Audience Effects Theory

 1) Write a definition of a passive audience: 

An audience which accepts the messages encoded in a media text without challenge.

2) Write a definition of an active audience: 

An audience that engages interprets and responds to a media text in different ways and is capable of challenging the ideas encoded in it

3) Write a definition of the hypodermic needle theory: 

This is the suggestion that audiences are always passive and therefore take the intended message from the producer as if it was injected into their minds. This assumes no individual difference in audience members. 

4) Write down a media product (e.g. TV show, newspaper or videogame) for each category of Blumler and Katz's Uses and Gratifications theory and WHY it fits that particular audience use/gratification. The first one is done for you: 

INFORMATION/SURVEILLANCE: Media text - The Times newspaper
 > Why: It tells audiences important information about politics, the world and more.

PERSONAL IDENTITY: Work - Actor
 > Why: Its when seeing your lifestyle on screen.

DIVERSION/ENTERTAINMENT: Watching Harry Potter 
 > Why: Its keeping you entertained away from your normal life

RELATIONSHIPS: watching a film that you are interested in 
 > Why: Because you are interested in the film and you want to find out what happens to the characters next