Monday, September 23, 2019

Audience Theories

1. Hypodermic needle theory/effect theory/linear communication. It is called Hypodermic Needle theory because messages are injected into the audience's mind by the text. Audience is passive and message flows in a linear form, sender to receiver.Audience is powerless to prevent the influence. Power lies in the message of the text.This kind of ideology is used by various politicians and various religious groups.

2.The Bobo doll experiment by Albert Bandera in 1961. According to him, learning occurs through observations,imitating and interaction with other people. He studied children's behaviour after watching an adult model act aggressively towards a Bobo doll. His research has proved that children copy violent behaviour from real life, film or cartoon. It was also found that boys exhibited more overall aggression than girls. The experiment-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmBqwWlJg8U
3.Gratification theory by Blumer and Katz. Audience is an active user and is opposite of hypodermic needle theory. Audiences are open to interpret media texts. This theory talks about what people do with media rather than what the media does to them.Audience use the text for their own gratification and pleasure. People are responsible for picking up and choosing media that they wish to consume.
Audience can use media text for diversion,escapism,information,learning,social identity,pleasure,social relationships,sexual stimulation, aggression and violence.  This theory suggests consumption of violent images can be rather helpful than harmful. Audience can act out their aggressive impulses through the consumption of media texts. Therefore, their inclination towards violence is lessened and they are less likely to commit crimes in real life.

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