Task 3 - Understand how media audiences respond to media products.
Task 3 - Understand how media audiences respond to media products.
Hypodermic Needle Theory
The hypodermic needle theory is a type of manipulation that first occurred in the 1920's and 1930's after observing how well propaganda was used to portray a message to the public, the government started to use the television and radio to influence their citizens by passively feeding them information that they believe.This would be possible because in this era things like the radio and cinema were very new and so what they seen or heard they perceived as fact. Although this has become outdated due to the audiences becoming more active over the years the main stream media outlets still attempt to use tactics such as fear to persuade an audiences opinion. Reports on games and films being linked with violence such as Call of Duty linked with school shootings have an impact on adults and the older generation because it is a subject that they don't know much about so they believe the news yet there have been studies that prove there is no correlation between violence and games.
Anything thats as simple as walking down the street can influence our decision making becuase you signs everywhere advertising different products from food to deoderant. Although we dont seem to notice this, we do subcounsionly and can convince our bodies that we are hungry for McDonalds, these advertisments are seen everywhere in heavily populated areas such as the Town Centres.
Films are popular for adding hidden images and adverts in their films when un-needed, these are known as product placement. An example of this is in the film 'Superman 2' when Superman fights General Zod there are three products placed in the single scene which are relatively unnoticable. The first is a KFC box which is placed on a car window, the next is the Marlboro van that he is threw into and then he is threw into a Coca-Cola advert which is the most obvious of the three, the viewer only thinks he is watching the film but unknown to them they are seeing these three adverts and then think that they want them,
Anything thats as simple as walking down the street can influence our decision making becuase you signs everywhere advertising different products from food to deoderant. Although we dont seem to notice this, we do subcounsionly and can convince our bodies that we are hungry for McDonalds, these advertisments are seen everywhere in heavily populated areas such as the Town Centres.
Films are popular for adding hidden images and adverts in their films when un-needed, these are known as product placement. An example of this is in the film 'Superman 2' when Superman fights General Zod there are three products placed in the single scene which are relatively unnoticable. The first is a KFC box which is placed on a car window, the next is the Marlboro van that he is threw into and then he is threw into a Coca-Cola advert which is the most obvious of the three, the viewer only thinks he is watching the film but unknown to them they are seeing these three adverts and then think that they want them,
Uses and Gratifications
The opposite to the hypodermic needle theory, the Uses and Gratifications Theory means that an audience will not have the media absorb into their heads like mindless zombies, usually they will look for the type of media such as news, sport, and documentaries. An example that backs this up is the second most popular website, YouTube. YouTube has given people the opportunity to search for any topic they wish. Furthermore, on modern television you have the ability to search for topics on demand therefore things like news outlets aren't being as viewed as opposed to 5 years ago. An example that backs this up is Sky news' statistics ranging from the first quarter in 2012 to the second quarter of 2017 in the UK.
Although not major, you can see that over the five year time span there is a very slight drop in the peak amount of viewers per quarter each year. For instance, in the first quarter on 2012 the peak amount of viewers was 17 million people and in the first quarter of 2017 the viewers reached a total of 14.5 million.
For a nation with 65.64 million people this isn't the types of figures you should be looking at when a YouTube channel like KSI (currently 36th most subscribed channel) has around 39 million views from his last 30 days.
Furthemore evidence that backs up this evidence comes from fortune lords youtube statistics, they have complied stats that show "6 out of 10 people now prefer online video platforms to Live TV" and say that "by the year 2025, half of the viewers under 32 will not subscribe to a pay-TV service." It just shows that TV is becoming less and less relevant as the years go on.
Google pay around $6,350,000,000 a year to keep YouTube going but make a profit of around $4,000,000,000 in the same calender year. With figures like these coming in it is hard to see that Live Television could ever top that. To combat the Live TV problem, Sky has produced its own streaming box called a 'Now TV' box which enables its users to watch films, tv shows, sports channels all in the same place with the use of adverts or anything, this does help tackle the problem with people not wanting to watch television anymore.
Reception Theory
The Reception theory is a lot different from the hypodermic needle and two step flow. This states that each individual will not either absorb information straight from source or take in the information from a person, they will however take the information as it comes then break it apart to make their own opinion on it from there. There are three types of responses from seeing an advert or another media source; Dominant, Negotiated and Oppositional.
Dominant would be about what the audience wants to hear and having them agree without much knowledge on the subject. An example of this is usually on the news when the Prime Minister is addressing the public about improving the countries budget so that the audience is on their side because it's what they want to hear.
Negotiated reception would be when the audience will questions the news rather than agreeing or disagreeing because of another source telling them different for example if the Prime Minister is saying the Countries budget will be improved but the opposition saying that it is impossible without taking more money from the public.
Finally, the Negative reception would be the audience totally dismissing it because of either their other beliefs or supporting another cause. For example, if the audience did not support the current Prime Minister because they offended their religion then they would fully dismiss their statement because of another reason.
Two Step flow
After discovering that the general public doesn't receive its media knowledge straight from the source or rather from their own informal, personal contacts, Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet decided to find out how media is distributed during the 1944 presidential election campaign and the discovered that within a group of friends they will make their decisions on who to vote for from their "opinion leader" who will usually pay very close attention to the campaign and then relay the given information along with their own insight to the others.
Another example is when a person will anchor an opinion on another, in modern times this happens a lot in the medias such as games and films. This happens either in the forms of adverts when their will be opinions of reviewers saying the game/film was "amazing", "outstanding" or "5 out 5 stars". Therefore when we go to watch the film or play the game, in the back of our heads we will already have an opinion based on what we've already been told. Also if a youtuber or streamer comments on a game saying "it is one of the worst games they've played" and "not to spend any money on it" we will be a lot less likely to buy it.
Another example is when a person will anchor an opinion on another, in modern times this happens a lot in the medias such as games and films. This happens either in the forms of adverts when their will be opinions of reviewers saying the game/film was "amazing", "outstanding" or "5 out 5 stars". Therefore when we go to watch the film or play the game, in the back of our heads we will already have an opinion based on what we've already been told. Also if a youtuber or streamer comments on a game saying "it is one of the worst games they've played" and "not to spend any money on it" we will be a lot less likely to buy it.
Exposure to violent content
Within the game industry there has been much controversy surrounding how games are or can be linked with violence. Violence in games is becoming more and more popular and not for any particular reason as more games are being released like GTA V, Call of Duty, Titanfall as well as countless others has caused mass outrage mong people throughout the world as they say that it causes people -who are vulnerable to games like this- to lash out. Video games have heavily been the centre of controversy within the last 10-20 years because of the amount of violence portrayed on screen. A test conducted in the US showed that as many as 97% of kids who ages ranged from 12-17 play video games which contributes to $21.53 billion in the video game industry. Over half of the top 50 selling videos contain violence and with that comes games like Diablo III, Overwatch, 'Call of Duty: Black Ops'. The violence in video games has been the blame for school shootings, an increase in bullying as well as violence towards women, the argument is that violent games desensitise exposed kids while they are playing games that require you to kill one another and then reward then for doing so.
Advertising
In modern media there are many ways that a company, business or franchise will lure in people to buy their product. Using different tactics companies have been able to grow using things like images, symbols and language to persuade people to buy. Without advertisements companies would not be able to make near anything they make while putting out adverts. During the world wars advertisements would promote the war effort and as propaganda against the enemy. The majority of all advertisements are online now and have become a lot more complicated cause of how much thinking about things like colours, symbols and images before an advert is put out. Colours in advertisements have become a very powerful tool because as an audience we identify each colour with a certain message. For example the colour red cna represent passion and youth and purple can mean luxury and knowledge.
Fan culture
With the success of a game, film or other media like cartoon's come huge following community that supports them. There are many normal fan followings but on the other end of the scale there are some followers that are a bit too extreme. The community will usually have a name for themselves that represent who/what they are dedicated to for example, Dr.Who fans call them selves 'Whovians', Star Trek fans have the name 'Trekkies' and so on.
Fandoms and Fan communities seem to be nothing but people supporting their favourite TV shows, film series or musicians but if you look a little bit deeper into it, there is a much different side to the different types of fans and how they show their appreciation.
An example of this is the My Little Pony fan cult. These are the not young girls you would expect them to be. This is grown men from 18-64 following the my little pony franchise. That's not all, the will buy the 'collectibles' such as pony figures, a load of t-shirts etc. These followers are known as 'Bronies'. Despite people thinking its "Weird" or "Creepy" there is no doubt that the mayhem caused by this has created a bigger following and made the average viewers rise making. There is such a following for this that in 2012 there was a documentary made named 'Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony'. This documentary was funded by Kickstarter and became the second most funded film project by earning $322,022, surpasing its $200,000 original budget plan.
Fandoms have incredible powers when they see something they don't like happen to their beloved tv show. For example, the widely popular TV show 'Family Guy' has been canceleed twice from air, the orignal cause for this is that it wasn't gaining enough viewers at the start btu once cancelled they soon figured out it was a bad idea, record number of people began buying the DVD's and watching the previous episiodes which where being showjn on another channel. This forced Fox to bring it back which turned out to be a good idea since the show now has a huge following.
Fandoms have incredible powers when they see something they don't like happen to their beloved tv show. For example, the widely popular TV show 'Family Guy' has been canceleed twice from air, the orignal cause for this is that it wasn't gaining enough viewers at the start btu once cancelled they soon figured out it was a bad idea, record number of people began buying the DVD's and watching the previous episiodes which where being showjn on another channel. This forced Fox to bring it back which turned out to be a good idea since the show now has a huge following.
Censorship
In films and games, there will always be people that will disagree with what is happening on screen. There are a few measures in place to assure that these complaints do not go unheard and something can be done when a complaint is filed. Based in London, The Office of Communications is a government approved regulatory body used for telecommunications, radio broadcasting and the postal service around the UK. OFCOM also have the opportunity to regulate landline calls. They are tasked with controlling what is shown on TV's, making sure that it is acceptable to be viewed by the general public. They have the ability to do this though the Communications Act 2003. OFCOM will frequently receive complaints from viewers and radio broadcasts that they do not believe as acceptable.
Most recently OFCOM have been sent nearly 400 complaints because of huge soap TV show Coronation street's attempt at a double murder scene. Because of the amount of people that have complained they have the ability to never have this episode shown on television again. Furthermore, the chairman has said that he wishes OFCOM to have a stake in the regulatory systems with Facebook and Google.
Sources:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/290872/sky-news-viewers-reached-quarterly-united-kingdom/
https://socialblade.com/youtube/user/ksiolajidebt
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/articles/overviewoftheukpopulation/july2017
https://mediafort.wordpress.com/2013/07/01/reception-theory/
https://www.lifewire.com/entertainment-fandoms-on-tumblr-3486068
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/product-placement-examples
https://fortunelords.com/youtube-statistics/
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Brony
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronies:_The_Extremely_Unexpected_Adult_Fans_of_My_Little_Pony
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