Audience Theories

Uses and Gratifications

Uses and Gratifications Theory is a popular approach to understanding mass communication. The theory places more focus on the consumer, or audience, instead of the actual message itself by asking "what people do with media" rather than "what media does to people" (Katz, 1959). It assumes that members of the audience are not passive but take an active role in interpreting and integrating media into their own lives. The theory also holds that audiences are responsible for choosing media to meeting their needs. The approach suggests that people use the media to fulfill specific gratifications. This theory would then imply that the media compete against other information and sources for viewers' gratification. (Katz, E Blumler, J G.& Gurevitch, M. 1974). 

Basic Model

It is suggested that the uses and gratification theory has to fulfill one of the following need when we choose a form of media:

• Identify - being able to recognize the product or person in front of you, role models that reflect similar values to yours, aspirations to be someone else.
• Educate - being able to acquire information, knowledge and understanding.
• Entertain - what you are consuming should give you enjoyment and also some form of 'escapism' enabling us to forget our worries temporarily.
• Social Interaction - the ability for media products to produce a topic on conversation between other people, sparks debates.

Reception Theory: Stuart Hall (1980)

Hall's 'encoding-decoding' model argued that media producers encode 'preferred meanings' into texts, but these texts may be 'read' by their audiences in a number of different ways:

• The dominant-hegemonic position: a preferred reading that accepts the text's messages and the ideological assumptions behind the messages
• The negotiated position: the reader accepts the text's ideological assumptions, but disagrees with the aspects of the messages, so negotiated the meaning to fit with their 'lived experience'
• The oppositional reading: the reader rejects both the overt message and its underlying ideological assumptions 

Cultivation Theory: Gerbner

Exposure to television over long periods of time cultivates standardised roles and behaviours. Gerbner used content analysis to analyse repeated media messages and values, then found that heavy users of television were more likely, for example, to develop ‘mean world syndrome’ – a cynical, mistrusting attitude towards others – following prolonged exposure to high levels of television violence.
Gerbner found that heavy TV viewing led to ‘mainstreaming’ – a common outlook on the world based on the images and labels on TV. Mainstreamers would describe themselves as politically moderate.

Media Effects: Bandura

The media can influence people directly – human values, judgement and conduct can be altered directly by media modelling. Empirical evidence best supports direct influence rather than the alternative models of media effects: two-step flow, agenda-setting, no effects, or the media reflecting existing attitudes and behaviour.
Media representations of aggressive or violent behaviour can lead to imitation.
The media may influence directly or by social networks, so people can be influenced by media
messages without being exposed to them.
Different media have different effects. The ‘new’ media offer opportunities for self-directedness.

Fandom: Jenkins

Fans act as ‘textual poachers’ – taking elements from media texts to create their own culture.
The development of the ‘new’ media has accelerated ‘participatory culture’, in which audiences are
active and creative participants rather than passive consumers. They create online communities,
produce new creative forms, collaborate to solve problems, and shape the flow of media. This generates ‘collective intelligence’.
From this perspective, convergence is a cultural process rather than a technological one.
Jenkins prefers the term ‘spreadable media’ to terms such as ‘viral’, as the former emphasises the
active, participatory element of the ‘new’ media.

End of Audience Theories: Shirky

In the ‘old’ media, centralised producers addressed atomised consumers; in the ‘new’ media, every
consumer is now a producer. Traditional media producers would ‘filter then publish’; as many ‘new’
media producers are not employees, they ‘publish then filter’.
These amateur producers have different motivations to those of professionals – they value autonomy,
competence, membership and generosity. User-generated content creates emotional connection
between people who care about something. This can generate a cognitive surplus – for example,
Wikipedia can aggregate people’s free time and talent to produce value that no traditional medium could match.
‘The Audience’ as a mass of people with predictable behaviour is gone. Now, behaviour is variable
across different sites, with some of the audience creating content, some synthesising content and some consuming content. The ‘old’ media created a mass audience. The ‘new’ media provide a platform for people to provide value for each other.