Audience Response and the Effects Debate

Audience Response

The Hypodermic Needle Model
Back in the early 1920s, this theory was used to explain how mass audiences would or might react to mass media. The audience receive an intravenous injection of a media text, either positive or negative and are stimulated into a response, for example, putting "Donald trump claims to regret building walls" in a paper, would cause a lot of talking about him becoming the new president and would make people think it was a good idea electing him as president. This is a short-term effect and the audience is seen as passive and malleable.

The Inoculation Model
This theory suggests that being exposed to long term mass media causes the audience to become in a way immune to its effects eventually. The audience is desensitised by the media text and can no longer be shocked by it. Someone sensitised is more likely to commit a violent act as it is not seen as an extraordinary action. Again, the audience is seen as passive.

The Two-Step Flow Model
This is the theory that people will sometimes require a "second opinion" from their opinion leader in order to agree or carry something out. For example, if my teacher told me that eating a banana every day is bad for you, i would ask my friend too and see what his opinion is on the matter. Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gauntlet conducted a study in 1940 during the presidential election. They found that 50% of voters had made up their minds six months before the election and did not change their minds despite the influence of media debates and coverage. In addition, it was found that individual views were most affected by opinion leaders who played a key role in the communication process, filtering the message.

The Uses & Gratifications Theory
During the 1960s, as the first generation to grow up with television became grown ups, it became increasingly apparent to media theorists that audiences made choices about what they did when consuming media texts. Far from being a passive mass, audiences were made up of individuals who actively consumed media texts for different reasons and in different ways.  The reasons usually consist of these 4:

• Information Personal 
• Identity Integration
• Social Interaction 
• Entertainment

Information Personal

• The need to be informed – press, broadcast and online news.
• Seeking advice on practical matters – how to fix the toilet. 
• Satisfying curiosity and general interest – pub quiz. 
• Learning; self-education – formal learning e.g. An OU course Identity Integration

Social Interaction and Social Interaction
Comparing our own roles and values with similar roles and values represented in the media – buying Loaded to be one of the lads or referencing a soap opera to see how other teenagers behave in relationships. Seeing yourself in the game. Most people can be convinced into liking games and feeling like they reflect their personal desires and opinions. The need for companionship and interaction with others: Identifying with others and gaining a sense of belonging Having a substitute for real-life companionship Enabling one to connect with family, friends and society This can be through viewing fictional characters as friends, having the radio on all day for company or social media like Facebook.

Entertainment
Fantasy, escaping, or being diverted, from problems Relaxing Filling time Emotional release

The Reception Theory
Extending the concept of an active audience still further, 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.

The entire theory says that people will encode information onto a medium, or in this case a shop owner, then the shop owner will sell this product to the buyer and they well have to decode that product in their own way. The way the consumer(buyer) consumes and used this product is all dependent on how it is decoded. For example, a game could be made to be very funny and entertaining, but some parents might just find it completely inappropriate and dumb. This means that she has received and decoded that product and decided from her experience that it should not exist.

This theory points out that meaning of any media text is created by the audience - not the producer. Meaning is encoded into the media text but it is up to the audience what they take from it depending how they decode the signs within the text. Broadly speaking the audience can arrive at one of three readings:

• The Preferred Reading - Audience understands and accepts the ideology offered.
• The Negotiated Reading - Audience understands the ideology offered, accepts some aspects of it but rejects other aspects.
• The Opositional Reading - Audience interprets the ideology offered in the opposite way than it is intended.