Audience Theories and Impact of Media Content

Hypodermic Needle Theory (1920s-1940s):
A term for the impact media products have on their audience. It's built upon ideas from the 1930s' 'Hypodermic Syringe' model, where Vance Packard discussed the negative impact of mass media products with reference to persuasive advertising across print and broadcast media.

Cultivation Theory (1978):
Gerbner and Gross' cultivation theory suggests that over time, repetition of viewing violent acts allows certain ideas and values to become normalised. By repetitive viewing of violent images in TV, film or video games the audience may become desensitised to them.

Passive Audience Theory:
Passive audience theory builds upon Packard's idea of being able to inject ideas into people's heads like a 'hypodermic syringe' and reinforces the idea that audiences have limited resistance to media message. Main concerns were about the idea of 'copycat' effects and assumes the audience will copy whatever they see.

Active Audience Theory:
The 'effects' debate has long been criticised for being out-dated. Commentators such as David Gauntlett (2004) suggest that there are major problems with the way that the effects model treats not only audience members, such as children, as inadequate but also sees the media texts as the root cause of the problem without taking sociological or psychological factors into account. Such ideas can be placed within active audience theory. They're saying that we're not just sheep who are influenced blindly by the media, but are more intelligent and free-thinking than that. The basics are that passive audiences just absorb the information, while active audiences may get involved with it, doing further research or something.