Audience Theory + The effects model

Audience Theory

All media is created to a set of conventions, which are specified for the intended audience. The differences which can make the different audience groups are:
- Age
- Gender
- Class
- Disabilities
- Race/Cultural Origins/ Ethnicity
- Interests

From audience theory, three main theories have been made around the principles of this, they are:
- The Effects Model/ Hypodermic Syringe
- The uses and Gratifications model
- The Reception Model

There is three ways which are theorised ways that the audiences consume media, these are:
- Primary/ Active Audiences: The audience is paying full attention to the media, and consuming all that it offers
- Secondary: The audience isn't focused solely on the media and will often be performing another activity whilst paying some attention to the media.
- Tertiary: The Audience is consuming the media sub-consciously, without paying any real attention to the media source.


The Effects Model

The effects model is a media theory developed in the idea of how media is consumed. There are three concepts related to this model.

Imitation: The idea that the consumers of the media are passively taking in ideals and copying them within real life.

Desensitisation: The audience is become more used to things they may have previously been seen as completely inappropriate and becoming a more normal scenario.

Catharsis: The audience is using the media as a way of escaping their own lives, to make themselves feel better about life by seeing something which they consider worse than their current scenario.