Task 2

There are three theories of audience that can be applied to have a better understanding about the relationship between product and audience.

1. The Effects Model or the Hypodermic Model

2. The Uses & Gratification Model

3. Reception Theory

The Effects Model:

•The consumption of media texts has an effect or influence upon the audience.

•It is normally considered that this effect is negative.

•Audiences are passive and powerless to prevent influence.

•The power lies with the message of the text.

The Hypodermic Model:

•Here, the messages in the media texts are injected into the audience by the powerful, syringe-like media

•The audience is powerless to resist.

•Therefore, the media works like a drug and the audience is drugged, addicted, doped or duped.

The Uses & Gratification Model:

•The Power lies with the audience, NOT the producers.

•This theory emphasizes what audiences do with media texts – how and why we use them.

Far from being duped by the media, the audience is free to reject, use or play with media meanings as they

Reception Theory:

•This considered how media texts were encoded with meaning by producers and then decoded (understood) by audiences.

•When a producer constructs a text, it is encoded with a meaning or message that the producer wishes to convey to the audience.

•Sometimes, the audience will correctly decode the message or meaning and understand what the producer was trying to say.

•In some instances the audience will either reject or fail to correctly understand the message.