Audience Effects Theory

 

Create a new blogpost called ‘Audience Effects Theory’ and complete the following tasks:

1) Write a definition of a passive audience: 

An audience which accepts the messages encoded in a media text without challenge.

2) Write a definition of an active audience: 

engages, interprets and responds to a media text in different ways and is capable of challenging the ideas encoded in it
3) Write a definition of the hypodermic needle theory: 

A linear communication theory which suggests that the media has a direct and powerful influence on audiences, like being injected with a hypodermic needle.

 
4) Write down a media product (e.g. TV show, newspaper or videogame) for each category of Blumler and Katz's Uses and Gratifications theory and WHY it fits that particular audience use/gratification. The first one is done for you: 

INFORMATION/SURVEILLANCE: Media text - The Times newspaper
 > Why: It tells audiences important information about politics, the world and more.

PERSONAL IDENTITY: 
 > Why:  

DIVERSION/ENTERTAINMENT: Multiplayer Games
 > Why: Meeting new people and gaining friendships

RELATIONSHIPS: 
 > Why: ?

5) Re-watch the clip from Blue Planet above and write a paragraph analysing how elements of the clip offer the audience pleasures or gratifications (use media terminology from Uses and Gratifications theory and the 3 Vs - notes outlined above).

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