Audience Questionnaire on Film

Audience Theories:


Two-Step Flow Theory-

• First introduced by Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson and Hazel Gaudet in 1944.
• Is the passing of information from 'Opinion Leaders' to the media and individuals. Opinion Leaders pay attention to mass media and receive information and then they pass on their own interpretations in addition to the actual media content.

Uses and Gratifications-

• More focus on the audience instead of the actual message itself, what people do with media and not what it does to people; how people interpret media into their own lives, how people use the media to fill their needs and wants.
• Blulmer and Katz say media user seeks a source which meets both the wants and needs of the user: 4 needs: Diversion, Personal Relationships, Surveillance, and Personal Identity.

Reception Theory:

• The idea that when a producer constructs a text or narrative for example, they encode it with hidden messages that they wish to convey to the audience
• There are 3 types of ways in which the audience can then take the hidden message: Dominant (fully shares the text), Negotiated (partly shares the text) and Oppositional (rejects it).