Wednesday, 11 September 2013

The Hypodermic Syringe Theory



  • 1920's
  • Explains how mass media influences audiences
  • Idea that information is 'injected' into the brains of passive audiences
  • Assumes that everyone is the same - no individual differences
  • Media content forced on mass audience who are believed to decode messages uniformally
Criticisms
  • Theory is outdated
  • Theory does not consider the fact that the mass audience is made up of individuals from different cultural backgrounds, social statuses, occupations, etc.
    • Therefore not all audiences can be engaged or appealed to
  • Modern advances in technology mean that audiences can clarify pieces of information through a number of resources
    • This means that the mass audience is now almost independent of the mass media

1 comment:

  1. 6/10. You have briefly described each of the theories, but you need to add more detail. You also need to show how they each relate to your own work.

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