Audience Flashcards
What is the Hypodermic Needle Theory?
The idea that audiences are passive, and can be easily influenced and manipulated by the media. It also suggests that the media can influence audiences’ attitudes and behaviour.
What is Blumler and Katz’s uses and gratification theory?
The idea that audiences use media for their own pleasure.
What are the three I’s and two E’s? (Blumler and Katz)
Interaction Identification Information Escapism Entertainment
What is a niche audience?
A small audience with a unique interest. (An audience which can be created).
What is the Jicnars Scale?
A scale used by mass media producers to separate audiences.
Group A - Upper m/c Group B - M/c Group C1 - White collar, lower m/c Group C2 - Blue collar, skilled w/c Group D - Semi/unskilled manual workers Group E - Unemployed
What is disposable income?
The money people have left to spend on themselves once they’ve paid their bills.
What is tokenism?
When the media includes a person/item just to please society.
Why are audiences crucial to media industries?
Because without audiences they would not exist.
Why do media providers want big audiences to buy their products?
Because the more mainstream it becomes, the more profit the industries make.
What are effects studies?
The effects that media has upon its audiences. The idea that audiences are used, manipulated and effected by the media.
What are uses and gratifications theories?
The ways audiences use media texts for their pleasure and aren’t affected by the media.
What is the context of reception?
Where media texts are consumed.
Why are there critics of the Hypodermic Needle Theory?
There’s no evidence that suggests that mass media effects behaviour. Though there is an argument that mass media does affect behaviour in a positive way.
Why does Barker criticise the Hypodermic Needle Theory?
He says that audiences can tell the difference between fact and fiction. Also, everyone responds differently to different texts and there is no evidence that media effects violence in society.
Why is the effect of mass media on audiences considered to be a moral panic?
Because society sees itself threatened in some way.
According to David Morley, what are the four factors involved in audience decoding?
- Social position: age, sex, race, class etc.
- Cultural identities: membership of trade unions, political parties, specific subcultures etc.
- Direct experience: the relationship between a particular message and a group’s direct experience of it.
- The context of decoding: work, schools, home etc.
According to Stuart Hall, what are the three types of media decoding?
- Dominant: when the audiences takes the full preferred meaning offered by the text.
- Negotiated: where the content of the message is altered so the receivers own view produces a new meaning.
- Oppositional: where the dominant view is contested and a reading which opposes it is produced.
According to Jeremy Tunstall, what are the 3 different levels of attention an audience member can pay to a media text?
Primary
Secondary
Tertiary
What is a niche audience?
An audience that has specific tastes or concerns.
Can audiences be constructed and/or made?
Yes
Which group of people are targeted by advertisers the most?
People with ‘disposable income’: 15-44 y/o m/c women.
What do you need to consider when answering a question on audiences?
Media content and audiences and the relationship between the two.
Context of reception: where media texts are consumed.
Who do advertisers target when they advertise a product?
Aspirational m/c (C1+C2)
What is the Hypodermic Needle effect?
Concerned with the harmful effects of the media on ‘ordinary people’.
How do effects theorists see audiences?
As passive receivers of messages. They see audiences as being easily manipulated and controlled victims of propaganda.
Who agrees with the effects theory and what evidence do they use to support this?
Elizabeth Newson suggests that violence is learned behaviour from the media and she uses the Bulger case as evidence to support this.
What did Gerbner and Gross say about the representation of fear?
That the more TV that audiences watched, the more likely they were to have a fearful attitude to the outside world.
What does Moore, Klein and Curtis say about the representation of fear?
A culture of fear is now deliberately exaggerated by the media, politicians and other dominant elites to boost ratings, support propaganda and keep audiences engaged, yet compliant.
What is Dyer’s theory of Utopian Solutions?
- Community: Soap operas
- Intensity: Drama series
- Abundance: Celebrity lifestyle
- Transparency: News media
- Energy: Sports media
What’s the difference between the uses and gratifications theory and the effects theory?
Effects studies believe that audiences are passive to the ‘all powerful message’, while the uses and gratifications theorists believe that the audience is the ‘all powerful receiver’.
