Critical Approaches 3

Audience Responses to Media Products
First and Third Person Shooters
All games have a very specific standing point of view where they are cast from, a first person shooter is a type of action video game that is played from the first person perspective. First person is a direct view from the subjects eyes, for example all humans are first perspective in their own way because it is how we operate, having this in a video game gives the effect that you are actually present inside the game and playing as yourself. You may not see your body when you look down on most games unless its Halo or Battlefield but you will get a real feel for it through the arms that will appear on your screen.

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If you use Battlefield as an example it has different modes, it has Multiplayer, Singleplayer, and integrated into the multiplayer is a type of commanders operation. Single players acts as giving a story where you play through as a specific character and experiencing everything that war has to give, losing friends, gaining enemies, etc. In Singleplayer you simply take on AI so you will be matched against a computer that is skilled on various levels. However Multiplayer acts as a more objective game where your matched with people from all over the world, so it can be extremely bias sometimes. Taking into consideratio audience theories will be acted out more through the combat aspect to a first person shooter, e.g aiming down scopes or through tank barrels.

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Third person does have the same intentions as first person but they focus more on what is around you, see your surroundings, see whats on you, whats on your back and all the way around you. Initally so you can see everything that the character has and doesnt have, whereas first person can be seen as being pretty limited to what they can see.

Passive and Active Audiences
Passive and active audiences theory is self explanitory it the theory behind a passive and an active audience, a passive audience is where they do not engage in the media, they just accept what happens in it or goes on with it. You will find that a passive audience is easier to manipulate they act as a type of sheep to the media industry, for example the Sun is a great lead to people, they provide content which is sometimes or mostly always false depending how bias you are on them and people just follow it and believe it. 

Active audiences on the other hand are very different, they like to take action, react to it, respond, give feedback, give complaints etc. they engage in the product or subject and make them "active" to it. They may make choices based upon new information and form their own opinions with their own knowledge of the subject, for example the game Grand Theft Auto comes to mind when we look at both audiences. Youtubers are a great example for an active audience because they create content around this game, whether its just funny moments or if its updates or opinions on what they want to see on the game.

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In the video above is an average GTA YouTuber who brings out content based around this game, it can vary from facts, hidden features, news, etc. in this video he interprets his side of what the game has gave for information and spreads it to YouTube as a whole whether he is wrong or not he is an active audience making responses to it. However the viewers of this video and the majority of the gaming community in GTA will be seen as a passive audience because they do not take action they just go off of what is given to them, this is where you could compare most people to parents who disapprove of this game and take action against it.

Hypodermic Needle Theory
The hypodermic needle theory has been tossed around from time to time but it is mostly known as the theory behind mass media messages getting injected directly into passive audience brains. This has been known to affect the audience directly triggering them to copy a violent act, this theory has had many questions to whether it actually had intentions that were serious enough to harm but it has had a series of limitations. This is also why parents believe that media influences their children, for example a game like Grand Theft Auto to affect their children even though it would be the parents fault for going against the age certificate.

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The video that affected the world leaving a huge panic because the audience believe the world had been invaded by aliens. At the time due to it being in 1938 they would of thought this was entirely possible and would take action against it or to not be near it. However in this day and age it would be a more doubted subject leaving less confusion and frustration to the world, this is a great example for hypodermic needle theory because the people who tuned into the broadcast halfway would of been injected directly with the message that martians were invading.

Gratifications Theory
The gratifications theory is an active audience that looks into how and something is done for that specific reason, in media it would be why and how we play the way that we do at video games. This theory doesnt actualy focus on how we are impacted it looks more to how we take this impact and what we do with it, for example how we react to it. For example how people would react to South Park, what would they disagree with? what is so innappropriate? where is the limit to it?

The chart above determines how the gratifications theory works, where the categories are for it. What would self-esteem come under? confidence, achievement etc. In gaming this would look into how this game may help a persons confidence, how they benefit and achieve from it. There are of course other categories such as love and safety, safety is more for privacy and social status whereas love is more friendship and sense of connection to others.


Audience Responses
Since all the theories have been looked at in full detail it is best to move onto the responses, all audiences can respond in different ways whether they are passive or active, in the gaming industry audience responses can be very important and based on many factors, a main factor would be that games are there for leisure and pleasure, to be there after a long day, or just their on the side when you are bored. You can do a variety of things whether its using it to be sociable or just achieve something on your own. Sometimes we use video games to take away from reality, to escape in a way and have our own world of freedom.

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Another way we can look at audience responses is through reaction videos, because this is taking a distinctive audience response to a video or subject and making another type of video displaying it to a variety of audiences globally through YouTube, this can show different emotions from the audience it could show rage, anger, sadness, happiness, laughter and much more, just by looking at the thumbnail you can already see the person is showing confusion and maybe disgust.


Audience Interpretation
Focusing more on gender and age in this specific category interpretation can be taken on so many different levels, if we take one of the biggest examples possible, youth and video game violence, it can be interpreted differently because however games may have an age rating an parents to not care for them younger people can interpret in a different way because they do not fuly know right from wrong, for example there has been multiple murders just by children who have apparently been afflicted with video game violence such as Grand Theft Auto.

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However if we look at adults at this day and age you rarely see them committing murders due to their activity around video games, this has always been a spike of concern in parents because they can be more easily manipulated within gaming and all different types of media because they will believe a lot more than we do. Moving back to interpretation, religions all interpret differently because some have laws against certain things so when someone from a different religion takes a video game and plays it say killer nuns or something, this will cause quite an impact to the religion and they could interpret it the wrong way. It all depends on how the media or product could impact the person.

End of Unit