Audience

When identifying the audience it is important to use the uses and gratification theory, this is when people use media texts to gratify certain needs. For example in a horror movie there are many reasons to why people watch it, horror's create fear, thrill so when watching the person is trying to gratify those feelings to challenge how scary it is building adrenaline for themselves. Due to these reasons this is why horror films are aimed at teenagers, teens are at the point where they want to explore boundaries and within these boundaries is the concept of fear. Horror films become an event for people to find out their different reactions compared to there own. The term 'Fear of the other' could be used to describe this because people fear what they don't know and things that aren't like themselves. This could range from ethnicity, age, gender, disability to aliens or different supernatural creatures.

Audience Reception:
When people view something everyone interprets it differently. Stuart Hall produced an encoding theory where he identified 4 different types of readings, these include:
The preferred reading - reading a piece of footage the way the director wanted you to
The opposite reading - reading the footage in a different way to what the director wanted you to
The negotiated reading - understanding what the director wanted you to read the footage but not viewing it that way
The aberrant reading - Not understand it and creating a completely off topic explanation

In War of the Worlds an audio file from the radio is played. It told viewers how aliens were attacking the country this created panic across nations and people became worried. The media construct something to fool an audience. Another video that was broadcast by Panorama BBC where spaghetti grew on trees. The video would of been more effective in 1957 because at that point there were two channels, as the information they get is limited from these two channels they are most likely to believe what they saw in the media. Meanwhile nowadays due to the internet and a wider range of channels it would be more difficult to fool the audience.

Hypodermic needle theory:
This theory is based on the media placing stories that the audience will believe. A passive audience is on which they do believe the stories that the media publish without research further etc. However an active audience interact with the media text and look further into the content. Another type of audience is sophisticated because they have different viral advertisement meaning they're more likely to look deeper into the story.

T-Mobile Advertisement:

- A preferred reader who see that the advert is aimed at all ages
- A opposite reader would think it's the royal family instead of people acting their part
- A negotiated reader would understand the aim of the advert is to suit all ages and to be funny however. they didn't find it funny
- A aberrant reader wouldn't have the cultural knowledge to understand it