Audience Theory

• Exposure to repeated patterns of representation over long peroiods of time can shape and influence the way people precive the world around them.
• Cultivation reinforces mainstream values.

• Fans are active participants in the construction and circulation of meanings.
• Textual poaching: Fans appropiate texts and read them in ways that aren't authorised by creators.
• Participatory culture: Fans construct their social identities through mass cultural images.

• The internet has had a profound effect on the relations between media and individuals.
• Audience members as passive consumers of mass media is no longer tenable in the age of the internet-media consumers are now the producers who 'speak back' to the media.

• The media can implant ideas in the mind of the audience directly as they are passive.
• Audiences acquire attitudes, emotioanl responses and new conduct via modelling.
• Representations of transgressive behaviour are irritable.

• Communication is a process of encoding by producers and decoding by audiences, 3 hypothetical positions to decode meaning:
• Hegemonic
• Negotiated
• Oppositional

7 Types  of media product consumer (Psychographics):

• Mainstreamers
• Aspirers
• Explorers
• Succeeders
• Reformers
• Strugglers
• Resigned

• Like the hypodermic Needle model only a intermediary is introduced.
• Opinion leaders: The individuals with the most access and understanding of the media influence and intervine between message and audience.

A basic model of human motivation- why anyone does or needs anything:

• Physiological Needs
• Safety Needs
• Love Needs
• Esteem Needs
• Self Actualisation Needs

Assumes the audience is active and consumes media for 4 different purposes and functions:

• Diversion
• Survelliance
• Personal Identity
• Personal Relationships