The hypodermic needle theory:
The hypodermic needle model is a model of
communications suggesting that an intended
message is directly received and wholly
accepted by the receiver.
The Hypodermic Needle Theory is one of the
oldest in the field of media studies. Also
known as the Magic Bullet Theory, it states
that media has a direct, complete and
immediate effect on the audience. The "Hypodermic Needle Model" suggests that the
media injects its messages straight into the passive audience which is immediately
affected by these messages. . In the 1930s, the Payne Fund, developed by the Motion
Picture Research Council, studied the impact of motion pictures on children to see if the
magic bullet effect was controllable. Even Hitler monopolized the mass media in the
belief that he could use it unify the German public behind the Nazis in the 1940s. The
phrasing "hypodermic needle" is meant to give a mental image of the direct, strategic,
and planned infusion of a message into an individual. But as research methodology
became more highly developed, it became apparent that the media had selective
influences on people.
Two step flow:
The mass media could influence a very
large group of people directly and
uniformly by shooting or injecting them
with the appropriate message designed to
trigger a desired response.
The two-step flow of communication
hypothesis was first introduced by Paul
Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel
Gaudet in The People's Choice, a 1944 study focused on the process of decision-making
during a Presidential election campaign. These researchers expected to find empirical
support for the direct influence of media messages on voting intentions. They were
surprised to discover, however, that informal, personal contacts were mentioned far
more frequently than exposure to radio or newspaper as sources of influence on voting
behaviour. Armed with this data, Katz and Lazarsfeld developed the two-step flow
theory of mass communication.
The two steps are:
1) Opinion leaders get information from a media source,
2) Opinion leaders then pass on the information, along with their interpretation to
others.
Uses and gratification:
Uses and gratifications theory is an approach
to understanding why and how people
actively seek out specific media to satisfy
specific needs. UGT is an audience-centered
approach to understanding mass
communication.
Originated in the 1970s as a reaction to
traditional mass communication research,
emphasizing the sender and the message. Stressing the active audience and user
instead. Psychological orientation taking needs motives and gratifications of media
users as the main point of departure.
Blumler and Katz’s uses and gratification theory suggests that media users play an
active role in choosing and using the media. Users take an active part in the
communication process and are goal oriented in their media use. The theorist say that a
media user seeks out a media source that best fulfils the needs of the user. Uses and
gratifications assume that the user has alternate choices to satisfy their need.
Uses and gratification theory can be seen in cases such as personal music selection. We
select music not only to fit a particular mood but also in attempts to show
empowerment or other socially conscience motives. There are many different types of
music and we choose from them to fulfil a particular need.
Reception theory:
Reception theory is a version of reader response
literary theory that emphasizes each particular
reader's reception or interpretation in
making meaning from a literary text. Reception theory is
generally referred to as audience reception in
the analysis of communications models.
It originated in the late 1960’s by a man called Hans –
Robert Jauss, the theory was the most influential theory in
1970’s and 1980’s
Stuart Hall stressed the role of social positioning in the interpretation of mass media
texts by different social groups. In a model by Frank Parkin, Hall suggests 3 hypothetical
interpretive codes or positions for the reader of the text
You will learn about negotiated reception, the understanding of environment and
context as components of reception and using reception models such as celebrity.
A quick overview: A branch of modern literary studies concerned with the ways in
which literary works are received by readers. The term has sometimes been used to
refer to reader‐response criticism in general, but it is associated more particularly with
the ‘reception‐aesthetics’ (German, Rezeptionsästhetik) outlined in 1970 by the German
literary historian Hans Robert Jauss. Drawing on philosophical hermeneutics, Jauss
argued that literary works are received against an existing horizon of expectations
consisting of readers' current knowledge and presuppositions about literature, and that
the meanings of works change as such horizons shift. Unlike most varieties of reader‐
response theory, then, reception theory is interested more in historical changes
affecting the reading public than in the solitary reader.
The Bobo doll experiment: The Bobo doll experiment was
the collective name of experiments conducted by Albert
Bandura in 1961 and 1963 when he studied children's
behaviour after watching an adult model act aggressively
towards a Bobo doll. There are different variations of
the experiment.
The bobo doll experiment influences the age rating on films,
this is to ensure that children aren’t watching an 18, as they
copy what happens around them, so for example if a child
went and watched The Kingsman, they would go around pretending they are Egsy and
being a Spy, because that is what kids do.
Passive and active audiences:
The view (particularly associated with mass-media usage) that the audiences are not
merely passive receptacles for imposed meanings (see hypodermic model) but rather
individual audience members who are actively (albeit often unconsciously) involved—
both cognitively and emotionally—in making sense of texts.
An active audience is one that actively engages with the text. They do not simply accept
every media message. They question what they see and develop their own
interpretation of a media product based on their life experiences, education, family and
cultural influences. ‘Bottom up’ theories generally assume an active audience. Theories
such as “Uses & Gratification” and “Postmodernist theory” assume that audiences are
active.
A passive audience does not actively engage with a media text. A passive audience is one
that does not question the message that the media
is sending and simply accepts the message in the
way the media outlet intended. ‘Top down’
theories of media influence tend to assume that
audiences are passive. Theories such as
“Bullet/Hypodermic” and “Agenda Setting
Function” assume audiences are passive.
Dyer – Fandom and Utopianism:
While some have suggested that fandom is a
pointless pursuit of escapism, Richard Dyer
suggests otherwise. Fandom is not merely a
celebration of fascistic utopia, but rather an
active pursuit of utopianism. Fans are
creative. They form social communities;
they share ideas and common values and
produce political statements.
For example, Star trek signposts a utopian future where racism is a distant and
forgotten prejudice. Fans responded to the show with a
version of slash fiction in which homophobia was also a lost
discrimination. This was a clear and creative initiative which
used alternative representations to point to a new future.
Dyer’s Utopian theory is linked with the Uses and
Gratifications theory:
- audiences consume media products with a clear set of
pleasures to draw from that experience
- Utopian theory - gratification that allows people to escape
from their real lives
- Reality - full of negatives and unfullfilment
Gramsci – Power and hegemony:
As a Marxist, he believed that society was
structured unfairly. The rich upper classes
were an elite in society who owned the means
of production. This power gave them a control
over the masses that work but do not receive
their fair share of wealth. Indeed, 80% of the
world’s resources are controlled by only 5% of
the world’s population. Gramsci was interested in how this unfair status quo is
maintained and reproduced.
The idea of a ‘third face of power’, or ‘invisible power’ has its roots partly, in Marxist
thinking about the pervasive power of ideology, values and beliefs in reproducing class
relations and concealing contradictions (Heywood, 1994: 100). Marx recognised that
economic exploitation was not the only driver behind capitalism, and that the system
was reinforced by a dominance of ruling class ideas and values – leading to Engels’s
famous concern that ‘false consciousness would keep the working class from
recognising and rejecting their oppression (Heywood, 1994: 85).
Hegemony is the theory that a wealthy, powerful elite maintain control over the lower
social classes and project their own ideologies until the lower classes come to accept
them as normal, and even desirable. This can be seen today as we are taught to want
things like electronics or a car, modern hegemonic theory sates that as wealthy elite
control our media, the media is used to control us and maintain status quo.
Jenkins – Participatory cultures:
In the last ten years, there has been an
unprecedented amount of
technological development, particularly
in new media technologies and
the Internet. Jenkins has written
extensively about ‘convergence culture’;
due to multimedia technology, different
media forms and technologies have
converged. Audience have become sophisticated ‘users’ of many different platforms of
media which cross over. ‘Bert is Evil’ is an example – a photo-shopped image of Bert
from Sesame St posing with Osama Bin Laden was published on line, found by accident
by a print house in Pakistan, who had no idea who Bert was, and then printed on AntiAmerican posters, which were then filmed by CNN News and broadcast on American
TV. Jenkins uses this example to shows how audiences are no longer just consumers,
they are also producers and users. They create and consume, participate and publish,
download and upload, receive and share. Blogs, network sites, web 2.0 and wikis are
just some examples of audiences as powerful creatives within the world of
Media production and reception.
In 2006, Jenkins and co-authors Ravi Purushotma, Katie Clinton, Margaret Weigel and
Alice Robison authored a white paper entitled confronting the Challenges of
Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. This paper describes a
participatory culture as one:
1. With relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement
2. With strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations with others
3. With some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most
experienced is passed along to novices
4. Where members believe that their contributions matter
5. Where members feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the
least they care what other people think about what they have created).
Hebdige – Subculture and creating
meaning:
Subculture: The Meaning of Style is a 1979
book by Dick Hebdige, focusing on Britain's
postwar youth subculture styles as
symbolic forms of resistance. Drawing from
Marxist theorists, literary critics, French
structuralists, and American
sociologists, Hebdige presents a model for
analysing youth subcultures.
Members of the working-class encounter
daily hardships and alienation from the ruling hegemony (with Althusser's
interpolation and Marx's class consciousness as the theoretical framework here).
Younger generations are reluctant to suffer what their parents go through without
protest. These youngsters develop distinct styles and practices with manifest their
separate identity, condition and subversion. They encounter young black of Caribbean
origin which have a much more historically grounded and formed reason for protest
and adopt some of their feature in order to form "white ethnicity'. The media discovers
the subculture (and thus essentially baptizing it) with a reaction that is typically moral
panic. The subculture expands while in the process losing its rebellious edge either by
turning into another commercial consumer product or by the media humanistically
exotisizing its members, rendering them as harmless "clowns", and now the mainstream
hegemony can again return to its peaceful unthreatened state.