Media Audience Theories

4 Audience Theories

1)      Hypodermic Needle Model

-          ‘The audience passively receive information from the media, and then they get manipulated in to believing what they are seeing before they have chance to debate it.’ (1920’s)

-          This theory is largely rejected today

2)      Two step Flow Model

- Media gets changed by people’s opinions before it gets top the audience, almost a filtered version of the Hypodermic Needle Model.

- It gets changed-------------------then it goes to the audience = 2 Steps (two step theory)

      3) Uses and Gratifications

              - The audience make an active personal decision to what they watch and how they interpret          it and then consume it.

           - It claims we use media to suit ourselves, interpreting it in ways we that we like and that work for us.

       4) Reception Theory

             - Gender, Class, Age would impact on our/your reading and views of media.

            - Links the kind of person you are, your background and your own existing system of beliefs, to the way you respond to media.