The Audience Aspect
There are many audience theories in the field of communications that attempt to demonstrate how an audience 
responds to the media. There are theories that claim the audience to be passive and others that claim the audience to be active. I personally would like to believe that the audience is active because if not then everything we see, hear and read would influence us in many ways. If in fact the audience is not active at all, then every time we see a commercial we would go out and purchase the product and this is not the case therefore I believe that we are an active audience.
The Hypodermic Needle Theory is an example of a theory where they assume that the audience is passive and therefore directly and powerfully influenced by the media. This means that the information passes to the audience unmediated and that the audience is easily manipulated. I do not believe this to be the case as now consumers do a lot of research before purchasing a product to make sure that they are getting the best quality for their money. It is true, however that advertisements place the idea that we need the product in our heads, but I don’t believe that they are the reason we buy the product in the end.
Paul Lazarsfeld and Herta Herzog performed research and experiments that disprove theories, such as the Hypodermic Needle Theory, where the audience is believed to be passive and susceptible to manipulation. Hadley Cantril used their research and demonstrated that every audience member’s reaction to media is different and it depends on the attitudes and situations of the person. The people who react to the media have a predisposition to or have had unique experiences in the past that would make them more susceptible to influence. This is the theory that makes the most sense to me and I feel that it is the most realistic view of the audience.
Audience behaviours are very difficult to predict, which is why many studies and such are performed before a product, ad, movie or television show is released. They bring in test audiences to get their reactions as well as monitor the sales of similar products in order to try and predict the success of their product. It is amazing the amount of effort that goes into the study of audiences in order to be able to manipulate them and encourage them to buy products all because capitalism requires it.
