Audiences as active

1. Audiences as ACTIVE
Alex Davies

2. MASLOW'S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS
 This five stage model can be divided into basic (or deficiency) needs (e.g.
physiological, safety, love, and esteem) and growth needs (self-
actualisation).
 Some people have unconscious
desires and rewards
 The diagram is in the shape of a pyramid.
The bottom are where basic needs are
located, whereas at the top is where
sexual actualisation
 This five stage model was thought up by the American psychologist,
Abraham Maslow

3. WHY AUDIENCES CONSUME
TEXTS: THE USES AND
GRATIFICATIONS MODEL
 Dating from the 1920s, this theory was the first attempt to explain how mass
audiences might react to mass media
 The Model suggests that audiences passively receive the information given to
them via a media text, without any attempt on their part to process or challenge
the data.
 The theory was developed in an age when the mass media were still fairly new
- radio and cinema were less than 20 years old.
 Governments had just discovered the power of advertising to communicate a
message, and produced propaganda to try and sway populaces to their way of
thinking.
 To summarise it, the Hypodermic Needle Model suggests that the information
from a text passes into the brain of the audience not thought about, for example
the experience, intelligence and opinion of an individual are not relevant to the
reception of the text.
The Hypodermic Needle Model

4. THE TWO-STEP FLOW MODEL
 Firstly, individuals who are opinion leaders, receive
messages from the media and pass on their own
interpretations in addition to the actual media content.
 Secondly, The information does not flow directly from the
text into the minds of its audience, but is filtered through
the opinion leaders who then pass it on to a more passive
audience.
 Thirdly, The audience then mediate the information
received directly from the media with the ideas and
thoughts expressed by the opinion leaders, thus being
influenced not by a direct process, but by a two step flow.
 This theory appeared to reduce the power of the media,
and some researchers concluded that social factors were
also important in the way in which audiences interpret
texts. This led to the idea of active audiences.