Audiences Theories

Question 1

Reception Theory by Stuart Hall

Answer 1

The idea that communication is a process Involving encoding by producers and decoding by audiences. The belief is that there are three hypothetical positions from which messeges and meanings may be decoded: preferred reading, negotiated reading, oppositional reading.

Question 2

Media Effects by Albert Bandura

Answer 2

The idea that the media can implant ideas in the mind of the audience directly and that audiences acquire attitudes, emotional responses, and new styles of conduct through modelling.

Question 3

Cultivation Theory by George Gerbner

Answer 3

The idea that exposure to repeated patterns of representation over long periods of time can shake and influence the way in which people perceive the world around them.

Question 4

Fandom Theory by Henry Jenkins

Answer 4

The idea that fans are active participants in the construction and circulation of textual meanings and that fans appropriate texts and read them in ways that are not fully authorised by the media producers. Fans also construct their social and cultural identities through borrowing and inflecting mass culture images and are part of a participatory culture that has a vital social dimension.

Question 5

End of Audience by Clay Shirky

Answer 5

The idea that the internet and digital technologies have had a profound effect on the relationship between media and individuals. Audience members are now a passive consumers of mass media content are no longer tenable in the age of the internet, as media consumers have now become producers who ‘speak back to’ the media in various ways, as well as creating and sharing content with one another.