Audience Theory: The Effects Model

Today in lesson we are doing some exam work. We have been learning about the effects model and how it influences people. Here is what I have learnt.

• the consumption od media text has an effect or influence upon the audience
• it is normally considered that this effect is negative
• audiences are passive and powerless to prevent the influence
• the power lies within the message of the text
• it is a said the audience is "drugged, doped and addicted"

The key evidence for this is the so called "Bobo Doll Experiment". This was a controversial piece of research whjich apparently proved children copied violent behaviour. How it worked was the children were first shown a video of an adult attacking Bobo, then they were brought into a room with nice toys that they weren't alloowed to play with and after led into a room with Bobo, it showed that 88% of the children imitated the action. The conclusion to this was that children will imitate violence that they saw on TV.

However the flaws to this experiment was that firstly there was nothing else you could do with the doll, once you hit it Bobo immediately came back up, so the fun of the toy was that once you knocked it back it bounced back up for more.

On the whole the Effects Model is jsut a theory and it is not proved.