Research and planning: Audience Theories (1-5)

The hypodermic model:
It suggests that the messages of the media go directly into the minds of the viewer. Te media may be seen as addictive.

Strengths
- The idea that the media has power to influence people draws attention to certain ideas about the media. such as media producers have a lot of power to create texts and that the kind of media texts of the media available to audience becomes a matter of argument etc.

Weaknesses
- This approach considers the audience to be passive and powerless, so this has been applied to women and children more often.

Cultivation theory
The more TV the audience watches the more likely they will develop certain views about the world, these may be negative.

Strengths
- This acknowledges the fact that people gain knowledge about the world through television.
It goes towards the idea that TV is an important feature of our social lives.

Weaknesses
- It doesn't measure these views against the audiences wider range of values and where they came from.
People may have gotten their views from life experiences, press etc

Desensitisation
Suggests that the audience will alter their attitude to violence if they view a lot of it repeatedly on screen. too much fictional violence is argued to make people desensitised to real world violence.

Strengths
- It brings attention to the amount of violence on screen and also raises questions about how much onscreen  violence we should be exposed to as the audience.

Weaknesses
- It cannot be proved how attitudes have changed with this stimulus, as there may have been other variables.


Modelling or copycat theory

The theory that watching something negative will lead people to do negative things. It is a theory maintained by the press not research.


Strengths
- Parents report anxieties about their childrens behavior this keeps the idea going.
-Of the stratagies available to teach children good behviour limiting the amount of tv they watch is the most achievable.

Weaknesses

- the mimicking of a certain negative act may only be a short term issue, it may be a phase of which is grown out of.

Uses and gratification theory 

 The theory states that people 'read' into the media in different ways according to their individual differences. people may be affected by the media if their beliefs are affected or it enhances their role or image.

Strengths
- The audience is assumed to know fact from fiction
- The media is credited for giving pleasure to audiences and pleasure isn't seen as a bad thing.

Weaknesses
- Sometimes arguing for audience power is done at the expense of thinking about questions of media power or the power of certain texts.
- Some theorists have claimed that the media has no influence or power at all