Audience Theory.

Recently in Media Studies, we were asked to do some independent research on an audience theory. We had to research into only one taken from the Effects Model:

- Hypodermic Syringe Model

- Desensitisation

- Cultivation Theory

- Uses and Gratifications Theory

- Copycat Theory

- Reception Theory

‘The Hypodermic Syringe Model’:

- Dating from the 1920s, this theory was the first attempt to explain how mass audiences might react to mass media.

- It’s 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.

- 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 and its aftermath.

- Basically, the Hypodermic Needle Model suggests that the information from a text passes into the mass consciousness 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 heterogeneous (different in kind).

- This theory is still quoted during moral panics by parents, politicians and pressure groups, and is used to explain why certain groups in society should not be exposed to certain media texts (comics in the 1950s, rap music in the 2000s); for fear that they will watch or read sexual or violent behaviour and will then act them out themselves.

Criticism of ‘The Hypodermic Syringe Model’:

- A prominent critic of ‘The Hypodermic Syringe’ model is Paul Lazarsfeld, an Austrian born scholar who arrived in the United States in 1933, and had a decisive role in the development of communication and social studies (Katz, 1987).

- Lazarsfeld and his colleagues at the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University develop the “limited effects theory” based on studies about opinion formation in the presidential elections in the United States and about the influence of opinion leaders in the communication process. 

- Their theory posits that media messages have only indirect and limited effects on the public; to be more effective these messages need to be mediated by opinion leaders.

- Therefore, the idea of the powerful media is debunked, and it is concluded that there are several intervening variables that mediated the media-audience connection.

As a result?

- Lazarsfeld and his group then created the ‘two-step flow of communication’ model, which states that ideas flow from the media to opinion leaders and from them to less active sections of the population. In this relationship, the tendency of the media is to reinforce predispositions, rather than change them.

- Therefore, individuals only search for information that goes with their beliefs, avoiding media content that challenge their position, determining a process of “selective exposure” (Czitrom, 1982).

What I've learned:

By looking up the Hypodermic Syringe Model, I've learned that this theory was the first attempt to explain how mass audience might react to mass media. In colloquial terms, once the audience watch say for instance a film, this idea and plot of the film will be 'drummed' into their minds. They'll be able to retell the plot if asked to.