The Bobo Doll experiment

In 1961 Albert Bandura carried out an experiment called the BOBO Doll experiment to see if children copy violent behaviour.:

The experiment involved children to watch a video of an adult violently attacking a toy or "Bobo Doll."
The children were then taken to a room full of aesthetically pleasing toys that the children were not allowed to touch.
Then they were taken to another room that had Bobo Dolls in them.
It was found that 80% of the children copied and imitated the violent behaviour.
Eventually 8 months later 40% of the children repeated the violent behaviour.

Reception Theory

• A different approach to audiences was developed by the Academic Stuart Hall at Birmingham University during the 1970's.
• The idea was to consider how texts were encoded with meaning by producers and then decoded by audiences.
• The theory suggests that: when a producer constructs a text it is encoded with a message or meaning that the producer wishes to convey.
• In some instances audiences will correctly decode the message or meaning and understand what the producer was trying to say.
• In some cases the audience will either reject or fail to correctly understand the message.

Stuart Hall identified 3 types of audience readings (decoding) of the texts:

• Dominent or preferred - the audience decodes the message as the producer wants them to do and broadly agrees with it. - E.g Watching a political speech and agreeing.
• Negotiated - the audience accepts, rejects or refines elements of the text in light of previously held views/ E.g Neither agreeing or disagreeing
• Oppositional - the dominent meaning is recognised but rejected for cultural, political or ideological reasons. E.g Total rejection of the political speech and active opposition

The Uses and Gratifications Model

This model is the opposite of the Effects Model. The audience is not passive it is active in their consumption of texts by using the text rather than being used by it.The audience uses the text for gratification or pleasure, thus the power lies with the audience not the producers. The model emphasises what audiences do with media texts - how and why they use them. Although far from being "duped" by the media, the audience is free to reject, use or play with media meanings as they see fit.

Therefore audiences use media texts to gratify needs for:

• Diversion
• Escapism
• Information
• Comparing relationships and lifestyles with their own
• Sexual stimulation

Similarly the audience is in control of their consumption of their media texts and help the people with issues such as:

• Learning
• Emotional satisfaction
• Relaxation
• Help with issues of personal identity
• Help with issues of social identity
• Help with issues of aggression and violence

The model controversially implies that sometimes the consumption of violent texts can be helpful rather than harmful. The theory suggests that audiences act out their violent impulses through the consumption of media violence. The audiences inclination towards violence is therefore sublimated and they are less likely to commit violent acts.

Effects Model Continued

In each case there was a media and political outcry for the texts to be banned.

In some cases laws were changed, films banned and newspapers demanded the burning of films.

Subsequently in each case it was found that no case could be proven to demonstrate a link between the text and the violent acts.

Each contributed to moral panics where the media produce inactivity by:

• Turning the people into students who won't pass their exams
• Or coach potatoes who make no effort to get a job.

It is still unclear that there is any link between the consumption of violent media texts and violent imitative behaviour.

It is also unclear the theory is flawed in that many people do watch violent texts and appear not to be influenced.

Therefore a new theory is needed...

Key evidence for Effects Model

The Effects Model

This theory suggests that the consumption of media texts has a direct influence and effect on the audience.

It is normally considered a negative effect, this is because the audience is passive and powerless to prevent the influence.

The power lies with the message of the text.

This is also called the Hypodermic needle model.

This is because the messages are "injected" into the audience by the powerful "syringe-like" media.

The audience is powerless to resist.

The media works like a drug to "dope" to audience and to make them "drugged and addicted."

Audience Theory - Consuming texts

Why do audiences choose to consume certain texts?

Different people have different interests which leads to the creation of numerous genres These provide a variety of themes and ideas for an audience to choose to consume. However people may decide to choose a different text because it doesn't conform with the mainstream texts available. For example A person may listen to a typical pop song by Michael Jackson but will also enjoy listening to an acoustic song by Newton Faulkner because "its different."

How does an audience consume texts?

As technology develops, so does the way audiences consume texts. With the creation and development of "Apple" products and "smart" products such as touch screen products like the "Amazon Kindle" creates a new era of the consumption of texts. Music videos can be consumed on a variety of media, particularly on multi-functioning consoles like the Playstation 3. These are able to perform several different ways for audiences to consume texts. For example the main function is to play video games but the Playstation 3 can play Blu-ray as well as original DVDs. Furthermore the Internet is accessible from the console allowing the view of websites like "Youtube" for the consumption of music videos.

There are three theories that help to understand the relationship between audiences and texts.