Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to

the concept of audience.

The concept of audience is possibly the biggest concept to consider when
looking at producing a media text. I will be looking at my As production
and applying it to the audience theories to analyse how accurate the
theories relate to my production.
The hypodermic needle theory states that the audience is passive. This
means that they are highly influenced by what the producers transmit
through the text. The theory states that media is essentially injected
into the audience like a needle and that as they are passive they believe
that the message that the text is giving to them. A prime example of this
would be the columbine shooting massacre in 1999. Two boys went into
their high school and shot loads of other pupils. The media used this
story to create a moral panic in the audience as the media made the
audience believe that they should not send their children to school. A
moral panic is used to create mass hysteria in the audience and if the
audience are passive like the hypodermic needle theory states then they
will be influenced by what the media has told them. This relates to my
production as I wanted to create a moral panic in my audience through
the use of social networking. I wanted to show the dangers of talking to
people on the Internet as you never really know who they actually are. To
do this we staged a kidnapping in the storyline in which the character who
was talking to the person online is abducted. This scene in particular
shows the dangers of talking to a person online as you never know who
they really are. Through doing this we are able to inject a message to the
audience and make them question who they are really talking to. Through
doing this I am able to make the passive audience members which would
be the majority of the audience as teenagers which is the main target
audience are highly influenced by the media. The messages that I showed
were negative in that they showed the dangers of the internet. I feel
that the theory can relate to my production in that it shows how the
audience can be influenced by the way that I show a particular issue in
the production and also informs me that I need to be considerate in the
way that I present certain ethnicities and stereotypes in the production.
The second audience theory is called the uses and gratifications theory.
This theory states that unlike the hypodermic needle theory says that
the audience are not influenced by the messages that the media show.
When the audience actively seeks media they want to gratify a need this
could be personal identity for example relating to the characters as they

are of a similar age to the audience. The audience for my production

would mainly use my media to gratify their personal identity, surveillance,
entertainment and personal relationships. The audience would use my
media text to establish personal identity as they would look at the
characters that I have shown and see that they are of a similar age and
would want to see how they behave, this will ultimately challenge the way
that we behave. An example of this in my production is that the audience
would look at the character of Rikki and would most likely be able to
relate to her situation with talking to someone online, and they would look
at her behaviour and compare that to the way that they would behave in
that scenario if it were them. The audience would also use my production
for information gathering as they would want to be able to see some of
the angers that are in society in this current day and age. My production
shows the dangers of the Internet and it could be used as a video shown
in schools to warn them of the dangers of talking to someone online. The
audience would also use the text for enjoyment and use it to fulfil a basic
need of wanting fun. They would also use my media text to engage in
personal relationships with the characters in the production. This is easily
done as they are of a similar age to the audience. The audience would
want to see social interaction between characters and see that it is
similar to how they interact with their friends and this would help in
creating verisimilitude. This theory is very relatable to my production as
it shows how and why the audience would watch my production and what
sorts of enjoyment they would get out of watching it.
The final theory that I will talk about is the audience reception theory.
This theory is split into three meanings. One of the audience readings is
dominant. This is where the reader recognises the media texts preferred
meaning and agrees with it. Oppositional is where the dominant meaning is
recognised but rejected for cultural or ideological reasons. The final
reading is negotiated. This is where the reader accepts, rejects or
redefines elements of a media text on the basis of previously held views.
The key message that I hoped to convey in my As production was that
when you talk to someone online, you may not necessarily know who they
really are. The majority of the audience understood this message as we
encoded the message into the narrative of the production to show how
strangers are dangerous. The audience were mainly dominant and
recognised the meaning and agreed with it. I know this from my audience
feedback where the audience were asked if they understood the meaning
behind the production and they were able to identify it. I feel that this

theory is very relevant to my production as it shows how the message may

be accepted or rejected.