Audience Response and the Effects Debate

The Hypodermic Needle Model

The Hypodermic is a model that was originally established in 1930's. The Hypodermic needle theory is a theory which suggest that the media could influence a very large group of people and broadcast uniformly message, by using media content which is passed to the audience for examplen using Radio or TV and no matter how unrealistic the message is, it is still 'injected' into the audience.
 This theory believes that media is 'injecting' messages straight into the passive audience which is immediately influenced by the message. Almost like the media are injecting the messages into the audience and the audience is too powerless to resist the media because they are too addicted almost like they are being 'drugged.' 

 This basically means that the media is a dangerous, immediate and powerful way of communication which is hard to escape, some of the population think this as they are sitting ducks waiting to be 'shot' at.  This suggest that the audience is passive because they believe in information without fully thinking if it is true or not. The Hypodermic Needle theory model is almost like 'straight into a passive audience which is immediately influenced by the message. This model could be compared to 'propaganda' as the mass media was controlled by Nazi who used it to influence people. 

The Hypodermic Needle model could have both negative and positive effects on the audience because it control's the audience views and what they listen to which could effect them immediate or in the future. This is because the audience is seen as 'vulnerable' and the media is seen as 'strong'  because every  single piece of information can cause slight brain alterations and change opinions subconsciously. The reason this happens is because The audience can not escape, they are going to be injected no matter what the concept and there is no other powerful sauce which provides information to help persuade the audience Like the media does. 


The Inoculation Model

The Inoculation model is a technique which is used to make people immune to attempts to change their attitude, belief or opinions.
 The model was developed by  psychologist William J.mcguire in 1961. The theory is done by exposing the receiver to a mild version of a threat which will basically expose them to a small argument against their belief. Giving the receiver a argument will make them think about their belief, opinions or attitudes and will hopefully begin to generate possible defences against the up coming attack.

 The  receiver will first be warned about the attack so they can start preparing to defence their beliefs, making them defence their beliefs will help motivate them and can keep existing attitudes and beliefs consistent in the face of future persuasion attempts.
This means that hopefully when the receiver is given another 'attack' in the future, they will be prepared and be able to develop more complex arguments to defend them self which will help them maintain their believes and attitudes  for the long term. 
The Inoculation model is named this because it works the same way medical inoculation does. The medical inoculation exposes a person's body to a weak version of a virus. For instance if you are given a shot of a weak virus your immune system will start preparing to get rid of the virus which will eventually make the immune system strong enough to fight off the real virus in the future. The Idea of this theory is similar to being given a shot, the ones that have been presented with this theory will be able to 'beat the threat' again in the future because they have already fought for it, making them a lot stronger. 
However to get a successful inoculation the threat has to be strong enough to keep the receiver defensive but weak enough to make sure they do not change their ideas, beliefs and opinions. Making the receiver defensive will allow them to strengthen their own beliefs  because being threatened will help the receiver feel more motivated about their belief and will make them prepare for the 'attack' which can result in them thinking of ideas which they have never thought before.  So to make this theory successful it is important that the receiver is first warned about the attack so they can get prepared, then when the attack happens it is not too overwhelming or else it can make the receiver change their beliefs and not defend them self.
This theory still plays a important role in everything from advertising to Rherotic. It can be seen in debate classes for instance in a debate class you will be 'practising arguing' so in the future you will have a better idea on what the other side may say and you are more prepared to hold your ground. This theory should help support and reinforce their attitudes and beliefs etc. A example of this theory could be when a child is being bullied in school and the parents at home are confronting the child by 'pretending' to be the bully them self and getting the child to defend them self, so in the future if the real bully is confronting the child the child will have a better idea on what to do. This theory is still studied today by communication, social psychology and is mostly used by politics, health campaigns and marketing. 



The Two-Step Flow Model

The two-step flow model was first introduced by Paul Lazarfield, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet in the book 'The People's Choice' although Kats and Lazarsfled are the ones who developed the theory. This theory believes that the public receives information from the opinion leaders through interpersonal communication rather than getting the message directly from the media. Interpersonal communication is when people exchange information and their feelings, it could be communicated through verbal or non-verbal messages because interpersonal communication doesn't focus about what is said it’s about how it is said for instance their tone of voice, facial expression, gestures or even just by their body language. 
The opinion leaders are people who pay close attention to the mass media and what messages they are sending, they then collect and interpret the message from the media and diffuse the message by influencing the message to people who are similar to the opinion leader. The opinion leader basically influences people who does not usually follow the media. 

 This theory is important because before this theory there was a theory called The Hypodermic Needle Model which basically assumed that the mass media can do a direct message to the audience and no matter what the audience will believe the message because it came from the media. However Lazarsfeld research came back that people who participated in the 1940 election choose their votes based on word-of-mouth of people who have read about the election in the newspaper, they never got information directly from the media. In fact only 5 percent of people who was in the election voted based on the media and the rest was mostly by interpersonal discussions with the 'opinion leaders'. 
In fact family and friends has more of an influence on the person’s decision than the information from the mass media.The first step is that the mass media will reach out to the opinion leaders which will then integrate the message and the content in the message and influence a wider population. So this means that the majority of people receive their information and are influenced by the media second hand because they aren’t getting the information directly from the media and is instead getting given second hand information of the opinion leader.  

The Uses & Gratifications Theory

Uses and gratification theory is an approach to help understand why and how people seek out specific media to help seek their specific needs. The theory places more focus on the consumer/audience to try and figure out what people do with the media instead what the media does to the people. It was developed by Blumler and Kats in 1974. The theory believes that the audience is not actually passive but chooses to take media into their own lives, they are responsible for choosing the media to meet their specific needs. Because the rest of the theory’s focus more on the effects the media has on people, this theory focuses on what people do with the media to meet there satisfaction. Although there are different sort of needs for instance there is cognitive needs, effective needs, personal integrative needs, social integrative needs and tension free needs
. 
Cognitive needs - These people use media for knowledge and information. In order to get this knowledge and information they will watch news to satisfy the need, search questions on Google or the internet, they make use of these to gain more knowledge in basically no time at all. 

Effective Needs - These people use the media to satisfy their emotional needs, in order to have satisfaction of this need the audience can watch the news or go on a social media such as Facebook which expresses the moods of other people. 
Personal Integrative Needs - These people use the media to build up their self-esteem for instance they might use a social media such as Facebook to help reassure their status and gain credibility by getting 'likes' and 'comments. 

Social Integrative needs - These people feel like they need to socialise with family, friends and relations through the media using websites such as Facebook and twitter to communicate and socialise. They do not need to meet up with their friends on the weekend etc. because they use this to satisfy their needs. 

Tension free needs- These people use the social media to 'escape' real life problems to help relief their tensions for instance to do this they could watch TV, listen to radio or just simply be nosy on a social media website like instagram. 

Overall the uses and gratification theory is more audience based then any of the other theories and tried to focus their attention on individuals other than the mass audience. It helps deal with how and why people use the media to satisfy their needs. The theory bevies that the media has a limited effect on the audience because the audience actually get to be choose their control over the media because they think the audience is not passive and actually have power over the media. 

The Reception Theory

The reception theory is an updated version of the reader response theory, it is a theory to help understand the early theory of reception of text. The reception theory is basically when the producer or the director constructs a hidden message or meaning that the producers or directors want the audience to see. The audience will then see the message and read the message. This theory helps provide an understanding on how these texts/messages are read by the audience.  There are three different types of how the audience reads the message; Dominant, negotiated and oppositional.

Dominant - Dominant is where the audience wants to hear from different people and agreeing with their message but not having a full knowledge on the subject. For instance when politics talk to the audience, they usually say what the audience wants to hear even though they only have a limited knowledge on the subject. 

Negotiated - This is where the audience will agree and disagree or ask questions about the political speech. 

Oppositional - This is where the audience will recognise the Dominant message but won’t agree to it due to culture or an opinion. These are the sort of audience which won’t understand any messages aimed at them, as they have already got their own opinion and won’t change it. 

The negotiation and opposition approach means the audience is not passive and will not simply accept the message. This means that the audience does not always except everything the media says and they actually negotiate the message and decode it in a oppostional way. Although the gender and age does effect how they decode different texts. For instance when there is dress'es being advertised on the telly women will decode the message in a different way than males do for instance the woman might look at the advert and thinks it looks good whilst males might look at the advert in more of a oppositonal way. 




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