The hypodermic needle theory states that the audience is a passive receptor of whatever the media wants to put into us, which could be translated simpler by saying we accept whatever the media says without going against it. Hypodermic needle theory could also be seen as giving us no free will since we are 'empty vessels' but the uses and gratification theory gives us our own determination of free will which could come from personal experience, religion, and culture.
the uses and gratification theory state that products are meant to give the audience either a sense of:
Identity
Information/surveillance
entertainment
to form friendships
A product example of the uses and gratification theory is Fifa 18 which is a video based on football.
Fifa 18 can give you a sense of identity since it would give you a hierarchy among friends since you would want to be better than all your friends, this also links to the 'form friendships' part of the theory since Fifa 18 is an online game where you can play against friends or random people who you can make friends with. Since Fifa 18 it is clearly a source of entertainment since most people play the game for fun or to be competitive. This could link to Mazlo's hierarchy of needs theory since Fifa may provide a better self esteem because when you win games it makes you feel better about yourself. Stuart Hall's reception theory says that there are three ways a product can be received by an audience, which are the preferred reading, the negotiated reading, and the oppositional reading. The preferred reading of Fifa 18 is that it's a fun game that we should buy and play for hours, the negotiated reading is that Fifa 18 is a good game and is fun but if you lose a game you will be angry with yourself and the game and the oppositional reading is that Fifa 18 is bad game and it will only lead to anger and frustration if you're bad at the game.
Dante youre getting there. You do not have to force all of the theories in here but this is a good attempt. I think that the oppositional reading for me is all games are created to distract people particularly young from concentrating on their studies, interacting in the real world and not engaging with politics or maybe thats just the opinion of a middle aged male non gamer. Have a look from different perspective Dante and that will improve your writing.
ReplyDeleteThis is a good piece of work including a lot of the theories and a lot of information for the reader. However to improve I think you could write about the pro's and con's about each of the theories.
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