A multiple of things define an audience like self image, age group, class, ethnicity, politics, location, gender, family, nation, education and religion. These things are used to determine a media text's Demographic.
The key key audience theories are :
The hypodermic needle theory which basically means that the audience believes what it sees and thinks that what it sees is acceptable in society.
2 Step flow : This suggests that mass media is channelled to the masses through opinion leaders : people with the most access to media and people that have more understanding of media content then they tell other people about it then they watch or take a look at the media text because someone with a higher knowledge of media told them it's good/bad.
This shows how the 2 step flow works.
Uses and Gratifications : This suggests that the audience has needs that the media need to meet for the text to be successful.
The needs are : Diversion - Divert oneself from everyday life.
Surveillance - People want to know news about the world.
Personal Identity - People want to compare people lives in the media to their own lives.
Personal Relationship - So people can talk about media texts and gain friends from talking about similar interests.
Reception Analysis : Audience will interpret the meaning of the text based on cultural background or life experience. It suggests that the programme is encoded by the producer and decoded by the audience.
Effects debate : This a debate on the effects of media on people. It suggests that there is a moral panic then the response to the panic or person/ group is defined as a threat to society just like the Mod's and Rockers in 1960.
Another example of this is the Jamie Bulger murder where 2 10 year old boys kidnapped a 2 year old child and re-enacted a scene from a horror film (Childs Play 3). People blamed the film for what the children did to little Jamie Bulger.
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