Audience Theory

Hypodermic Needle Theory:

The Hypodermic Needle theory suggests that the media inject ideas into a passive audience, like giving a drug. Dating from the 1920s the theory suggests that the audience passively receive information given through a media text; the information from a text passes into the mass consciousness of the audience unmediated, meaning that the experience, intelligence and opinion of an individual are not relevant to the reception of the text.. Most researchers think that the theory is too simple to explain the way that the media work but there is still a lot of opinion and research that suggests that we are manipulated by the creators of media texts and that our behaviour may be easily changed by media-makers.

Two Step Flow:

The two step flow model suggests that ideas flow from mass media to opinion leaders, and then from them to a wider population. The theory was first introduced by Paul Lazarsfeld et al in 1944. Unlike the hypodermic needle model, which considers mass media effects to be direct, the two step flow model stresses human agency. According to Lazarsfeld and Katz, who developed the model, mass media information is channelled to the masses through opinion leadership; the people with most access to media and a greater understanding of media content, explain the content and share their knowledge.

Uses and Gratifications Theory:

This theory accepts that audiences are made up of individuals who actively consume texts for different reasons and in different ways. 

It was said by Halloran, in 1970, "We must get away from the habit of thinking in terms of what the media do to people and substitute for it the idea of what people do with the media." By this he seems to be saying that the consumer now has an say in what they want from the media.

C. Wright Mill specified four functions of the media for the audience:

• To give people aspiration
• To give individuals identity
• To give people instruction
• To give people a form of escapism 

Blumler and Katz expanded this theory and published their own in 1974, which stated that individuals might choose and use a text for the following uses and gratifications:

• Diversion - escape from everyday problems and routine.
• Personal relationships - using the media for emotional and other interaction, for example substituting soap operas for family life.
• Personal Identity - finding yourself reflected in texts, learning behaviours and values from texts.
• Surveillance - Information which could be useful for living, for example weather reports, financial news or holiday bargains.

Reception Theory:

Reception theory emphasizes the reader's reception of a literary text. It originated from the work of Hans-Robert Jauss in the late 1960s. 

Cultural theorist Stuart Hall is one of the main proponents of reception theory, having developed it for media communication studies. This approach to textual analysis focuses on the scope for "negotiation" and "opposition" on the part of the audience. This means that a text is not simply passively accepted by the audience, but that the reader / viewer interprets the meanings of the text based on their individual cultural background and life experiences. In essence, the meaning of a text is not inherent within the text itself, but is created within relationship between the text and the reader.

Stuart Hall also developed Hall's Theory of encoding and decoding, focusing on the communication processes at play in the televisual form.

It is essential that I keep these theories in mind throughout my project, as they will assist me in considering the way in which my audience will consume our music video. It is clear that my audience will probably not passively consume the video, as the hypodermic needle theory suggests; instead our audience is likely to bring their own views, feelings and experiences to the video and it will therefore be interpreted in many different ways.