Audience: Effects theory

create a new blog post called ‘Audience Effects Theory’ and complete the following tasks:
1) Write a definition of a passive audience: The view of audiences that passively take information in which it has the same effect on everyone and it sends a clear message towards them

2) Write a definition of an active audience: This is the more modern and generally accepted view that audiences interact with and make conscious choices regarding the media that they consume and how the analyse the content that is shown to them or which is seen by them.

3) Write a definition of the hypodermic needle theory: This is the suggestion that the audience is more passive and therefore take the intended message from the producers, they all rely on the producers and the content that they produce and the how it almost seems that the producers have injected the message int he consumers mind, this will assume that no individual difference in audience members.

4) Write down a media product for each category of Blumler and Katz's Uses and Gratifications theory and WHY it fits that particular audience use/gratification: 

INFORMATION/SURVEILLANCE: Documentaries 
 > Why: They educate the consumers on thing that they might not know of and they show how the subject they are focusing on how they live, eat, etc. interact with others and how their life style affects them.

IDENTITY: The thing that links to the audience in which the audience can relate towards

 > Why: The thing tries to relate with the consumer by showing a different varieties that may make the consumer think about how it relates towards them.

DIVERSION/ENTERTAINMENT: Video games
 > Why: Video games can be time consuming and fun to play, this can distract the consumer form their actual life and can even get addicted.

RELATIONSHIPS: Reality shows that show the lives of the people being recorded
 > Why: This is when the audience has a social interaction and care about the celebrities that appear on the show which then results in a forming relationship with the e.g watching soap opera for long periods of time as you care about the long standing characters in the show  

5) Re-watch the clip from Blue Planet above and write a paragraph analyzing how elements of the clip offer the audience pleasures or gratifications (use media terminology from Uses and Gratifications theory and the 3 Vs - notes outlined above). 

Task 5)

This clip uses the voyeuristic pleasure as it shows the reality of the animals in the sea and how they live their daily lives, it shows the different way of them harvesting their food or the process in which they have to go through just to get some food and to survive as some take extreme measures in order to get food and other vital things. This clip can also include information/surveillance as the crew have recorded the the animals lives and how they live, a reason why it falls under information is that so that anyone from the audience who is less educated can learn form the documentary



Extension: To take this further, select a media text of your own choice, embed it in your blog and write another detailed paragraph analyzing the audience pleasures in that product.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlFRPkT-hVc


 The clip used here is information/surveillance as it is a documentary and how it educates the consumer by showing them different shots of the animals so that the audience can see the lives of the animals  and how they live and survive in the wild and it shows how they gather food , this can also count as a diversion/entertainment This is because the videos being taken can be pleasing towards the audience's eye as it shows very mesmerizing shots and cinematic shots to show the environment around in which the animals live in and have to survive in those different conditions, harsh easy etc. for the animals.