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The Link Between Hypodermic Needle And Its Effect On The Audience Motivation

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The idea of an audience to be important when it comes to interacting with text has highlikely been around as long as human communication itself and was already picked up and written down by Greek philosopher Aristotle in 4th century BCE. Since the arrival of mass media, especially television and later the Internet its concept has changed drastically. Now, audiences are able to constantly access the extreme amount of information online whenever they please. This change leads to the questions whether audiences still exist at all nowadays.
An audience is understood to be an assembly of spectators or listeners at a public event, for example a play, film, concert, or meeting. There are four main theories on audiences. The 'Hypodermic Needle ' …show more content…

Especially television and now the Internet have "[...] been described as a 'cultural forum ' reflecting various themes in society which are subjected to selective readings or interpretations by viewers" (Drummond and Paterson, 1986: 125) which is why studies not only often focus on its distribution of analytic power and potential but also target the questions about analysing media texts, and the critical response and participation of its audience.
The concept of an audience used to be different from what it is now, varying between whether to stress the power of the text or message over its audience or not, and this influence on the engagement of using the media (Morley, 1999). With the rise of new technologies, especially after the early 1980s, the now offered new options and choices changed the way of watching television and its rating. Before, '[...] the practice of audience measurement for American television was a relatively stable and quite business ' (Ang, 1991: 68), later the '[...] viewers seem to have responded by eagerly altering their viewing habits, and multiplying the range of their viewing activities ' (Ang, 1991: 69). What Ang was already discussing twenty years ago, is still applicable today after the success of the Internet. Nearly everything on the World Wide Web, leading from youtube advertisement to dating profiles,

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