Audience Theory

"We must get away from the habit of thinking in terms of what the media do to people & substitute for it the idea of what people do with the media" 

-Halloran 1970

Within the last forty years there's been a shift from a hypodermic needle theory of how mass audiences passively accept media texts with little or no input to the product itself to a reception theory where the emphasis is placed on the reader and the codes they decode from the text. The main shift from the 1930's to now is the way in which texts are understood with reader's passively being fed codes to readers now playing an active part in the meaning found within the text as everyone will read a text differently. Therefore producers encode texts and will try and encourage their readers to decode a preferred meaning which I need to replicate within my magazine as there will be preferred meanings that I want my reader's to get from my magazine. 

C. Wright Mills also writes about the four functions of media which are to give people and identity, provide aspirations, give instructions as to how to reach these goals and aspirations and provide a form of escapism. In order to provide what my audience want I need to use some of these functions within my magazine especially the concepts of aspiration, identity and escapism. People who like Indie music tend to feel isolated and different and by providing them with a sense of identity they feel part of something and can escape into a world and community that they fit into. They also escape into a glossy world full of passion for music and normally attractive people who appear immortal through the use of static images and helps readers escape their own morality and drudgery of day to day life allowing them to focus completely on the music and the arts.  Also by providing them with images of strong confident people who are content with themselves within the magazine it gives them an ideal of confidence to aspire to.