1. Question 1b

2. Audience Theory
Objective: explore audience
theory, connecting to examples
from my own work

3. Audience
• Every media product has to have an audience, otherwise
in both a business sense and probably an artistic sense
too it would be judged a failure.
• In your projects, you will undoubtedly have been looking
at the idea of a target audience- who you are aiming it at
and why; you should also have taken feedback from a
real audience in some way at the end of the project for
your digital evaluation, which involves finding out how
the audience really ‘read’ what you had made.
• You were also asked at AS to consider how your product
addressed your audience- what was it about it that
particularly worked to ‘speak’ to them? All this is
effectively linked to audience theory which you then need
to reference and apply.

4. Audience Theory
• Hypodermic model
• Uses & gratification theory
• Reception theory

6. Hypodermic model
The audience is passive
• In this model, the audience is perceived to be passive. The media
governs how we will use / respond to texts – and the effect of the
text upon the person who has been reading / using the media.
Symbolic – taking illegal drugs.
• Has negative connotations.
• Audience becomes addicted and need more and more
(increasing levels of, fear /violence etc to achieve same effect /
pleasure in the text. E.g. exorcist not scary any more)
• Term used by popular press – sensationalist.
• Connected to Moral Panic arguments about Media

7. Uses and gratifications theory
How the audience USE the media to
get specific gratifications or pleasure.
• Audience are not helpless victims, they
use media to meet their various needs.
• Media 'run' by audience – producers
compete to satisfy audience demands.
• Media has no control over the way the
audience may read / use the media.

8. Uses and gratifications theory
4 elements of uses/pleasures
• Surveillance: Information which could be useful
for living, understanding the world around them.
Example: weather reports, financial news,
holiday bargains
• Personal identity: finding yourself reflected in
texts, learning behaviour and values from texts
• Personal relationships: using the media for
emotional and social interaction. Example:
substituting soap operas for family life, building
relationships with characters.
• Diversion: escape from everyday problems and
routine.

9. Reception theory
• Active partnership are the key words
for this theory.
• Neither media nor audience has full
control.
• Media is polysemic, has more than one
meaning.
• Audience is not passive but interprets
text based on their individual cultural or life
experiences.

11. Passive V Active
David Morely 1980
• Different social/economic groups watched
the same TV programme.
• Interviews revealed different readings of
the same text.

12. Passive V Active
• Members of the same sub-culture will tend
to decode texts in a similar way.
• Individual readings of texts will be framed
by shared experiences, cultural formations
and practices.

13. Applying Theory
CD Cover
• Now apply to your own productions
• How do you want audiences to read and
use your text? Explain.
– Passive v Active
– Which theory is best fit?
– Why does your production fit this theory?
• What pleasures do you hope audiences
might derive from using your text? Explain

14. Applying Theory
• Now apply to your own productions
• How do you want audiences to read and
use your text?
• What pleasures do you hope audiences
might derive from using your text?
• Especially – CD cover

15. So what do you do in the
exam?
You need to state which project you are using and briefly describe it
You then need to analyse it using whichever concept appears in the
question, making reference to relevant theory throughout
Keep being specific in your use of examples from the project