Research: Key Theorists

Audience theory is the starting point for many Media Studies tasks. Whether you are constructing a text or analysing one, you will need to consider the destination of that text, ie its target audience and how that audience (or any other) will respond to that text. Dating from the 1920s, this theory was the first attempt to explain how mass audiences might react to mass media and suggests that audiences passively receive the information transmitted via a media text, without any attempt on their part to process or challenge the data. Some institutions such as the Governments had just discovered the power of advertising to communicate a message, and produced propaganda to try and influence common people to their way of thinking. The Hypodermic Needle Model suggests that the information from a text passes into the mass consciousness of the audience unmediated. This theory suggests that, as an audience, we are manipulated by the creators of media texts, and that our behaviour and thinking might be easily changed by media-makers.