Audience Theories

       Cultivation/Culmination theory

According to this theory, years of watching more violence will make you less sensitive to violence like years of watching women being mistreated in soaps will make the individual less affected by it in real life. This is called desensitisation. There's no proof that media can change behaviour and certain ways of perceiving certain things such as violence. Games such as Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty which both include armed weaponry and violence. GTA also involves criminal offenses.

Many people believe that children are especially sensitive to this kind of content as they're still learning and developing they may be influenced by these games and films and believe that it's acceptable. However, games such as these and films are rated (CoD and GTA are both 18) meaning that it's for adults and showing that it involves: very strong violence, frequent strong language, strong portrayals of sexual activity, strong blood and gore, etc. So although these games and films are often easily assessable it is argued that they're protected from these things. Though psychology studies such as one done by Albert Bandura in 1977 support the cultivation theory. He studied the imitation of aggressive behaviour through young children watching models (aggressive or non-aggressive), the results concluded that children in the aggressive models condition showed significantly more aggression in phase 3 (observation of children) than children who were in the non-aggressive models condition.

     Hypodermic needle model

The hypodermic needle theory suggests that the mass media has a direct and powerful influence on

it's audiences. This model suggests that the audience passively accepts the message of the content, often described as the content being "injected" into the audience by the mass media. This model also suggests that there's no individual differences between the audience since each person is affected by this, because of this it expresses views that the media is dangerous because the audience is deemed powerless to resist the impact of the message. This theory was dominant in the 1940's and 1950's, because of events on October 30th 1938 when the radio version of H.G. Wells' 'War of the worlds' was broadcasted, later that evening the radio programming was interrupted with news that there was an alien invasion, 1/12 million people believed this broadcast and people even fled their city. This was the first example of the hypodermic needle model, showing how the media could manipulate a passive and gullible public.

    The Two-Step flow

The theory was first introduced by Paul Lazarsfeld. The two-step flow includes two stages. The first stage being lead by an opinion leader (e.g. celebrity, politician) who get information from a media source such as a newly released film. The second staged includes the opinion leader passing the information on along with their opinion and interpretation of the topic/subject to others. For example, an opinion leader with a mass number of followers on social media may share their opinion on a new film influencing the readers to go and watch the new film.