AUDIENCE THEORY

Blumer and Katz - Uses and Gratifications Theory

How audiences choose to consume the media.

• Audeinces watch sad films to connect with emotions etc.
• Audeinces watch comedies to have a laugh.

Passive Audience = Take in what they watch eg. The News
Active Audience = Gives the audience choice of what they want to watch.

If mass audience dont consume certain media then it is not produced.

The 'Uses and Gratifications' model represented a change in thinking, as researchers begin to describe the effects of the media from the point of view of audiences.

The model looks at the motives of the people who use the media, asking why we watch the tv programmes that we do, why we bother to read newspapers, why we find oursleves so compelled to keep up to date with our favourite soap operas, or consume films.

The theory makes the audience active as they choose what they want to consume, they are not forced into consumption. For example, you are in control, the media just creates the product.

Argues the audience needs to have social and psychological needs which generate certain expectations.

The audience use the media not vice versa.

The model is broken down into four different needs:
1. Surveillance -

• Based around the idea that people feel better having the feeling that they know what is going on in the world around them. (We watch the news as we feel it is a reliable source)
• All about awareness - we use mass media to be more aware of the world, gratifying a desire for knowledge.

2. Personal Identity -

• Explains how being a subject of the media allwos us to confirm the identity of ourselves within society.
• Media can form personal identitites which can be seen in music videos/ films. Popstars can become role models, but leads to outcry when one does something wron.
• Music videos/songs allow us to connect with such idnetities and help us fit into society.

3. Personal Relationships -
- Within the media

• We can form a relationship with the media and also use the media to form a relationship with others
• People use tv as a form of companionship which creates an intimate experience

- Using the media within relationships

• Having a favourite tv programme in common can often be the start of a conversation
• Some famillies use sitting around watching tv as a stimulus for conversation, talking to each other about the programmes or related anecdotes.

4. Diversion -

• Describes whats commonly termed as escapism - watching the tv so we can forget abotu our own lives.
• We watch music videos to take our mind off our everyday lives, we want to distract our self from the problems we are experiencing.

Stuart Hall - Reception Theory
States the media texts are encoded by producer meaning that whoever produces the text fills the product with values and messages.
Texts then decoded by media.

Producer encodes the meaning/message and the audience become:

• Dominant/Prefferd
• Negotiated
• Oppositional

Dominant -
View media texts the way the producer intended and there agree with it.

Negotiated -
Compromise between dominant and oppositional, they see it from the producers point of view, but also theyre own.

Oppositional -
Rejects the preffered reading and creates their own reading of the text.

How may an audience have a dominant understanding of your product?

• Clear messages
• Audience is the same age so they can relate
• From the same culture
• They can undersyand/relate to the narrative