HA2 - Task 3

How Audiences Respond to Media Products
The Hypodermic Needle Model - The Hypodermic Needle Model suggest that text based information passes into the populations conscious regardless of each individuals intelligence or opinions. This suggests that text media creators can easily manipulate their audience and that opinions and behaviour are easily influenced by magazines and comics. It assumes that we are passive and  It assumes that the audience are passive, that they receive and accept information without considering it in an objective fashion this theory is often quoted and used to explain why certain age and social groups should not be exposed by certain media products for fear that they will read sexual or violent acts and commit them themselves without thought of legality or consequences.


The Inoculation Model - The Inoculation Model is a theory that through constant exposure to, for example, violence the population becomes desensitised to it so that real violence is no longer considered to be wrong or abnormal and is instead ignored.


The Two-Step Flow Model - This model states that information from the media moves in two stages. The first is that people who follow the media closely receive information from the media and then in the second stage pass it along to their social groups along with their own opinions these "opinion leaders" have a lot of influence over their social groups attitudes and opinions. This theory has helped media providers understand how mass media affects the population and refined their ability to predict the influence of the media as well as understand why certain media campaigns have failed in the past.


The Uses And Gratifications Model - A popular model in media is the Uses And Gratifications Model which (assuming a 'hypodermic' view of media and a homogeneous audience) theorises about why people use certain media rather than the content of that media. In contrast to the concern of "media's effects" it concentrates on "what people do with media" meaning that people are only affected by the information they choose to obtain and the media sources they obtain it from.


The Reception Model - This theory states that information received from media sources is dependant on how the population interoperates the meaning of a text. The media company may put meaning into a text that is totally rejected by the reader and taken to mean something else entirely. there are three possible outcomes of the reception model 
1. Preferred reading - The reader takes all the information from the text and accepts it in the way the media intended
2. Negotiated Reading - The reader takes all the information and accepts parts while rejecting others
3. Oppositional Reading - The reader interoperates the text in the opposite way the media intended