The effects model/ Hypodermic model

There are three theroies of audience that we cqan apply to help us come to a better understanding about the relationship between texts and audience.

The first one is the effects model or Hypodermic model.

The effects model

- consumption of media texts has an effect or uinfluence upon the audience
- it is normally considered that this effect is negative
-Adiences are passive and powerless to prevent the influence
- the power lies with the message of the text
- it is also called the Hypodermid model
-key evidence is
1)the Frankfurt school- in the 1920s and 1930s that the mass media acted to restrict and control audiences to the beneifit of corporate capitalism and government. (Big business).

2) The bobo doll experiment- is a very controvestial piece of research that apparently proved that children copy violent behaviour
conducted in 1961 by Albert Bandura

In this experiement:

- children watched a video where an adult violently attacked a clown toy called a bobo doll
- children were then taken to a room with attractive toys and told not to touch them
- they were lead to another room with bobo dolls
-88% of them imitaed the violent behaviour that they had earlier viewed. 8 months later 40% of the children produced that same violent behaviour.
- conclusion reached was that children will imitate violent media content
- there are many problems with the experiment. What do you think are the flaws with the methidology? Does it indeed prove that children imitate violent media content.



Hypodermid model
- the messages in media texts are injected into the audience by the powerful, syringe- like, media
-audience is powerless to resist
-therefore, the media works like a drug and the audience is drugged, addicted, doped, duped