Hypodermic Model
The hypodermic needle is an early explanation to how audiences react to things they are told by the media. If the media were to still consider this model it means they would think that everyone that watches the same thing will react in exactly the same way. This is called passive consumption. For example, if the news were to say, teenagers are all thugs, this model would explain that everyone would accept the fact that all teenagers are thug and not question it.
The theory was used a lot during the second world war in Nazi propaganda films such as Education for Death in order to make the people agree with the reasons for going to war. The media almost controls people into thinking what they want them to think. Although, the only reason these types of programmes work was because there was already a mass dislike of how Germany was ran within society, so the hatred only grew when the audience saw them.
This relates to the Frankfurt School, who were a group of social scientists that were anxious about impact the media was starting to have in society. They believed that audiences were passive therefore they were very easily manipulated by the media.
Today, even though this theory is not really acknowledged as being correct it still influences people with modern media. Recently media classification has become a lot more relaxed with sex and violence being shown. GTA is an extremely violent game and theorists have claimed that it influence young children into attacking or killing other people. For example last year an article was written about a 10 year old child who killed his Grandmother after playing GTA. It has not been proved that GTA was the reason but because the media explained it in a certain it created a big moral panic into whether the game should be sold.
The effects that this type of violence has, has been debated a lot within society, the effects debate is an argument that audiences should be protected from explicit content. It explains that audiences, especially children are passive so they don't know the difference between right and wrong, therefore they could recreate what they see. Now even though this did affect quite a few people, there were still a lot of people that completely disagree with this claim, myself being one of them. This is probably due to themselves playing the game and knowing that they didn't become violent, so why should any one else. This is a perfect example of how everyone can react in their own way towards media products.
Due to people believing audiences should be protected, the BBFC view all media products and censor certain things for certain ages, for example I Spit On Your Grave is classed as an eighteen because there are rape scenes and a lot of gory violence. Although people under eighteen cannot buy the DVD, the classification rating is only a suggestion for people, so it is their own choice if they want to watch it if they are given it.The argument against this is that some people think that anyone should be able to watch anything of their choice because if they are raised right they will know not to copy violent or explicit things.
This theory is no longer accepted because it was created at the time when we only had printed media. It does not take into account the amount of ways audiences can now actively consume information. Now a days the technology we have allows us to post on social media, comment on articles, ring into shows etc. Granting people opportunity to show their own opinions, you can go onto any YouTube
video, look at the comments and realise how different every person is. http://www.theory.org.uk/david/effects.html
It is very hard to determine what effects a media product will have on their audience, but the cultivation theory explains that a single viewing of a text may not have a big effect, but repeated viewing of the same text will desensitise the audience. For example, even though there were a lot of gory films in the 70's and 80's and there aren't as many today, the level of gore has increased. Saw, and the Human Centipede are both very graphic films but due to the exposure of gory films throughout the years people do not mind watching them. If these films were to be created 30 years ago they would have definitely been banned.
The gratification theory is used a lot more accepted because it considers everyone as being self reliant thinkers in the way that they respond to media products. This being because they have all had, different experiences, have different values and have different understanding of what they are being shown. For example if people are told that Muslims are terrorists, some people may agree with it because they do not know anything about their culture. Whereas someone that may have travelled and found out about their culture and had a good experience would have a completely different view. This is Active Consumption.
Another way of explaining this would be the fact that a lot of people do things to get different reactions for them selves. For example, people visiting a certain website, such as YouTube. A football fan would watch a match for pure entertainment but a football player could watch it to learn new techniques.
I believe, along with a lot of other people that this theory is relevant, not just now but has always been relevant. There is not way that everyone that watches a programme has the same reaction
