audience theory

i will be discussing the differnet ways in which the concept of audience theory have been explained and changed throughout the years.
the first attempt to explain a mass audience reaction to a mass media text was called the hypodermic needle model, it was said that the audience would recieve the information through a piece of media i.e a film and would make no attempt on their own behalf to challenge this data or process it. although this is a basic way of anaylsis audeicne theory and some say a rather crude way it is important to state that this theory was developed when mass media was fairly new.
this theory suggest that the experience or intelligance of an indiviaudal is not important to the reception of the text and they will be infulenced by it regardless, they are saying that the aueicne are unmediated. because in this theory it is believed that the audience can be manipulated by the text and that an indiviudals way of thinking and behaviour are infulenced by the creators.
unsuprisingly these theory got a lot of critism, its ctritics included, parents, politicans and pressure groups who all argued that it explained why certain groups in society should not be exposed to certain media text for example rap music.
however, as the media progresses so did peoples approach to the audeince theory, lazarfield, berlson and gaudet belived that the explantationa nd the way audeicne theory worked could be explained by the two step flow. this was a procedure in which the information would be filtered through what they called the opinion leaders who would then take this information and communciate it to their less active asscoaites who were easily infulenced by the opinion leaders. they then suggested that audience would then mediate this infromation which was recieved from the media with ideas and thoughts from the opinion leader and less active assocaites. they claimed that the audience were not infulenced by direct process but by the two step flow.
this approach stopped the power of media and made them relaize and conclude that social factors were important in the way audience interpret texts.
in the 1960's the uses and gratification theory came about , theorists relized that individuals who consumed text in different ways for different reasons. laswell sugegsted that media text had the following functions for an individual and for society:
1. survelliance
2. correaltion
3. entertainment
4. cultrual transmissions
blumer and katz went on to expand this theory. they beleived that indviudals chose a text and use it for their own purposes:
1. diversion - escape from perosnal problems
2. personal relationships- emotional and other intreactions
3. personal ideintity- finding yourself your behaviour and your values.
4. survelliance - information which could be useful for living for enxmapke haoldiay baragains, finanical new and waether reports.
now i will introduce the reception theory. this theory beleives that individual differences such as gender race class and age all affect the reading of an indiviaual, this theory is based on stuart halls encoding/decoding theory. its said that the text id encoded by the producer and decoded by the audience because this can create big differences between two different readings of the same code. its said that by using recognized codes and conventions the creators can assume what the audience excpects depending on their age class gender ehtnicity, therfore the producers can posotion the audience and therefore create an agreed menaing of what the code means, using the research and theory have on the audience, which we call a preferred menaing.