ABSTRACT

This chapter examines many contrasting approaches to the media audience, including all of those cited by A Level Media Studies specifications. Media effects theories are explained and exemplified by detailed case studies of Orson Welles’s 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast and Albert Bandura’s Bobo doll experiments. A critical appraisal of effects theory leads to a consideration of the active audience approach. This includes explanations of the Two-Step Flow model, uses and gratifications, and Cultivation Theory. Reception theories, such as the encoding/decoding model associated with Stuart Hall, are set within the broader context of neo-Gramscian Hegemony Theory. More recent perspectives, including Abercrombie and Longhurst’s idea of the Diffused Audience, are explained and illustrated. The chapter concludes with a critique of ideas such as ‘semiotic democracy’ and the ‘end of audience’ based on a case study of the use and abuse of data by social media companies and network providers.