Audience Theory

The effects model

This theory suggests that the consumption of media texts affects (often adversely) the audience. The audience is influenced, sometimes to replicate what they have consumed. Also known as the hypodermic syringe model. Here the audience is passive. The images of the text are injected directly into the brain and the audience is powerless to resist.

It is still unclear that there is any link between the consumption of violent media texts and violent intuitive behavior.
It is also clear that the theory is flawed in that may people do watch violent texts and appear not to be influenced.
Therefore a new theory is necessary.
This is called the uses and gratifications model.

Uses and gratification model

The uses and gratification model is the opposite of the effects model.
The audience is active.
The audience uses the text & is not used by it.
The audience uses the text for its own gratification or pleasure.
Here, power is with the audience, not the producers.
the theory emphasises what audiences do with media texts - how and why they use them.
Far from being duped by the media, the audience is free to reject, use or play ith media meanings as they see fit.

Reception theory

The theory suggests that:

When a producer constructs a text it is encoded with a meaning or message that the producer wishes to convey to the audience.

In some instances audiences will correctly decode the message or meaning and understand what the producer was trying to say.

In some instances the audience will either reject it or fail to correctly understand the message.

Stuart Hall identified three types of audiences reading of the text : Dominant, negotiated, oppositional.