Theories and Audiences Knowledge

All across media, theories are used to explain and describe the effect of media texts on audiences and why specific devices have been used in order to convey certain messages to the audience. By looking at these theories, it should enable me to create a trailer with a clear narrative, and, therefore, a clear meaning, as well as an effective and informative piece.

The Hypodermic Needle Theory describes how an audience can be manipulated throughout a media text as audience receives the film as it's presented. Media texts of this theory are just for entertainment purposes as the audience does not need to do decipher deeper meanings as the plots and narratives tend to be basic and linear. However, the theory also demonstrates the negative implications, injecting beliefs and attitudes into the audience which can influence them. This can be damaging for younger audiences especially and there have been several cases with young children watching violent films and then imitating the acts.


The Uses and Gratifications Theory (McQuail), however, explains the audience's participation in a media text to be more active and engaging to gratify individual needs. The basic need is entertainment; the audience watches the text to relax and to be entertained. The audience can also engage through personal relationships or social integration of the characters of the text, in which the audience can identify and compare their life to the character's in the text. An audience may also watch a media text to gain information and be educated about the world or others in it. 

The Reception Theory, like the Uses and Gratifications Theory, explains the audience's participation further specifically when the enigma code has been used in a narrative. The text is encoded by the producer and it is up to the audience to decode and understand it. This creates questionning as to whether each audience member receives the same experience and watches the same media text. An audience member can decipher texts through a dominant (producer's intentions), negotiated (when the audience compromises a little to make sense of the text) or oppositional (the audience does not agree but accepts the message) way. When creating a text when a specific message is to be received, it is important that the narrative and, therefore, the plot is clear. This also coincides with the enigma code; a method used to feed subtle hints and information during a text to an audience so that they can decipher the producer's meaning.

Propp's Theory of Characters describes the 7 different characters generally involved in every narrative to keep the plot moving, including the hero, princess, villain, false hero, donor, helper and the dispatcher. Some characters can play more than one of these characters in the theory, such as a hero and a false hero. An example of this is the character of Lord Farquaad in Shrek. He appears to be a hero by rescuing the princess but is in fact a villain, and therefore a false hero. In particular, trailers tend to show the hero, princess and villain as these characters are the most common and central to narratives across all media texts.

Todorov's Theory of Narrative can also be used to describe how the narrative is helped to progress through five stages. Stage one is the initial equilibrium, stage two is the disturbance, stage three is the recognition of the disturbance, stage four is resolution before returning to equilibrium once again for stage five. However, in trailers only the first 2 stages, sometimes 3, are used in order to keep the narrative open and intrigue the audience to watch the full episode and resolution of the disturbance.


With an understanding of these audience theories, it will be able to help us to decide on a narrative for our trailer and to be aware of what information we will include for our audience to decipher. It has also let me think about other mainstream soap opera television and what their target audiences are and why they have been chosen.

To gain a better understanding of the target audience for our soap opera trailer, I have noted my previous media knowledge and have defined the demographic groupings:

Group A: top management, bankers, lawyers, doctors, etc.

Group B: teachers, graphic designers, etc.

Group C1: supervisors, junior management, nurses, clerical staff, etc.

Group C2: skilled workers, etc.

Group D: semi-skilled, manual labourers, etc.

Group E: unemployed, students, pensioners, etc.

These groups should enable me to recognise the target audiences of soap operas and decide on our own target audience for our soap by looking at similar media texts and through the themes, characters and storyline of our trailer.