Traditional Audience theories.

The effects model is how the people cosuming the media react and how they are influenced to the media product. Generally the reaction is said to be negative. The audience that cosumes the media product are simply unable to prevent to passive influence. There is usually a hidden message behind the influence.

This is also often referred to the hypodermic model. This is where messages are driven into the audience by powerful media useage. The audience becomes addicted to the message and therefore to the media as they are unable to resist the message.

There are particular peices of evidence that supports this theory such as the Bobo Doll experiment.

The Bobo doll experiment is seen as very controversial as it involved putting a group of children in front of a screen. The screen showed a clip of adults acting in a postive manner towards Bobo doll. There was a seperate group of children who were shown a clip of adults behaving in a negaitve manner towards the doll. In the negative group, 88% of the children copied the negative response. However, 8 months after, the same children were given a Bobo doll again, only 40% of the children acted in the agressive manner.

Effects model.

The gratification theory.

This is a specific theory that takes into account that the audience has the powerand have a free mind to use, reject or play with the consumed media. There are some reasons for the media consumption:

- Escapism

- Information

- Sexual stimulus

- Pleasure

- Diversion

The reception theory.

This theory is the process of producing encoding the media texts and the audiences decoding it. There is a number of ways of decoding the media text, the 3 ways are:

Either dominant or preferred audience - This is where the audience decode the precise message that the company wanted them to get and do not question what they are viewing.
Negotiated audience - This is where the audience agree with some aspects but possibly disagree with others.
Oppositional audience - This is where the audience disagree entirely with the whole message that is being portrayed by company.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs.