Media Theories

The Hypodermic Needle Model

This theory explains how mass audiences can be affected by a piece of media. It talks of how the audience can be of any intelligence, experience and opinion and still be affected and manipulated in the same way. An example of this is the two young boys who kidnapped a two year old, tortured him and left him for dead on railway tracks. As a result of this crime the game Man Hunt was recalled and banned by the government.

Although this theory dates back to the 1920’s and was first applied to the propaganda of the First World War, it is still relevant to today’s media proved by the example above.

No-one has control over what goes into their heads other than the producer, it is presumed that all of these messages are negative due to the initial connotations linked with propaganda of the First World War.

Our film could affect audiences in two ways. On one hand the film reflects positively as it is promoting music which is a positive social influence. A negative social influence is the way women are portrayed in the video, we have a women represented as a prostitute this could affect audiences negatively. 

Two-Step Flow

This is similar to the Hypodermic Model in that the audience is passive, however, the Two-Step Flow addresses the moderation of “opinion leaders” meaning the text is not directed to the audience straight from the producer. It recognises the role of editors and the government in moderating the text before it is sent to the audience. It is also suggested that this is a more subtle approach to the bluntness of the Hypodermic Model. This was first thought in 1940 as a progression from the previous model.

Uses and Gratifications

This theory states that audiences use media texts for different reasons: diversion, personal relationships, personal identity and surveillance. This means the texts affect different people in different ways. Although what information they receive may differ, they all receive messages. This was brought about in the 1960’s and developed by Blulmer and Katz in 1974.

Reception Theory

In the '80's and '90's more research was done into how receive a text. It is thought that personal circumstances such as gender, class and age, affect how they interpret a text. This is based on Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding model; the producer encodes his ideas into a text and the audience decodes its meaning, however, each individual audience member will decode a different meaning. This is known as a preferred reading.