Audience Theory- Effects Model

 This theory suggests that the media inject ideas into a passive audience, like giving a patient a drug.

The media are often described as working like a drug with the audience being addicted, doped or duped.

The media will often be referred to as the mass media or mass communication in order to emphasize the size and scale of their activities

The effects model is the name given to approaches that emphasize what the media do to their audiences.

 "Power lies with the message"

Adorno and Horkheimer, who were members of the Frankfurt School suggested that culture industries such as commercial TV and popular cinema moulded people into a standardised, passive state of being that allowed them to be easily manipulated.

They argued that the mass media could manipulate people into accepting particular political ideas and that culture industries worked against democracy and restricted people’s choices and actions.



Problems with the theory


The mass audience is usually assumed to be the ‘weaker’ members of society such as women and children.


Critics who subscribe to the Effects Model and urge censorship often present contradictory arguments.

Firstly, they say the media produces inactivity and makes us into couch potatoes and passive receptors. Secondly they say the media produces activity, but of a negative kind such as violent copycat behavior, or mindless shopping in response to advertising.