© 2008 ROUTE ONE TEACHING RESOURCES LTD

Media Studies
A brief introduction to theory
ADVERTISING
A for Audience
 A for Audience
Audience is the starting point for most
media tasks whether you are
deconstructing or constructing a
media text.

You need a working knowledge of the

theories which are relevant to audience.
They attempt to define how audiences read
and react to texts.
 The Hypodermic Needle Model
This theory was the first attempt in the 1920s to explain how
audiences react to mass media.

It suggests that audiences passively receive information

without any attempt to challenge what they are receiving.

This theory was developed when the mass media

was still in its infancy.

This theory suggests that audiences are manipulated by the

creators of media texts, and that our behaviour and thinking is
easily changed by the media we come into contact with.

This theory is often used to argue why certain groups in society

should not be exposed to certain media texts, for example the
fear that watching violence initiates violence.
 Two Step Flow
Moving into the 1940s the Hypodermic
model was found to be too simplistic.
Audiences weren’t the unthinking masses
that this theory presumed.

Mass media was quickly becoming an

intrinsic part of everyday life. Researchers
such as Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson,
and Hazel Gaudet suggested that information
does not flow directly from the media text
into the minds of the masses.
 Researchers felt that media was filtered
through ‘opinion leaders’.

Two Step Flow is sometimes referred to as

the limited effects paradigm.
 Katz and Lazarsfeld saw opinion
leaders as people in certain
segments of society who are
interested in particular subjects and
they become experts on those
subjects.
 These people Opinion leaders are
absorb certain not necessarily
media messages traditional leaders
and inform their in society,
peers. although they can
be.
 The opinion
leader, then, is
the key (or
stone) to this
model of
communication.

The main point is There are two

that mass media steps in the
communication process, a ripple
does not reach effect among
the public in a groups within a
giant wave. population.
Reception Theory Encode
In the 1980s and 1990s the
way individuals receive and
interpret a text was the major
focus of research.

The individual circumstances

of each reader (gender,
class, age, ethnicity) affected
their reading.

This work was based on Stuart

Hall's encoding/decoding model
of the relationship between text
and audience.
 The text is encoded by the producer, and
Decode
decoded by the reader.
There may be major differences between two
different readings of the same code.
The producers of advertising material can
however, by using recognised codes and
conventions, and the audience’s
expectations of certain content, position the
audience.

In this way they can create a certain amount

of agreement on meaning.

Known as a preferred reading.

 Often advertisers will add text, or other
supporting images to a picture to ensure that
the audience is directed to a preferred reading.

Adding words to the central image, or

giving direction through accompanying
images in this way is called ‘anchoring’.
Uses & In the 1960s media
Gratifications theorists realised that
audiences made choices
about what they did when
consuming texts.

They were not a passive

mass, audiences were
made up of individuals
who consumed texts for
different reasons and in
different ways.
Back in 1948 Lasswell suggested that
media texts had the following
functions for individuals and society:

• surveillance

• correlation – personal relationships

• entertainment - diversion

• personal identity
 In 1974 Bulmer and Katz built on this
theory and developed what we know as
the ‘uses and gratifications’ theory.

Individuals might choose and use

texts for different reasons.

They identified the following…

Surveillance - finding useful
information, news, weather reports,
financial news, holidays, produce.
Personal Relationships - the
media is used for emotional
and social interaction.

Media gives a common ground on which we

can build conversation and relationship; we
identify with certain media personalities or
alternatively soap operas or celebrities can be
used to substitute family life.
Diversion - escape from problems and
routine, or purely for entertainment.
 Personal Identity - learning
behaviour and values from
texts; identifying yourself with
a particular text.
As we have already
identified, different readers will
interpret an image in different ways, they will
also ‘read’ in different ways. We do not have to
take in an advertisement in any particular order
to make sense of the overall message.
 As media analysts however it is always
best to approach the deconstruction of an
advertisement, whether still or moving
image, in a systematic way; training
ourselves to work through them
consciously, carefully and logically.
Different readers will interpret detail
in different ways according to their
demographic and psychographic
background.
 Demographics:
Recognisable characteristics of media
consumers such as age, gender,
education and income level.
Psychographics:
A more
sophisticated form
of demographics
that includes
information about
the psychological
and sociological
characteristics of
media consumers,
such as attitudes,
values, emotional
responses and
ideological beliefs.
 Media Audiences
Who is the target audience?
Think of recent advertisements that have been
specifically aimed at children, teenagers, young
professionals, parents or the elderly.

Describe each one.

What does the text assume about the audience’s
characteristics?

Add your thoughts to your notes.

Can you think of two advertisements that are aimed at

the same demographic group but are aimed at different
psychographic profiles?