Audience theory

Whenever you make a piece of media - you have a target audience.
Audiences can be broken down by:

• age
• gender
• race (ethnicity)
• hobbies and interests
• experiences
• class
• regional identity
• disability
• religion

There are 3 main audience theories that we can apply to help us come to a better understanding about the relationship between texts and audiences:

1. The effects model/ hypodermic model
2. The uses and gratifications model
3. Reception theory

We are also going to look at the the two step model, and the agenda setting theory. 

Primary - to consciously engage with the media text.

Secondary - kind of engaging, but doing something else as well.                   - active   

Tertiary - engage with it subconsciously.                                             - passive 

Ideology links to representation, as when you represent something, you are conveying a set of

ideology's, they are a set of values, principles, beliefs. A negative dominant ideology would be that

blondes are dumb.

The effects model

1. imitation.

2. Catharsis - when we look at someone else's life who is worse than ours, we don't think our life is so bad.

3. Desensitization - having an effect on us, as we are used to seeing acts of violence, graphic sex and bad language in the media, so it does not affect us any more. 

The effects model tends to be something that is quite negative.

The uses and gratifications theory

We view the media because ...

• Personal identity - media has created the way we dress, our views, personalities etc. - so we no longer choose to view the media, and we are becoming tertiary. 
• surveillance - what's going on in the world.
• pleasure
• diversion/escapism
• social/cultural/global issues
• to understand emotions.