Audience Theory

Audience theory is defined as the study of the audience's role in any kind of mediated communication. For example like films, television etc. 'Active audience theory' arose from a sub-cultural and Marxism inflected view.

Active audience theory is the idea that people receive and interpret media messages in different ways, dependent on what their age, ethnicity, social class and gender are, along with other factors. The audience isn't just passive and accepts what happens. This is in relation to Katz & Lazarsfeld who in 1955 came up with the two step flow theory in which people discuss the media text they have seen with their friends and social networks where they will be opinion leaders. There opinion on a certain media text sets the tone for what the rest of the group will think. 

David Morley found that viewers tend to interpret media text in three ways.

1) Oppositional - those who disagree with the message and reject it

2) Negotiated - overall the view is agreed but slightly altered

3) Dominant - the message is fully accepted by the viewer

The Hypodermic Needle Model:

This theory suggests that audiences passively take in the information they receive from, they directly take in the intended message and wholly accept it without question. This is as if the information was 'injected' into the audience and was not challenged. This theory suggests that individuals don't have their own opinions but instead can be easily manipulated.

An example of this was the Nazi Propaganda, the powerful in society controlled the mass media and reflected their views through the media and the audience did not question it. 

Uses and Gratification:

This theory suggests that there is a highly active audience who use the audience to their advantage and needs: such as entertainment, information and identification. The main areas in this model are;

1) the need for information about our geographical and social world (news and drama)

2) the need for identity, the use of characters and personalities to define our sense of social behaviour (film and celebrities)

3) the need for social interaction and to experience the relationships and lives of others (soaps and sitcoms)

4) the need for diversion and entertainment (quizzes and game shows)

The Two-Step Flow:

The hypodremic model soon became to simplistic and a more detailed and accurate over view of the audiences relationship to the media was needed due to the mass media becoming an essential part of life. It was found that the media was not directly taken in by the audience but the information was filtered through 'opinion leaders.' What would happen is that a person may watch something on television or a film however, through their soical network 'opinion leaders' e.g the dominant speakers, change others perception of media text. Therefore they do not passively accept the information directly.

By researching all of these media theories, once we have created our trailer, poster and magazine cover, we can apply these theories to them and understand more about our key demographic audience.