Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Audience Theories
Any form of media has to be analysed on 3 levels:
Production - Text - Audience
Therefore it is essential you refer to theories that explore the
relationship between the audience, media texts and producers:
Model
HYPODERMIC
SYRINGE
cCULTIVATION
Theory of Media
it mainly relates
to?
MARXIST
THEORY
HEGEMONIC
MAXISTS
PLURALISTS
HEGEMONIC
MARXISTS
SEMIOTICS
PLURALISTS
USES AND
GRATIFICATION
RECEPTION
ANALYSIS
VERY LOW
POST MODERNISTS
HYPODERMIC SYRINGE
Vance Packard (1957) the hidden persuaders
Audience is;
passive weak & inactive
homogeneous
like blank pages
INTERPRETIVE (SELECTIVE
FILTER)
Active audience approach
Some media messages get through others are ignored
or rejected (filtered out)
Klapper (1960) for a media message to have any
effect must pass through three filters
Selective exposure
Selective perception
Selective retention
RECEPTION ANALYSIS
People interpret media texts differently according to
class, ethnicity, age, etc.
Reception analysis
Morley (1980) messages often have many meanings
(polysemy)
Audience has three responses
Dominant response
Oppositional response
Negotiated response
Cultivation theory
Reception analysis
This extends the U & G approach. Once you accept that people
use the media in different ways then the next step is to
actually study how this happens.
This theory is based on the idea that no text has only one simple
meaning. Rather the audience themselves help create the
meaning of the text.
Each one of us is constructed in many different ways through
family, education, peers etc and it is these differences that
enable us to encounter the world including the media in
different ways.
Reception analysis looks at the differences in the ways people
read texts and the reasons for this.
Asks questions such as Why do soaps mean different things to
men and women?