Audience Theorists

Question 1

Describe banduras media effects theory

Answer 1

Media is capable of implanting ideas directly into the minds of its audiences.
Audiences respond to the modelling in media and, thereby, acquire new attitudes, styles of conduct and emotional responses. Media representation of transgressive or antisocial behaviour can lead audience members to imitate those forms of behaviour.

Question 2

Describe gerbners cultivation theory

Answer 2

Repeated exposure to patterns of representation over long periods of time can shape and influence the way the audience perceives the world around them (i.e. by cultivating particular points of view and opinions).
Cultivation reinforces mainstream, or dominant, values and ideologies.

Question 3

Describe halls reception theory

Answer 3

Communication is a process involving encoding by producers and decoding by the audience. There are three hypothetical positions from which meanings can be decoded:
1. the dominant-hegemonic position: the encoder’s intended meaning is fully understood and accepted;
2. the negotiated position: the legitimacy of the encoder’s message is acknowledge, but the message is adapted to better fit the decoder’s
individual experiences or context;
3. the oppositional position: the encoder’s message is understood, but the decoder disagrees with it, reading it in a contrary or
oppositional way.

Question 4

Describe jenkins fandom theory

Answer 4

Fans are active participants in the construction and circulation of textual meanings.
Fans also appropriate texts and read them in ways that are not fully authorised by the media producers (“textual poaching”)
Fans construct their social and cultural identities by borrowing and inflecting mass culture images and participate in a culture that offers a vital social dimension.

Question 5

Describe shirkys end of audience theory

Answer 5

The internet and digital technologies have a profound effect on the relations between media and individuals.
In the age of the internet, audience members or no longer passive consumers of mass media content: consumers now have the ability to “speak back to” media in various ways.
Media consumers engage in the creating and sharing of content with one another.