Critical Research Study
Useful Theories
Aims
• Cover theories that you can use in your
research
• Help you work out how to apply them to your
own study
• You MUST cover at least ONE audience
theory
• Consider all theories that are relevant – the
more you use, the more critical your study
Which theories?
• Audience: Hypodermic needle model,
two-step flow, cultivation theory, uses
and gratifications model, reception
theory.
• Male Gaze and voyeurism
• Representation theories
Audience Theory 1: Hypodermic
Needle Model
• Theory developed in 1920’s
• First theory applied to how audiences receive the
media
• Principle that audience passively receives a text
without processing or challenging the data
• Governments cottoned on to this and used the theory
to their advantage – by creating propaganda (e.g.
Hitler).
• Theory suggests that intelligence and opinion of
audience are irrelevant.
• Theory suggests we are manipulated by media texts.
Audience Theory 2: Two Step
Flow
• Sometimes referred to as limited effects
paradigm
• Suggests information does not flow directly
from text to mind of reader
• Info flows through “opinion leaders” who add
their own spin to an idea
• This is then communicated to the general
audience who assimilate the primary
information incorporating the ideas of the
opinion leaders.
Audience Theory 3: Uses and
Gratifications Model
• During 1960’s it became apparent that
audiences consumed texts for different
reasons and in different ways
• Diversion: escape from everyday problems
• Personal Relationships: using the media for
emotional and other interaction
• Personal Identity: finding yourself reflected in
texts, learning behaviour and vales from text.
• Surveillance: Information useful for living,
such as weather reports.
Audience Theory 4: Reception
Theory
• Theory extends the concept of an active
reader still further
• Describes how gender, class, age, ethnicity
affects our reading of texts
• Meaning is encoded by the producer, then
decoded by the reader
• Use recognised conventions and audience
expectation to position the audience
• Producer and reader then have certain
amount of agreement on what the text means
– this is known as preferred reading.
Audience Theory 5:
• A direct development of the hypodermic model
• Came about because it’s difficult to prove effect of
media text on audience
• States that one media text will not have too much
effect on behaviour
• However suggests that repeated viewing of violent
material may decrease sensitivity to violence and
violent behaviour
• Some media companies use this to their advantage
• No proof has been uncovered to ratify this theory, but
it doesn’t mean its not a good idea
Moral Panics
• Directly related to the hypodermic needle theory, as it
relies on audiences being passive enough that their
behaviour is changed
• Famous cases include Natural Born Killers
producers, who were sued by the families of murder
victims
• Families believed producers should be held
responsible for the killers actions as they were
influenced by what they had seen
• Process by which members of society become
sensitive to challenges to their own moral values, as
a result of the media construct of an attitude towards
social problems.
Male Gaze and Voyeurism
• Developed by Laura Mulvey, prominent
feminist film critic
• Defines the relationship between female
characters and the male audience
• Describes how females are set up as
sexual objects within films through soft
focus camerawork and mise-en-scene
Representations
• Characters are constructed in a series
of different ways:
• Caricature – exaggerated construct of
existing characteristic e.g. Little Britain
• Cultural – exact reconstruction of social
group e.g. Soap opera
• Stereotype – generic representation of a
group e.g. 24