Audiences as ACTIVE

Alex Davies

MASLOW'S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS This five stage model can be divided into basic (or deficiency)

needs (e.g. physiological, safety, love, and esteem) and growth needs (self-actualisation).

Some people have unconscious desires and rewards

The diagram is in the shape of a pyramid. The bottom are where basic needs are located, whereas at the top is where sexual actualisation

This five stage model was thought up by the American psychologist, Abraham Maslow

WHY AUDIENCES CONSUME TEXTS: THE USES AND

GRATIFICATIONS MODEL Dating from the 1920s, this theory was the first attempt to explain how

mass audiences might react to mass media

The Model suggests that audiences passively receive the information given to them via a media text, without any attempt on their part to process or challenge the data.

The theory was developed in an age when the mass media were still fairly new - radio and cinema were less than 20 years old.

Governments had just discovered the power of advertising to communicate a message, and produced propaganda to try and sway populaces to their way of thinking.

To summarise it, the Hypodermic Needle Model suggests that the information from a text passes into the brain of the audience not thought about, for example the experience, intelligence and opinion of an individual are not relevant to the reception of the text.

The Hypodermic Needle Model

THE TWO-STEP FLOW MODEL Firstly, individuals who are opinion leaders, receive

messages from the media and pass on their own interpretations in addition to the actual media content.

Secondly, The information does not flow directly from the text into the minds of its audience, but is filtered through the opinion leaders who then pass it on to a more passive audience.

Thirdly, The audience then mediate the information received directly from the media with the ideas and thoughts expressed by the opinion leaders, thus being influenced not by a direct process, but by a two step flow.

This theory appeared to reduce the power of the media, and some researchers concluded that social factors were also important in the way in which audiences interpret texts. This led to the idea of active audiences.