Audience Theory

The Effects Theory: 
Media Effect theory is how media can affect society and how society affects the media. Typically it is  considered that this effect is negative and the audience is passive and powerless to prevent influence. The power lies with the message in the text. For example, reality show such as The Only Way is Essex portray the residents of that area in a certain way. Sometimes this gives people a negative view on the area and its residents, depute the show only showing a tiny minority of the area.

Hypodermic Needle:

Essentially, this model holds that an intended message is directly received and wholly accepted by the receiver. Dating from the 1930s, this theory was the first attempt to explain how mass audiences might react to mass media.It suggests that audiences passively receive the information transmitted via a media text, without any attempt on their part to process or challenge the data. The messages in the text are injected into the audience. The media's message is like a drug.

Bobo Doll Experiment: 

A lab experiment was used, in which the independent variable (type of model) was manipulated in three conditions:
Aggressive model shown to 24 children
Non-aggressive model shown to 24 children
No model shown (control condition) - 24 children

• Children who observed the aggressive model made far more imitative aggressive responses than those who were in the non-aggressive or control groups.

• There was more partial and non-imitative aggression among those children who has observed aggressive behavior, although the difference for non-imitative aggression was small.

• The girls in the aggressive model condition also showed more physical aggressive responses if the model was male, but more verbal aggressive responses if the model was female. However, the exception to this general pattern was the observation of how often they punched Bobo, and in this case the effects of gender were reversed.

• Boys were more likely to imitate same-sex models than girls. The evidence for girls imitating same-sex models is not strong.

• Boys imitated more physically aggressive acts than girls. There was little difference in the verbal aggression between boys and girls.

Stuart Hall - Encoding and Decoding:
Stuart Hall argued that when texts are made they are encoded with a message by the institutions that suit the social, economical and political society that they are made in. Hall suggested that there are 3 ways the receiver can decode a message:

1. Dominant Reading - when a receiver accepts and reproduces the code to the producer 

2. Negotiated Reading - when a code is broadly received but only partially shared with the producer 3. Oppositional Reading - when the receiver understands the reading but rejects the code

• There are many social and economic structures that shape the way things are perceived by recievers
• Meanings of messages signified through languages can be transposed into conduct (action,) or consciousness (thought.) 

Uses and Gratifications Theory: 

Blumler and Katz theorized that audiences are active and that actually the audience uses the text, rather than the text using the audience. The audience will seek out pleasure from the text so they will choose to consume it.

Pleasures and Gratifications can include:
- Escapism
- Diversion
- Information
- Counter Cultural Experience
- Comparing
- Sexual Stimulation

Uses and gratification theory can be seen in cases such as personal music selection. We select music not only to fit a particular mood but also in attempts to show empowerment or other socially conscience motives. There are many different types of music and we choose from them to fulfil a particular need.

Main Brief:
From researching audience theory, Chelsea and I quickly realised that as we are responsible for how the general public react to our film when it is released. This means that, we need to make sure that our film will be viewed as a means of entertainment and enjoyment, rather that inspiration for crimes or imitating actions in the film. In order to prevent similar crimes happening, we took a lot of time to make sure that our age certification was appropriate, this is crucial because if young people were to view a film with disturbing scenes they may be too immature to realise that these actions are wrong, and should never be imitated or copied.