Influencing the Audience/ Theories

The Hypodermic Syringe Theory
According to the Hypodermic Syringe Theory, the media is like a syringe which injects ideas, attitudes and beliefs into the audiences who as a powerless mass have little choice but to be influenced. This theory is based on people’s actions after watching films, specifically violent ones.
For example:
You watch something violent and then you may go and do something violent. Or you could possibly see a woman doing the cleaning in a house and then you want to go and do the same thing the woman is doing if you are a woman as well, and a man will expect women to do the cleaning for you.

A film called ‘A Clockwork Orange’ has been banned in the past, partly because of a belief that they might encourage people to copy the crimes within them.

Another example:
The serial killer Jeffery Dahmer, watched a clip from his favourite film before every murder he committed to excite him. This is the kind of fact that could possibly prove the Hypodermic Syringe Theory to be correct, however the film he was watching was ‘Star Wars’, and nobody has ever suggested banning this film for being too violent, therefore on the other hand, this could also be going against this theory.

The Cultivation/Culmination Theory
This theory takes the hypodermic syringe theory to the next level. This theory looks at how the audience of films become desensitized as time increases due to the fact that the more we view something in a film, for example violence, the more it is ‘normal’ for us to view this in everyday life, especially if this violence goes unpunished. The opposite to this is sensitization where one viewing of violence would leave a person so shocked, that they were unable to view this again.

Gratification Theory
According to this theory, we all have different uses for the media and we make choices over what we want to watch. In other words we only encounter a media text if we know that we are going to be satisfied by what we chose to entertain ourselves by – therefore we gain gratification because we have satisfied our needs.

Researchers such as Maslow (among the chief exponents of this model are McQuail and Katz) have identified the kinds of gratification we can be getting. Four have been found:

1) Information: we want to find out about society and the world – we want to satisfy our curiosity. We can also gain information from the news and documentaries because they also make us feel we are gaining knowledge from the world.
2) Personal Identity: we may watch the television to see if we can find people who are role models that we can admire and look up to for our behaviour. For example, we may identify with a character in a film and they might help us to decide how we feel about ourselves.
3) Integration and Social Interaction: we use the media in order to find our more about the circumstances of other people, this also helps up to sympathise and empathise with the lives of others. However, television also gives us a topic to talk about with our real friends.
4) Entertainment: sometimes we simply use the media for enjoyment, relaxation or just to fill time.

However, this theory ignores the fact that we do not always have the complete choice as to what we receive from the media. For example, we may see a poster on a billboard that we may consider extremely sexist but we are unable to change that poster to what we find more pleasant – therefore we are having to choose the media that we consume from what is available.

Reception Analysis
Reception analysis is based on the idea that no text has one simple meaning. Instead, reception analysis suggests that the audience themselves help to create the meaning of the text. For example, we may watch soap and some people may find a certain scene quite offending and sexist but another person may find this perfectly acceptable to society. Factors such as gender, our place inside society, and the context of the time we are living in can be enormously important when we perceive the meaning of the text. David Morley identified three categories in which audiences fall into when conveying the meaning of a media text:

Preferred reading – The preferred reading is the reading media producers hope the audience take from the text.

Oppositional reading – Audience members from outside the target audience may reject the preferred reading, receiving their own alternative message.

Negotiated reading – Audiences acknowledge the preferred reading, but modify it to suit their own alternative message and opinion.