Audience Theorists

Audience Theorists

Adorno – Passive Consumption, Hypodermic Model (Frankfurt School): “A strong argument suggests that audiences may be passively affected by the sexist, violent representations in GTAV as it is a more realist text than other shoot em’ up action adventure games. Young audiences ultimately may begin to view women differently and think that the aspirational violence is acceptable as a means to an end”.

Martin Barker – Challenging Moral Panics: “Barker suggests once you have entered into a debate about violent video games for example you must have already decided about negative media effects”.

Stanley Cohen – Moral Panics: “Recent stories about young audiences’ behaviour after playing violent video games reflects a common moral panic that some media like the Daily Mail constantly seek to remind its readers of”.

David Gauntlett – Producer as Consumer (Prosumer): “Media Studies students regularly make their own short film productions but are also regular consumers of the media – in doing so they are both producer and consumer blurring the boundaries of traditional media consumption”.

George Gerbner – Cultivation Theory: “The cultivation theory suggests that the more you look at television, the more you are likely to believe in the reality of the representation e.g. believing everything you see and hear on BBC News 24 and not challenging the nature of a constructed text”.

Stuart Hall – Audience Positioning and Dominant, Negotiated, Oppositional Readings: “Some texts, like The Mighty Boosh may have a number of readings, dependent on audience – a dominant reading could be that it is a postmodern representation of celebrity culture while a negotiated reading could be that it is simply surreal and funny while an oppositional reading could be that it is childish, subversive and offensive”.

Katz and Blumler – Uses and Gratifications Theory: “Different audiences gain different pleasures from a media text e.g. Gravity can be enjoyed via diversion or escapism, it can use surveillance to give information to audiences and can also be discussed on forums and blogs as a form of developing personal relationships (common also in video games). Personal identity can be developed with audiences who relate to certain characters more than others”.

Katz and Larzasfeld – Two Step Flow Theory: “Jonathan Ross discussed with his guest Steve Coogan the recent phone hacking scandal and made it clear he had an opinion on the subject – this reflects the Two Step Flow theory where an existing idea or belief is taken on by an opinion leader (as in newspapers as the ‘Fourth Estate’)”.

Jeremy Tunstall – Primary, Secondary, Tertiary Audience Engagement: “Watching films in a cinema involve a primary mode of audience engagement as the spectator is immersed with the narrative while watching a programme at home on television may involve eating a meal at the same time, texting, using social media or other additional activities. Tertiary audience engagement is using the text as background media like music radio”.