Stuart Hall – Reception Models Dominant reading When the audience responds to the ideas in the way the media producer wants them to. For a programme like The Voice UK or The X Factor this could be large scale audience voting and the purchase of the winning singer's single.
Negotiated reading When the audience responds by accepting and rejecting certain elements. Perhaps voting for the underdog in a talent competition or questioning the programme via social media platforms.
Oppositional reading When the audience understands the preferred reading but choses to oppose it. For instance, the campaign to stop the winner of The X Factor getting to Christmas number one in the charts.
Uses and Gratification – Blumler & Katz The basic theme of Uses and Gratifications is the idea that people use the media to get specific gratifications. This is in opposition to the Hypodermic Needle model that claims consumers have no say in how the media influences them. The main idea of the Uses and Gratifications model is that people are not helpless victims of all powerful media, but use media to fulfil their various needs. These needs serve as motivations for using media.
Whenever you consume media you haven’t always got a choice of what you consume, the theory assumes that passive audiences are still choosing to consume media for one of these purposes.
The Uses and Gratifications Theory suggests there are certain reasons why an audience responds to different media texts:
Entertainment and Diversion Audiences consume media texts to escape from their everyday lives. They choose entertaining texts that allow them to divert their attention from the real world, perhaps by watching a fantasy film like Harry Potter or reading a fashion magazine like Vogue.
Information and education Some media texts are consumed by audiences when they want to be informed and educated. Newspapers, news programmes and current affairs documentaries educate and inform. They help the audience to find out what is happening in the world. – Me before you, to find out about Euthanasia, is that a true representation of Euthanasia.
Social interaction Some media texts like The X Factor or I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here provoke interaction with the audience. Social media can now spark an immediate reaction and get people talking while the action is still happening.
Personal identity Some audiences like to watch or read media texts because they can compare their life experiences with those represented in it. Audience pleasure comes from empathising and identifying with characters or content represented in them. Soap operas or lifestyle magazines can offer audiences this kind of enjoyment. Boys & Superhero’s – I want to be like them, I am like them, I want to be their friend.
Applied to the Internet Over the past 10 years the internet has played a large part in the way the uses and gratifications theory is perceived.
Internet allows us to identify more products and people, due to search engines like Google we can search for anything, enables the audience to come closer to their role models. Music has benefited because of websites like YouTube enabling us to watch any music video we choose.
Wikipedia and other factual websites enables us to learn whenever we like, it may be argued that the internet has developed our education massively in the last 10 years.
YouTube, ITunes, 4od etc. are just a few of the numerous websites that give us an opportunity to be entertained whenever we please
Facebook, blogs and other social websites enable us to socialise while online.
Internet enables us to have freedom and escape all our worries at a click of a button. Having access to websites that can give us happiness and a release from the daily grind.
Criticism
Many people have criticized this theory as they believe the public has no control over the media and what it produces. It can also be said to be too kind to the media, as they are being 'let off the hook' and do not need to take responsibility for what they produce.
The theory takes out the possibility that the media can have an unconscious influence over our lives and how we view the world. The idea that we simply use the media to satisfy a given need does not seem to fully recognize the power of the media today. (I.e. daytime TV is aimed for housewives)
‘Media consumers have a free will to decide how they will use the media and how it will affect them.’ This may be argued as media can be manipulative such as the news in its use of hegemony.
However, this theory may be more relevant in modern society as the internet and satellite TV such as Sky enables us to have much more freedom and control over what we consume in relation to the pre- internet and analogue TV.
Hypodermic Needle Theory
The theory suggests that the mass media could influence a very large group of people directly and uniformly by ‘shooting’ or ‘injecting’ them with appropriate messages designed to trigger a desired response. They express the view that the media is a dangerous means of communicating an idea because the receiver or audience is powerless to resist the impact of the message. People are seen as passive and are seen as having a lot media material "shot" at them. People end up thinking what they are told because there is no other source of information.
Example of the hypodermic needle theory being successful In 1938, the now-infamous radio dramatisation of the science fiction novel 'war of the worlds' by HG Wells was performed like a contemporary new broadcast, a technique that had been used to heighten realism and dramatic effect. However, as audiences listen to this stimulation of a news broadcast as it occurred every 40 minutes some people concluded that it was in fact a real account of an invasion from Mars, headed to the roads, hid in homes and loaded their weapons to defend themselves against the supposed imminent attack.
Only reason to talk about this theory is to say that this is now outdated however is coming back. Replaced with the two-step flow. Main example is the war, propaganda. Realised this was wrong, comes about though right wing extremists, foreigners are bad and we need to look after our country. Not a Liberal view – they would still not believe what they hear is true. Internet has stopped – internet isn’t regulated, Facebook have filters, twitter and Instagram do the same. Things that provoke the biggest reactions are things we disagree with. You surround yourself with the same opinions on social media and who you agree with when people disagree you block them.
Male Gaze – Laura Mulvey Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema was an essay written by Laura Mulvey. The concept of gaze is one that deals with how an audience views the people presented. For feminists, it can be thought of in 3 ways:
How men look at women
How women look at themselves
How women look at other women.
Gaze and feminist theory Laura Mulvey coined the term ‘Male Gaze’ in 1975. She believes that in film audiences have to ‘view’ characters from the perspective of a heterosexual male. Features of the Male Gaze:
The camera lingers on the curves of the female body, and events which occur to women are presented largely in the context of a man's reaction to these events.
Relegates women to the status of objects. The female viewer must experience the narrative secondarily, by identification with the male.
Use of the Male Gaze in everyday life: Some theorists also have noted the sexualizing of the female body even in situations where female sexiness has nothing to do with the product being advertised.