audience theory

Audience Theory

Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer - 1940s

similarities between the 'propaganda industry' in Nazi Germany and the 'culture industry' in the United States.

popular culture in the USA was like a factory producing standardised content used to manipulate a passive mass audience. like a 'hypodermic syringe'.

consumption of 'dumbed down' content of popular culture made people passive and false psychological needs that could only be met and satisfied by the product of capitalism.

Vance Packard - 1957

he wrote a book called 'The Hidden Persuaders' which suggested that advertisers were able to manipulate audiences and persuade them to buy things they may not want to buy. Suggested advertisers have power their audiences. (Proved unreliable as modern audiences are too sophisticated).

stems a fear of the mass media and gives the media much more power than it can ever. it ignores that not everyone in an audience behaves the same way.