Audience Theorists

Utopian Solutions

Dyers utopian theory, refers to the way in which Dyers see’s audiences consuming media products with a clear set of pleasures to draw from it, and the use of this media consumption is a form of escapism from audiences real lives. Dyers view is that reality is negative and unfullfilling, whilst the mediated world becomes a hopeful one in which to escape.
Dyer suggested that there were 3 reasons why audiences choose to consume media; social tension, inadequacy or absence, and these 3 reasons are are generated by reality. The consumption of media / entertainment, provides audiences with a ‘utopian solution.’ In his theory, this is how he believes entertainment works, because it responds to a need generated by society.

Below is a utopian solution chart, illustrating what Dyer would view as the tension and solution.

The Hypodermic Needle Model

Dating from the 1920s, this theory was the first attempt to explain how mass audiences might react to mass media. It is a crude model (see picture) 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. Don't forget that this theory was developed in an age when the mass media were still fairly new - radio and cinema were less than two decades old. Governments had just discovered the power of advertising to communicate a message, and produced propaganda to try and sway populaces to their way of thinking. This was particularly rampant in Europe during the First World War and its aftermath.

Basically, the Hypodermic Needle Model suggests that the information from a text passes into the mass consciouness of the audience unmediated, ie the experience, intelligence and opinion of an individual are not relevant to the reception of the text. 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. It assumes that the audience are passive and heterogenous. This theory is still quoted during moral panics by parents, politicians and pressure groups, and is used to explain why certain groups in society should not be exposed to certain media texts (comics in the 1950s, rap music in the 2000s), for fear that they will watch or read sexual or violent behaviour and will then act them out themselves.

 Uses & Gratifications

During the 1960s, as the first generation to grow up with television became grown ups, it became increasingly apparent to media theorists that audiences made choices about what they did when consuming texts. Far from being a passive mass, audiences were made up of individuals who actively consumed texts for different reasons and in different ways. In 1948 Lasswell suggested that media texts had the following functions for individuals and society:

• surveillance
• correlation
• entertainment
• cultural transmission

Researchers Blulmer and Katz expanded this theory and published their own in 1974, stating that individuals might choose and use a text for the following purposes (ie uses and gratifications):

• Diversion - escape from everyday problems and routine.
• Personal Relationships - using the media for emotional and other interaction, eg) substituting soap operas for family life
• Personal Identity - finding yourself reflected in texts, learning behaviour and values from texts
• Surveillance - Information which could be useful for living eg) weather reports, financial news, holiday bargains

David Buckingham

His theory was categorized in a social process like Gunther's theory. His findings offer evidence that children progressively acquire a discourse of genre.His research focuses on children's and young people interactions with electronic media and media education.
Buckingham related the development of genre to the complex issue of ever changing identity. He argues "genre is not simply given by the culture it is a constant process of negotiation and change."Buckingham cautions that it would be a mistake to regard the dates as a demo station of audiences pre-existing cognate understanding since he stresses that categorization is a social process as well as a cognitive one.