Motion Picture Association of America would once have rated R are now being rated as PG-13, in order to increase box-office profits and rental sales.

Music• Music and Music Videos• Music and music videos are pushing into new

and increasingly violent territory. When singer Jordan Knight, formerly of the popular New Kids on the Block group, released a solo album in 1999, Canadian activists called for a boycott of the album because it included a song advocating date rape.

• "Don't you get it, bitch? No one can hear you.Now shut the fuck up, and get what's comin' to you... You were supposed to love me!!!!! (Sound of Kim choking)NOW BLEED, BITCH, BLEEDBLEED, BITCH, BLEED, BLEEEEEED!"

(Source: From the song Kim, by Eminem)

Video games

• Violence in general, and sexual violence in particular, is also a staple of the video game industry. The current trend is for players to be the bad guys, acting out criminal fantasies and earning points for attacking and killing innocent bystanders. Although these games are rated M, for mature audiences, it's common knowledge that they are popular among pre-teens and teenaged boys.

• "As easy as killing babies with axes."

(Source: Advertising copy for the game Carmageddon) For example, players in Grand Theft Auto 3 (the best-selling game ever for PlayStation 2) earn points by carjacking, and stealing drugs from street people and pushers. In Carmageddon, players are rewarded for mowing down pedestrians -- sounds of cracking bones add to the realistic effect. The first-person shooter in Duke Nukem hones his skills by using pornographic posters of women for target practice, and earns bonus points for shooting naked and bound prostitutes and strippers who beg, "Kill me." In the game Postal, players act out the part of the Postal Dude, who earns points by randomly shooting everyone who appears -- including people walking out of church, and members of a high school band. Postal Dude is programmed to say, "Only my gun understands me."

Weaknesses with the effects debate

• However, theorists since have thought that media could not have such direct effects on the audiences they serve, and consider the media as a comparatively weak influence in moulding individual beliefs, opinions and attitudes. Other factors present in society, such as personal contact and religion, are more likely to influence people. The Effects model is considered to be an inadequate representation of the communication between media and the public, as it does not take into account the audience as individuals with their own beliefs, opinions, ideals and attitudes:

Criticisms of media violence

• David Gauntlett http://theory.org.uk/tenthings.htm

Web 2.0• Finally where we have all this media to choose from is it the case

that we can be seen as one heterogeneous audience, which is passive, is it not more the case that we are now creatingt the media, and choosing when and where we want to watch it. The final quote suggested the audience is fractured, Ien Ang – said “Audiencehood is becoming an even more multifaceted, fragmented and diversified repertoire of practices and experiences”

• This means meaning the audience is not one type of individual, but there are different types, different ways of experience media. The changes in technology, and the role of the internet, web 2.0 means that audiencehood and who we view the audience has changed completely.

Finally think about how you have created your product for your audience?

Audience theory remember these key points

• 1. Who is your audience i.e. demographics and psychographics?• 2. How did you research your audience• 3. How could you use audience theory to explain your audience using

theorists?• 2. How do you believe the audience mediates and understands the media texts

i.e. how the audience interprets what it reads, hear and sees. Include quotes from different theories and theorists look for a compare and contrast view.

• 4. What do you think to the effects debate make sure you show contrasting views and use Gauntlett’s view.

• 4. Do you believe a heterogeneous audience explain your view?• 5. How has the audience changed due to web 2, how would this effect the way

you market and distribute this film?• 6. Finish off with the quote about fragmentation.