Media audiences

Media effects - Albert Bandura

Hypodermic needle model: effects model suggests media can implant ideas in the mind of the audience directly

Audiences acquire attitudes, emotional responses and behaviours through media products modelling ideologies

• Vicarious learning: learning by watching the behaviours of others. If a behaviour is seen to be rewarded, someone is more likely to imitate that behaviour

Cultivation theory - George Gerbner

Being exposed to repeated patterns of representations over long periods of time an shape and influence the way in which people perceive the world around them: cultivating particular views or opinions

• Process of cultivation reinforces mainstream hegemonic values [dominant ideologies]

• Media violence defines powerless/powerful characters in representations of victims/saviours reinforcing ideological status

Reception theory - Stuart hall

Consuming media products is a process involving encoding by producers and decoding by audiences

There are endless possible responses that can be affected by environmental factors

• PREFERRED READING: the dominant, hegemonic position where the audiences understands and accosts the ideology and message of the producer

• NEGOTIATED READING: where the message of the producer is understood although it is negotiated and picked apart by the audience as they disagree with certain aspects

• OPPOSITIONAL READING: where the producers message is understood but the audience disagrees with their perspective

Fandom - Henry Jenkins

Fandom: refers to a particularly organised and motivated audiences of a certain media producer franchise

Unlike audiences fans are active participants in the construction and circulation of textual meanings. Fans construct social indemnities through borrowing and utilising mass culture images and use this to form bonds through online forums

• recently fans often take to social media to share thoughts or ideas of how they believe a media product should move forward

Fans appropriate texts and read them in ways that aren’t fully intended by producers [fan fictions]