Chapter one
Changing paradigms in audience studies
Effects, uses, and decodings
The history of audience studies during the post-war period can be seen as a series of oscillations between perspectives which have stressed the power of the text (or message) over its audiences and perspectives which have stressed the barriers “protecting” the audience from the potential effects of the message. The first position is most obviously represented by the whole tradition of effects studies, mobilizing a hypodermic model of media influence, in which the media are seen as having the power to “inject” their audiences with particular messages which will cause them to behave in a particular way. This has involved, from the right, perspectives ...
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