effects theory

The ‘Effects Theory’ suggests that the audience are passive and therefore believe all the ideas and values they see in the media. A concept which is associated with the ‘Effects Theory’ is the ‘Hypodermic Needle Model’. It states that as the audience are passive, this concept injects ruling class ideologies and values into the audience, as a result creating a hegemonic society as the ruling class pass down their values and ideologies and as the audience as passive, they will believe these ideologies and will not oppose to them. This creates a false class consciousness, as the audience are unaware that they are being exploited. This idea derives from Karl Marx, as he stated that the Bourgeoisie, who are the ruling class, exploit the Proletariat who are the working class. They pay them low wages and as a result keep the profits high. Marx decided that they are unaware of this exploitation and therefore decided that there is false class consciousness. This leads onto the idea of Ideological State Apparatus, which is a concept by Althusser. He stated that these apparatuses, being institutions such as government, police and education pass down values to the audience, this is relevant to Marx as all these institutions are owned or run by ruling class people so therefore the ideas that they pass down are of the ruling class. However, there are criticisms to the ‘Effects Theory’. Firstly, this theory assumes that all consumers of texts are passive they fail to look at audiences who are active and therefore media literate. The ‘Two Step Flow’ concept looks at audiences who are more active and discuss what they consume with other members. From this they are gaining a different opinion and may believe this rather than the ones they get from their initial consumption of the text. Albert Cohen’s concept of the ‘moral panic’ is also significant with this theory. Society assumes that individual acts are lead by what they consume from the media. For example, young boys who play video games involving stealing cars are said that they will carry out these deviant acts in society. However this is a very basic assumption. This concept assumes that the audience are still passive which is not entirely true. Personally, I disagree with this theory to a certain extent as is largely based on the audience being a passive audience; this can be true in many cases as we believe what the government and police say to us. Similarly, I feel that there are many individuals, especially in contemporary society, as there are more people going onto further education, and therefore are media literate.