Audiences

What is The Hypodermic syringe model

• Believes that the media can have a direct and immediate effect on the audience. This model sees the audience as a ‘homogeneous mass’ (all the same), as passive and believing what they see in the media without questioning the content.

• Media messages fill audiences with the dominant ideology - sexist, racist and violent
  Causes immediate change in peoples behaviour = direct correlation between violent behaviours in TV and real life

Example of audience response (evidence for hypodermic syringe model)

ORSON WELLES - radio story ppl thought was a news report

War of the Worlds is a fictional story about Alien invaders coming from Mars and killing very large numbers of people in the process. The original radio adaptation was done in the style of a news report, and some of the listeners who tuned in after the show had begun (and so missed the introduction to it) actually believed they were hearing a news report, packed their cars and fled to the country.

Copycat violence (hypodermic syringe model)

BANDURA - BOBO DOLLS - evidence that media-violence can ‘cause’ children to act more aggressively when given the opportunity to do so. Bandura showed three groups of children real, film and cartoon examples of a bobo-doll being beaten with a mallet. A further group of children were shown no violence. The children were then taken to a room with lots of toys, but then ‘frustrated’ by being told the toys were not for them. They were then taken to a room with a mallet and a bobo-doll, and the children who had seen the violent examples (whether real, film, or cartoon) imitated the violence by beating the doll themselves, while the children who had seen no violence did not beat the doll.

Criticisms of the hypodermic syringe model

Firstly, this model may have been true in the 1940s when the media was relatively new and audiences less literate, but in today’s new media age, audiences are more likely to criticise what they see rather than just believing it.

Secondly, the hypodermic syringe model treats audiences a ‘homogenous mass, but today’s audiences are more diverse than in the past, so this model is less applicable.

Thirdly, it’s too simplistic a theory to explain social problems – societal violence has many causes, and it’s all too easy to scapegoat the media.

Fourthly, where Bandura’s imitative aggression model is concerned, this was carried out in such an artificial environment, it tells us little about how violence happens in real life.

What is the cultural effects model?

NEO-MARXIST model

According to the cultural effects model, the media contains ideological messages that reflect the values of media owners and professionals who expect audiences to agree with their preferred readings of events.

Points of view which are oppositional media owners and middle class journalists’ world views are generally kept out of the mainstream media through processes such as agenda setting and gatekeeping.

Audiences are continually exposed to the dominant ideology and this has a gradual ‘drip-drip’ effect and over time audiences come to share the views of the rich and powerful. They also come to criticise those who have been demonised by the ideological framing of the elite: such as immigrants and those on benefits.

The cultural effects model recognises that audiences are active and that they interpret media content in diverse ways, but they do argue that interpretations are narrow due to long term ideological framing of media content.

Criticisms of the cultural effects model.

Methodologically it is difficult to test any theory on long term media effects. It is almost impossible to isolate the independent effect that long term exposure to media content has over several years.

It seems increasingly unlikely that homogenous content has homogenous effects in the postmodern age of new media.

What is the reception analysis model? Who is it associated with?

Reception analysis model states there three main types of ‘reading’ which audiences make of media content:

• The dominant reading: which is the same as the media content creators.

• The oppositional reading: which opposes the views expressed in the media

• The Negotiated reading: where people interpret media content to fit in with their own lives.

MORLEY

According to Morley, audiences came from many different cultures (polysemic) and thus there were many possible ‘negotiated’ readings. He further argued that individuals had many aspects to their identities, and they interpreted media content in a variety of ways, often chopping and changing their interpretations over time.

Morley thus believed that audiences were active rather than passive and their interpretations were not always easy to predict.

What is the two-step flow model?

Derived by Katz and Lazarsfeld (1965) which views the audience as active and influenced by influential opinion leaders, rather than directly by media content.

Katz and Lazarfeld argued that social networks were dominated by opinion leaders, who were influential people within social networks with the power to influence how others around them saw the world.

Opinion Leaders are exposed to media content, and they then share their interpretation of that content with the wider audience. Thus media content goes through two stages, with the wider audience being primarily influenced by the views of the active opinion leaders rather than being influenced directly by media content.

Evaulations of Two step flow model

• + This model might be especially useful for understanding the role of parents as opinion leaders.

• – Of course there is a sense in which the media has a ‘direct effect’ – on the opinion leaders, so there may still be some validity in the hypodermic syringe model.

• – This model may not apply to people who are socially isolated – and these could be the people who are most likely to be influenced by media content.

What is the uses and gratifications model?

People use media for 4 reasons:

• Diversion - escape from daily routine.

• Personal relationships - compensate for decline in community.

• Personal identity - express identity e.g. facebook

• Surveillance - to obtain information abt the world e.g. news

Criticisms of the Uses and Gratifications model

• There is a lack of substantive research which supports this theory

• Marxists argue it exaggerates audiences’ capacity to interpret media content, ignoring the power of agenda setting.

• Postmodernists argue there are an even wider set of uses individuals make of media.

What is the Selective filter model?

The selective filter model of audience effects (Klapper 1960) holds that media messages pass through three filters before they have an effect.

This is an active audience model which suggests that the audience do not just passively accept what they see in the media as ‘the truth’, as the hypodermic syringe model suggests.

1. Selective exposure - Different groups are exposed to different media content, which will influence the effect the media can have on them.

   Audiences actively choose what to watch, which is influenced by their interests, age, gender, education etc.

2. Selective perception - Audiences may reject some of the content they are exposed to, for example because what they see does not fit in with their view of the world. Festinger (1957) argued that people actively seek out media content which affirms their already existing views of the world.

3. Selective retention - Finally, content has to stick for it to have an effect. Audiences are more likely to remember content they agree with.

What is the Postmodernist model?

Postmodernists argue that the media is an integral part of postmodern society. Individuals actively use the media to construct their identities, and there is a sense of playfulness, creativity and unpredictability about how they go about doing this.

Postmodernists criticise other theories of audience effects, especially the Hypodermic Syringe model for assuming that audiences are homogenous (the same) and any models which assume there is such a thing as one dominant or preferred reading of media messages, such as the reception analysis model.

A diverse and active audience

Individuals read media in a diverse variety of ways, and how they read media content depends on a range of factors, including the entirety of an individual’s prior life experiences. Audiences can also change the way the interpret media content over time and make multiple readings of the same content simultaneously.

It follows that of all the models of audience effects, the postmodernist model sees the audience as the most active.

No such thing as an ‘underlying’ reality

Finally, postmodernists also argue that the media is constitutive of people’s realities – there is no deeper reality underneath media representations, media representations are no less real than non-media reality (if indeed there is such a thing!). It is thus meaningless to say that the media has an ‘effect’ on audiences as to make such a claim assumes that media representations and the audience are two different things, in postmodernism they are not, they are one and the same.