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Audience theory offers explanations of how people encounter media, how they use it, and how it affects them. Although the concept of an audience predates modern media, [1] most audience theory is concerned with people’s relationship to various forms of media. There is no single theory of audience, but a range of explanatory frameworks.
Media researchers commonly believe that audience behavior is best explained by micro-level factors such as individual preferences. In a 1983 article, “A theory of television program choice,” [ 15 ] Webster claimed that preferences were expressed within the structure of available program options and that these structures were important ...
Active audience theory is seen as a direct contrast to the Effects traditions, however, Jenny Kitzinger, professor of Communications at Cardiff University, argues against discounting the effect or influence media can have on an audience, acknowledging that an active audience does not mean that media effect or influence is not possible. [5]
Combing through the technological and social environment, early media effects theories stated that the mass media were all-powerful. [20] Representative theories: Hypodermic needle model, or magic bullet theory: Considers the audience to be targets of an injection or bullet of information fired from the pistol of mass media. The audience are ...
In media studies, mass communication, media psychology, communication theory, and sociology, media influence and media effects are topics relating to mass media and media culture's effects on individual or an audience's thoughts, attitudes, and behavior. Whether it is written, televised, or spoken, mass media reaches a large audience.
However, the focus of such programs sometimes excludes certain media—film, book publishing, video games, etc. [36] The title “media studies” may be used to designate film studies and rhetorical or critical theory, or it may appear in combinations like “media studies and communication” to join two fields or emphasize a different focus.
In conclusion, reception theory provides a valuable framework for understanding the complex relationship between media texts and their audiences. It emphasizes the active role of the audience in constructing meaning and challenges the notion of a single, authoritative interpretation.
Media dependency theory states two specific conditions under which people's media needs, and consequently people's dependency on media and the potential for media effects, are heightened. The first condition of heightened media needs occurs when the number of media and centrality of media functions in a society are high.