 There
are three main reception Theories.
1.
The Hypodermic needle model
2.
The Uses & Gratifications model
3.
Reception Theory –Encoding/decoding
model
 The
media “injects” its beliefs & values
(ideology) into the passive viewer.
Dating from the 1920s, this theory was the first
attempt to explain how mass audiences might
react to mass media. It is a crude model and
suggests that audiences passively receive the
information transmitted via a media text,
without any attempt on their part to process or
challenge the data.
 Don't forget that this theory was developed in an
age when the mass media were still fairly new radio and cinema were less than two decades
old. Governments had just discovered the power
of advertising to communicate a message, and
produced propaganda to try and sway populaces
to their way of thinking. This was particularly
rampant in Europe during the First World War


Images from Leni Riefenstahls Nazi propaganda film Triumph of The will.
Basically, the Hypodermic Needle Model suggests
that the information from a text passes into the mass
consciouness of the audience unmediated, ie the
experience, intelligence and opinion of an individual
are not relevant to the reception of the text.
This theory suggests that, as an audience, we are
manipulated by the creators of media texts, and that
our behaviour and thinking might be easily changed by
media-makers. It assumes that the audience are passive
and heterogenous(all the same).

Can
you think of any specific
texts that
have influenced the behaviour
of the audience?
Jeffrey Dahmer was a particularly horrible serial
killer & cannibal.
 In one case, a victim, handcuffed,
escaped & ran to the police.
 Dahmer followed & convinced the
police to let the man go with him.
He took him to his basement killed
& ate him.
 Jeffrey Dahmer had a favourite film
that he liked to watch before he
went out killing.
 In Pairs Make a list of your ideas of
which film motivated Dahmer?

1.
2.
3.
Have you ever been influenced by a text?
List why you think this model is or isn’t relevant
today?
The hypodermic needle model argues that we
are passive viewers, do you agree? Give reasons
for your argument.
 The
basic idea of this model is that the
audience is not passive but active, and
USES media texts to gratify a need.
 Can
you think of any examples of when you
use the media to gratify a need?
 This
model is in opposition to the hypodermic
needle model, as it claims audiences have a say
in how media influences them.
 During
the 1960s, as the first generation
to grow up with television became grown
ups, it became increasingly apparent to
media theorists that audiences made
choices about what they did when
consuming texts.
 Far
from being a passive mass, audiences
were made up of individuals who actively
consumed texts for different reasons and
in different ways.
In 1948 Lasswell
suggested that media
texts had the
following functions
for individuals and
society:
 surveillance – what texts
do you consume ?
 correlation what texts do

you consume ?

entertainment
what texts
do you consume ?

Cultural transmission
what texts do you consume ?

Researchers Blulmer and Katz expanded this theory and published their
own in 1974, stating that individuals might choose and use a text for the
following purposes (ie uses and gratifications):
 Diversion
- escape from everyday problems and routine.
 Personal Relationships - using the media for emotional and other
interaction, e.g . substituting soap operas for family life
 Personal Identity - finding yourself reflected in texts, learning
behaviour and values from texts

Surveillance - Information which could be useful for living eg) weather
reports, financial news, holiday bargains

Since then, the list of Uses and Gratifications has been extended,
particularly as new media forms have come along: video games, the
internet


Watching TV Soap Operas
A major focus for research into why and how people watch TV has been the
genre of soap opera. Adopting a U & G perspective, Richard Kilborn (1992: 7584) offers the following common reasons for watching soaps:

regular part of domestic routine and entertaining reward for work

Launch pad for social and personal interaction

fulfilling individual needs: a way of choosing to be alone or of enduring
enforced loneliness

identification and involvement with characters (perhaps cathartic)

escapist fantasy (American supersoaps more fantastical)

focus of debate on topical issues

a kind of critical game involving knowledge of the rules and
conventions of the genre

I can compare myself with the experts

I like to imagine that I am on the programme and doing well

I feel pleased that the side I favour has actually won

I am reminded of when I was in school


I laugh at the contestants’ mistakes

I look forward to talking about it with others

I like competing with other people watching with me

I like working together with the family on the answers

The children get a lot out of it

It brings the family together sharing the same interest

It is a topic of conversation afterwards
Basis for Social Interaction
Excitement Appeal &
Educational Appeal

I like the excitement of a close finish

I like to forget my worries for a while

I like trying to guess the winner

Having got the answer right I feel really good

I get involved in the competition

I find I know more than I thought

I find I have improved myself

I feel respect for the people on the programme

I think over some of the questions afterwards

It’s educational

(McQuail, Blumler & Brown 1972)

finding out about relevant events and conditions
in immediate surroundings, society and the
world

seeking advice on practical matters or opinion
and decision choices

satisfying curiosity and general interest

learning; self-education

gaining a sense of security through knowledge
 finding
reinforcement for personal values
 finding
models of behaviour
 identifying
 gaining
with valued other (in the media)
insight into one's self

gaining insight into circumstances of others; social empathy

identifying with others and gaining a sense of belonging

finding a basis for conversation and social interaction

having a substitute for real-life companionship

helping to carry out social roles

enabling one to connect with family, friends and
Society


escaping, or being diverted, from problems

relaxing

getting intrinsic cultural or aesthetic enjoyment

filling time

emotional release

sexual arousal

Diversion - escape from everyday problems and routine.

Personal Relationships - using the media for emotional and other
interaction, eg) substituting soap operas for family life





Personal Identity - finding yourself reflected in texts, learning
behaviour and values from texts
Surveillance - Information which could be useful for living eg)
weather reports, financial news, holiday bargains
In the 21st C, many of us
do not just consume
one text at a time, for
example, I may have
the TV on, be on the
phone & flicking
through a magazine.
I may listen to the radio
while reading a
newspaper.
Primary Consumption

Which texts/media do
you consume as
primary consumption

Which texts do you
consume as secondary
consumption?

Which texts do you
consume as tertiary
consumption?
Secondary Consumption

Diversion - escape from everyday problems and routine.

Personal Relationships - using the media for emotional and other
interaction, eg) substituting soap operas for family life





Personal Identity - finding yourself reflected in texts, learning
behaviour and values from texts
Surveillance - Information which could be useful for living eg)
weather reports, financial news, holiday bargains
U
& G research has been concerned with why people
use media.
 Whilst this approach sprang from 'mainstream'
research in social science, an interpretive tradition
has arisen primarily from the more arts-oriented
'cultural (and 'critical') studies'.
 The approach sometimes referred to as reception
theory (or reception analysis) (e.g. focuses on what
people see in the media, on the meanings which
people produce when they interpret media 'texts'
Extending
the concept of an
active audience still further, in
the 1980s and 1990s a lot of
work was done on the way
individuals received and
interpreted a text, and how
their individual circumstances
(gender, class, age, ethnicity)
affected their reading.
Text

Gender

Age

Class

Education

Ethnicity

Nation
Pair work 5 mins.
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 decoded by the
reader, and there may be major differences
between two different readings of the same
code.
 However, by using recognised codes and
conventions, and by drawing upon audience
expectations relating to aspects such as genre
and use of stars, the producers can position the
audience and thus create a certain amount of
agreement on what the code means. This is
known as a preferred reading.


Preferred

Negotiated- we accept
– we accept
the dominant encoded
reading of the text
some & reject some of the
preferred reading

Oppositional –
we
reject/disagree with the
preferred reading
Readings
Gender
 Age
 Social demographic
 Nation
 Ethnicity
 Cultural knowledge
 Social class
 Education

Factors that can effect reading
 Preferred
 Negotiated
 Opposiotnal
this cover
readings of
 Preferred
 Negotiated
 Oppositional
this text
readings of
 Gender
 Age
 Social
demographic
 Nation
 Ethnicity
 Cultural
knowledge
 Social class
 Education
 Jeremy
 Mens
Kyle
Health
 300
 Cosmopolitan
 The
independent
 Saga
magazine
 As
we have seen
with semiotic
analysis (Roland
Barthes, denotation
& connotation)
 Semiotic analysis of
signifiers is text
centred, focussing
more on how the
text is encoded
with a meaning.
 Reception
theory
shows that media
analysis now focuses
on audiences – as
the
decoders/readers/u
sers, who bring
their cultural
knowledge to a
text. This also show
how texts can be
read as
polysemic(many
meanings/readings)

Hall referred to various phases in the
Encoding/Decoding model of communication as
moments, a term which many other commentators have subsequently employed
(frequently without explanation). John Corner offers his own
definitions:
1.
2.
3.
the moment of encoding: 'the institutional practices
and organizational conditions and practices of
production' (Corner 1983, 266);
the moment of the text: 'the... symbolic
construction, arrangement and perhaps
performance... The form and content of what is
published or broadcast' (ibid., 267); and
the moment of decoding: 'the moment of reception
[or] consumption... by... the reader/hearer/viewer'
which is regarded by most theorists as 'closer to a
form of "construction"' than to 'the passivity...
suggested by the term "reception"' e.g. – we
construct meaning from the text (ibid.).

The hypodermic needle model The intended message is directly
received and wholly accepted by the receiver.

Two-step flow The people with most access to media, and highest
media literacy explain and diffuse the content to others. This is a
modern version of the hypodermic needle model.
 Uses
and gratifications People are not
helpless victims of mass media, but use
the media to get specific gratifications.
 Reception theory The meaning of a "text"
is not inherent within the text itself, but
the audience must elicit meaning based
on their individual cultural background
and life experiences










1. The effects model tackles social problems 'backwards': simplifying the
causes
2. The effects model treats children as inadequate: their intelligence is
underestimated
3. Assumptions within the effects model are characterised by barelyconcealed conservative ideology
4. The effects model inadequately defines its own objects of study
5. The effects model is often based on artificial elements and
assumptions within studies
6. The effects model is often based on studies with misapplied
methodology
7. The effects model is selective in its criticisms of media depictions of
violence
8. The effects model assumes superiority to the masses
9. The effects model makes no attempt to understand meanings of the
media
10. The effects model is not grounded in theory‘ Audiences are not blank
sheets of paper on which media messages can be written; members of an
audience will have prior attitudes and beliefs which will determine how
effective media messages are.

www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem08c.

www.mediaknowall.com/alevkeyconcepts/audience.

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Hall_%28cultural_theorist%29

www.theory.org.uk/mediaeffects.

www.godnose.co.uk/downloads/alevel/textual%20analysis/semio
tics.

http://zimmer.csufresno.edu/~johnca/spch100/7-4-uses.

Google Books:

Understanding media cultures: social theory and mass communication By Nick Stevenson

Media and cultural studies: Page 163 Meenakshi Gigi Durham, Douglas Kellner - 2006
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Apply The Uses & Grats model to your
market leader magazine cover
Apply Uses & grats to your production
cover
Evaluate how your cover gratifies needs.
Discuss the preferred readings of your
market leader.
Discuss the preferred/negotiated &
oppositional readings of your production
Add to you research portfolio