Audience Theories

The Hypodermic Needle Model

This theory is relatively dated as it was created when cinema and radio were less than two decades old. The main point is that information from a media text is passively received by the audience and not taken into consideration or understood by them, they have no control of this. The idea is that this information could be used to manipulate the audience, and when research was done on advertising and the Hypodermic Needle model, it was understood that audiences could re-act information that they had been shown. The government understood this and used propaganda after the first world war, this theory was very popular. This is why that it is used to explain why certain groups in society shouldn't be exposed to certain media texts. (comedy in the 1950's and rap music in 2000's) as it was believed that if they were shown sexual and violent behavior, that they would therefore act this out themselves. This theory was seen by media producers for them to have a huge impact on the audience, and the power to influence them in which ever way they please.

We believe that if we took this model into consideration in our coursework, the story line that we have created, wouldn't be the case, as this theory says that audience passively receive the information and will then (as they don't understand it) re-act it. This would result in viewers re-acting the life of a prostitute, which is our chosen narrative. This would then mean we have to change our chosen narrative, based upon how free we feel we are as producers, and whether or not we want to stay within the guidelines of media production, or we want to ignore this theory and rebel against these guidelines. We have chosen to produce a music video that we feel has relevance to feminism, and the fact that media institutions such as FHM perceive women to be sexual objects, we want to bring this to a headline.

Two-Step Flow

This theory is more in depth than the Hypodermic Needle Model, it was felt that a more complicated reason of the relationship between the audience and the media text was needed. The Hypodermic Needle Model was seen as not taking into consideration the audience, and labeling them as "unthinking drones" as they are passive and heterogenous. The Two-Step Flow Model considers the audience to be less passive and gives them more gratification in concern of how they receive information and whether or not they understand it. 

The main idea is that information is not passively or unmediated but it is filtered through "opinion leaders", who then communicate this to their less active associates, over which they have influence over. The "opinion leaders" take away power from the media, and put it in the hands of powerful people who have the influence over others, they can interpret their own ideas and what they believe the media text is telling/showing. This theory takes into account social factors of the time, and not just the media as an influence. 

If we were to apply this theory to our coursework, the way in which people see our product would change in concern of who the opinion leaders are, this is because as the producers, the media product is then shown to opinion leaders, who decide what information they want to absorb, which is important and what conclusion they can get from this. This means our intention of the impact which we want to have on the audience could vary depending on again who is the opinion leader, and also what experiences they may have had in order to change the viewpoint of our media product. This means we would have to choose