Audience Theory

provides a starting point for many Media Studies tasks. Whether you are constructing a text or analysing one, you will need to consider the destination of that text (i.e. its target audience) and how that audience (or any other) will respond to that text.

Over the course of the past century or so, media analysts have developed several effects models, ie theoretical explanations of how humans ingest the information transmitted by media texts and how this might influence (or not) their behaviour. Effects theory is still a very hotly debated area of Media and Psychology research, as no one is able to come up with indisputable evidence that audiences will always react to media texts one way or another. The scientific debate is clouded by the politics of the situation: some audience theories are seen as a call for more censorship, others for less control. Whatever your personal stance on the subject, you must understand the following theories and how they may be used to deconstruct the relationship between audience and text.

The hypodermic needle model

The intended message is directly received and wholly accepted by the receiver.

Two-step flow

The people with most access to media, and highest media literacy explain and diffuse the content to others. This is a modern version of the hypodermic needle model.

Uses and gratifications

People are not helpless victims of mass media, but use the media to get specific gratifications.

Reception theory

The meaning of a "text" is not inherent within the text itself, but the audience must elicit meaning based on their individual cultural background and life experiences

Obstinate audience theory

This theory assumes that there is a transactional communication between the audience and the media. The audience actively selects what messages to pay attention to. The Zimmerman-Bauer study found that the audience also participates in the communication by influencing the message.