Audience theory

"Audience - Consumers of media text"


Passive Audiences

• All share the same view, all are influenced, mass audience product - Brainwashed - Disagree, only minority - other issues.
• Debated topic, no defining answer, hard to interpret audience
• Censorship - less control
• Relationship between audience and text

Hypodermic needle

• Media infect values and belief put forward by the media, audience are passive - out dated - moral panic - threat
• Mass audience consumption gaining the same messages - Nazi Propaganda
• Manipulating peoples views and beliefs - the dark knight, war of the worlds

Nazi Propaganda

• Distorted human, inhuman - someone else - inhuman - not pure
• Not German citizens - Communist
• Yellow - money, power, united Germany, positive, faded - Gritty yellow
• Looking at money - taking all of the money from Germany - greed
• Unwelcome - communism - untrustworthy - ideologies
• Threatening - slave drivers, demanding money

Uses + Gratification - Blulmer & Kate

"Media provides gratifications related to the satisfaction of social and psychological needs"

• Active audience - do something within the media text
• Diversion / entertainment - escapism, relaxation
• Integration & social interaction - gain an insight into others beliefs, identifying with others, substitution for a relationship
• Personal identity - Aspiring 
• Information / surveillance - Learning, relative events

 Slumdog millionaire

• Escaping from problems - engaging with someone else's problems
• Cultural or aesthetic enjoyment - reality
• Emotional release - enabling freedom
• Satisfying general interest - does he win?
• Finding models of behaviour
• Learning - cultures
• Social interaction - provides conversation
• Destiny - identifying with the person

Hierarchy of needs

• Layers of need, we need to satisfy one before moving up. Aim to get to self - actualisation.
• Gain the top, media products provide this - self - esteem
• Only 2% get to the self actualisation

M & S

• Belongingness + love and needs - affection
• Esteem - reputation, achievement
• Active - doing something with the media text

Reception theory - Encoding and decoding

Audience are active and there are different responses to a media text, all factors that might influence how someone might read a text.

Reader interprets the meaning of a text, interpretation is biased on individual culture and background.

• Preferred reading - Reader fully accepts the media text meaning.
• Negotiated reading - Share preferred meaning, but resists and modifies the way they view it.
• Oppositional reading -  Rejects the media text, but understands the meaning of the text.

Influences - Gender, age, race, social class, religion, politics, location & life experiences.

iLL Manors

• Stereotyping
• "do what Boris does..... rob them blind"
• "We're"
• "Break"
• barrier of social class - rich v poor
• Problem with stereotypes + class - chavs, violence - Etc
• Shock tactics - impact - shocking out of habit
• Understanding - challenging ideas
• Alienation
• Audience - a - d, active audience as it builds up questions in users mind, a direct mode of address, breaking down class barriers
• Oppositional reading -  a/c - taxes - against B system, conservative - right wing
• Negotiated reading - Understand the problem but dislike method - mc, cb, archetype & liberal
• Preferred reading - Breaking down of class system, names etc and riots
• MP responses - Jamie Reed - "the risk of any lefty politician being pilloried for praising the new Plan B track is really pretty high. That said, it's excellent". David Lammy - "reflecting anger" of a generation of youths who have lost hope.
• Newspapers - The Guardian "greatest British protest song in years" v The Independents "Misconceptions" of Plan B, "cheap discourse" 
• My Manors Law -  Audience response
• YouTube - "glamorisation of violence", "giving off the wrong message" & "you get free money from the rich people so shut up, we pay tax so you have money, we go to work and earn it and half of it goes to you!"