Audience

HYPOTHODERMIC NEEDLE MODEL

This theory was first discovered in the 1920s and is an attempt to explain how mass audiences might react to mass media. The model suggests that audiences passively receive the information transmitted through media text without any attempt to process or question/ challenge the text.

Horror films are usually certified at 15+ this is because young children and infants are unable to processes media text critically and are more likely to be influenced by these media texts.

USES AND GRATIFICATION

The uses and gratification theory shows that audiences are not passive and make a choice on what media texts they watched, this was first realised during the 1960s as that generation was first to grow up with televisions. The theory suggests that audiences watch texts for different reasons and in different ways and through technological proliferation this has become more evident. Lasswell in 1948 said that reasons for media use include surveillance, correlation, entertainment and cultural transmission. In 1978 reasons such as diversion, personal relationships and personal identity where included.

For horror films I believe that the audience use horror films as a form of DIVERSION and ENTERTAINMENT. This is because horror films offer excitement at a cheap prices and the array of unusual stories can be escapism from everyday life.

RECEPTION THEORY

Reception looks at the way the audience interprets a producers media text. The producer encodes the text and the audience decode the text. There is a difference between how the producer interprets the media text and how the audience does, however by using conventions and codes drawing up the audiences expectations of that genre the producer can position the audience and therefore have the “preferred reading” of the media text from the audience.