Media Audience Theory

 Albert Bandura-

Hypodermic needle model- Suggested the media are powerful and oppressive  - control the passive audience by 'injecting' their message. However this isn't completely true as I've played plants vs zombies but I've never seen a zombie or planted a plant that can shoot peas. 

BOBO doll experiment - 

Bandura wished to observe the effects of witnessing violence's on an audience so he showed 2 groups of children a doll - one group witnessed the doll being gently played with and cared for and so the children matched this behaviors whereas the other group watched the doll get mauled and repeatedly damaged and so they did the same. This was a revolutionary finding as at the time it was widely believed that watching violence would purge you of all violent thoughts and even calm you down.

Stuart Hall - Reception Theory-

Believes that the media 'encode' a message and we as an audience download it into our minds however unlike bandura suggesting its instantly accepted, Hall suggests our minds 'decode' it and decide for ourselves if we wish to accept. These encoded messages are called the preferred meaning.

The 'dominant-hegemonic' position is the preferred reading that just accepts the meaning.

the 'negotiated' position accepts the ideology and intentions but disagree with certain points of it - essentially a compromise.

the 'oppositional' position rejects the overt message and its underlying ideological messages.