Audience Effects Theory

 1) Write a definition of a passive audience: 

 This is the view that audiences passively take in information from the media and that these messages have the same effect on everyone.

2) Write a definition of an active audience: 
This is the more modern and generally accepted view that audiences interact with and make conscious choices regarding the media they consume.

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 video games) 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: The Times newspaper
 > Why: It tells audiences important information about politics, the world and more.

PERSONAL IDENTITY:TV
 > Why:  Creating a personal connection to the characters and caring about them because you relate to them or the situation they're in.

DIVERSION/ENTERTAINMENT: video games
 > Why:This allows people to escape and be entertained away from their normal lives.

RELATIONSHIPS:TV
 > Why: This makes us care about the characters that are being presented to us by relating to the characters and therefore forming a relationship with them.

5) Re-watch the clip from Blue Planet above and write a paragraph analysing how elements of the clip offer the audience pleasures or gratifications (use media terminology from Uses and Gratifications theory and the 3 Vs - notes outlined above). 

Some uses/gratification used were Information/Surveillance and Diversion/Entertainment.

Information/Surveillance offers the audience pleasures by giving information about the world and the ecosystems that make it turn.The clip gives us useful facts about how the world we are living in works, how the animals that are living in it are surviving an ever-changing planet. Even while introducing the show David gives us tiny pieces of info concerning the show and that information seeps into our brain unknowingly.Diversion/Entertainment offers audience the pleasure of being aesthetically pleased by 3 factors: the voice of David Attenborough , the music in the background and the videos and pictures  of the animals that go with it. These features allow the audience to escape away from reality and be entertained by the media product presented to them.