Audience essay

Audiences are the people that consume media on a regular basis. This makes it easier for the institutions that create the media to correctly direct their content towards their target audiences and associate them with symbolic codes. The audience themselves understand and consume the media to a different level from each other due to their backgrounds and how they've seen the world. My trailer is seen to incorporate the copycat theory into the contents. Media can be interpreted differently by audiences. But there are two main audience theories that are mainly recognised: Mass Audience (Passive) and Active Audience. Mass audience theorists believe that media is dangerous as it could influence people to do dangerous things, and that everyone will react in the same way to media text. Active audience theorists believe that we as individuals interpret media texts in different ways. They see media texts as polysemic (open to interpretation) and try to understand why audiences may respond differently to the same media text. John Hartley said "Institutions are obliged not only to speak about audience, but crucially talk to one as well. They need not only to represent audience, but to enter a relation with them". 

The hypodermic model is a theory that addresses how the media really effects you psychologically and gets under your skin. The effects model is on how the consumption of media texts has an influence on the audience in a negative way, due to the fact that the audience is positive and it is the power within the message that has an effect on the audience's mind. The hypodermic model is how the message is injected into the audience via powerful, syringe-like media text, and the audience is powerless to resist this as the media works like a drug, numbing the audience. This type of media is one that habitually blames the effect of media for why there is so much violence in today's society. This is a passive theory as the media has no power over what is being done to them, and the text is slowly numbing their beliefs like drug. 

The reception theory focuses on how text is coded and decoded by the audience. This theory was created by Stuart Hall and analyses the relationship between producer and audience. Text can be dominated, meaning that the audience responds in the way the producer wants them to; text can be negotiated, meaning that the audience accepts or rejects the elements of the text; and opposed, meaning the dominant meaning in the text can be recognised by the audience but rejected as well. This theory is an active theory because the audience has the power of choice on how they consume the text and it doesn't affect their ideologies. 

The uses and gratification theory was developed by Bulmer and Katz and is about how audience consumption is based on highly active audience choices & personal preferences. Individuals have different uses for different texts, and used it to their advantage in order to meet needs. Cognitive needs was basic use of media in terms of surveillance, such as news or magazines, and was used for people's affective needs. Personal intergratived needs were how the audience used the things they see in media to change their lifestyle to meet the norms of society. Social intergrative needs let the audience know what our friends are up to, so they don't feel out of place. Tension free needs, used for escapism, was used for people to have a safe haven from reality and escape from the boring cycle of life, e.g. The violence in horrors used to satisfy their adrenaline as their day to day life had no action whatsoever. This can be associated with by trailer as most of the stock scenes have the killer strangling, stabbing, or chasing people, giving the audience a tang of fear and excite. 

The copycat theory is a theory on why audiences too young to comprehend the gravity of their actions copy what they see in movies. This is mainly directed at content too graphic for younger viewers, such as horror movies and children, because they have a tendency to copy what they see, so if they're seeing in Scream that someone is being stabbed repeatedly they'll believe it to be okay and practise it in real life. This theory is relevant to my trailer because there are stock scenes which have characters being stabbed and strangled. This is a passive theory as the audience has not fully comprehended the gravity of the content and has subconsciously thought it is okay to do it.