The Four Television Theories

In our lesson with Mrs Griffiths we learnt about the different television theories which were created before the television we have today. The four theories were as followed in chronological order: The Hyperdermic Needle, Two Step Flow, Uses and Gratification and The Reception Theory.

1. The Hyperdermic Needle theory was a theory created in the 1920's. The theory suggested that people were passively receiving information through a media text or propaganda without challenging it, it didn't take into account people's individual opinions but they assumed everyone liked the same information. 

2. The next theory we looked at was the Two Step Flow theory. This theory was created in the 1930's/1940's by Paul Lezerfeld, Bernard Berelsdam and Hazel Gaudet. They all realised after interviewing a number of people that different people process different information according to what they enjoy hearing about the most. For example some people would like to hear about the football or rugby so therefore they would only filter information on that other than something they wouldn't like to hear about. 

3. The third theory was produced in the 1970's by two people called Blulmer and Katz, this was the theory of Uses and Gratification. They came up with four reasons why people watch television these were:
Diversion: escaping everyday activities or routine
Personal Relationships: using the media for emotional support
Personal Identity: finding yourself in a particular show/series in order to connect to it  
Surveillance: to find out information 
They believed that if media expanded these reasons would expand too.

4. The final theory was created in the 1980's/1990's, it was devised by Stuart Hall. He thought that we could produce different media to suit different gender, age, class, ethnicity, this is known as preferred reading. He also thought that an audience received text by encoding and decoding.