audience THEORY

1920 – 30: Lasswell Hypodermic

  • wrote about propagranda (propaganda technidue in the world war)
    passive consumption
  • – components of lasswells model ( hypodermic model of media effect)
daily mail – “has the stress of covid given borris danduff

who – daily mail – made by Caroline Johns
says what – the pm has seen “snow” on this suit, talking about the stress of borris giving him dandruff
channel – newspaper
to whom – the readers of the daily mail – working class, middle class women from the age of…
with the effect – to mock Borris
– this links to lasswells theory of hypodermic (components of lawsswells model)

1940s – ‘says that the model was too simple’
– Shannon and Weaver – model was adapted by these people) include noise, error, encoding and feedback
they developed a communication model (transmission model of communication – theres a lot more that goes on with what you say to them

1950s – two step flow of communication (active consumption)
Paul Lazarfeld says it doesn’t work in linear way
information is more diffused through networks, channels, people
– the audience are active – actively decoding and thinking about the messages and info being spoken






1960s – Uses and Gratification – developed by:
– denis mcauail
– jay Blumler
Elihu Katz


peoples sort particular needs and desires, which was got by the media
as a whole the daily mail maps is multi various – giving you knowledge about the world, escapism, enjoyment etc



1960s – 70s –

Skinner ~( behavioral conditioning )

institutions will appeal to what people want – if people want stuff about trump, they will fill the newspapers with trump, to satisfy the personal needs

cultivation theory – changing behavior over time ( george Gerbner)

television cultivates from infancy the very predispositions and preferences that used to be acquired from other primary sources

television’s major cultural function is to stabilize social patterns and to cultivate resistance to change‘ 

watching television over time adds up to our perception of the world around us

cultivates predispositions and preferences

Althusser – theory of interpellation

  • structures (institutions) have more power than indivual agency
  • unaware of manipulation
  • skinners theory – makes the pigeon feel powerful, then really they are the ones have been manipulated by the power

1980s – The theory of preffered reading

  • Stuart Hall – black person – says the world looks very white
  • people can present a word, but people can read it in a different way – if its not like you, you reject the reading
  • says theres three ways of reading a message:
  1. A dominant position accepts the dominant message
  2. A negotiated position both accepts and rejects the dominant reading
  3. An oppositional position rejects the dominant reading

2000s – Clay Shirky – the end audience – theres no such thing as a mass audience – only indivual audiences

  • intersectionality: theres an intersection of different subject positions

the more ideas there are in circulation, the more ideas there are for any individual to disagree with.’ 

2019 – Zuboff – suvailence capitalism

  • we are all complete indivuals – but all individually targeted and profiled

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