Audience Theories

An active audience is one that engages with the audience, they do not just accept every media message given to them, they question what it is they are seeing and come up with their own interpretation based on numerous influences like family, education, culture and life experiences.  

A passive audience does not question the media text that is being presented to them but accept it with the intention that the media institution had.

Audience is a macro feature of media and they consume media texts and percieve the work in different ways. The audience theories help to devise a better understanding between texts and the audience. These are:

The Effects Theory

This is the idea that the consumption of media texts has an influence or effect on the audience.

Generally, the audience is passive and powerless in preventing the influence that the media text has over them. However, the power lies within the message of the text.


An example of this, is the 'clown craze' that has recently happened where people dress up as clowns and go out on the streets and scare people. It is said that this has been sparked by the upcoming film 'It' releasing in September 2017 in the UK. This clown phase could be due to 'It' marketing their film, however, it is speculated, that they should not release it as it can may cause this 'clown craze' to further. 

The Hypodermic Model

The theory that the media is being 'injected' into its' audiences and therefore the audience is impotent to resist, making the media seem as if it is a drug.

The Bobo Doll Experiment

This evidence was used for the Effects Model and was an experiment in which children watched a video where an adult violently assaulted a toy clown called a Bobo Doll. The children were then taken into a room with nice toys that they were not allowed to touch. Afterwards, they were taken to a room with Bobo Dolls and 88% repeated the violent behaviour they had earlier seen. Eight months later, 40% of the children imitated the violent behaviour again.

This concluded that the children repeated the actions of the violent behaviour from the media they had seen.

Contributing examples of this theory are:

- the film 'Child's Play 3' in the murder of James Bulger in 1993.

- the game 'Manhunt'

Media can also encourage inactivity leading to other implications like students and exam productivity, it can also offer 'copycat' behaviour.

The Uses and Gratifications Model

This theory is opposite to the Effects Model as it implies that the audience is active meaning that they use the text as oppose to being used by the media text for pleasure and gratification.

In this respect, the power is found with the audience rather than the producers, unlike examples of the Hypodermic Model where the audience is not rejecting the media's meaning.

The needs that are gratified by the audience are:

• Diversion
• Escapism
• Information
• Pleasure
• Comparison of relationships and lifestyles
• Sexual stimulation

The media also helps them with:

• Learning
• Emotional Release
• Relaxation
• Personal identity
• Social identity  
• Issues associated with violence and aggression

The theory also implies that by the audience consuming violent texts, this is helpful rather than dangerous as the violent impulses are being played out in the media texts. Therefore they are less likely to commit violent acts as the desire to behave violently has been decreased.

Reception Theory

This was developed by Stuart Hall, he theorised that all media texts are encoded with meaning by the the producers and it is up to the audience to decode them. In some circumstances the audience decode the message or meaning accurately and understand what is is that the producers are trying to convey. In other ways, the audience will fail to accurately decode the message or meaning.

Stuart Hall distinguished three types of audiences:

1. Dominant or preferred - this is where the audience decodes the message as the producers intends them too and aggreeing with it. It is as if the text is 'transparent' to them.

2. Negotiated - they partly share the text's code and may modify it in a way that reflects them and their experiences and interests.

3. Oppositional - when the dominant meaning is recognised but they choose to ignore it for cultural, political or ideological reasons

Two Step Flow

There are two steps to this theory. Firstly, the opinion leaders gain their information from a media source and they then pass this information, along with their opinions, to others.

An example of this is Paris Hilton being in 'House of Wax', she would've publicised this to her audience who would then go and see the film as she is in it.