The Hyperdermic Needle Model

Hello everyone!
Recently in class we learnt more about the theory of 'The Hypodermic Needle Model'. This theory explores how audiences can be manipulated into believing certain themes and concepts from the Media. The theory was not made by anyone specifically but it was first created within the 1920s. Here are some brief notes that I made about this theory:

•   A model of communications suggesting that the message intended is successfully portrayed to the audience
•   Dating from the 1920s, this theory was the first attempt to explain how mass audiences might react to mass media.
•  It suggests that audiences passively receive the information transmitted via a media text, without any attempt on their part to process or challenge the data.
•   This theory was developed in an age when the mass media were still fairly new - radio and cinema were less than two decades old.
•  Governments had just discovered the power of advertising to communicate a message, and produced propaganda to try and sway populaces to their way of thinking.
•  Basically, the Hypodermic Needle Model suggests that the information from a text passes into the audience sub-conscientiously
•   For example the experience, intelligence and opinion of an individual are not relevant to the reception of the text.
•   This theory suggests that, as an audience, we are manipulated by the creators of media texts, and that our behaviour and thinking might be easily changed by media-makers.
•   It assumes that the audience are passive.
•   This theory is still quoted used by parents, politicians and pressure groups, and is used to explain why certain groups in society should not be exposed to certain media texts for fear that they will watch or read sexual or violent behaviour and will then act them out themselves.

Main Notes

•   The hypodermic syringe model is a theory of media effect on audience.
•  The term is used to describe interaction between the media and public belief, offering the idea of people becoming affected by the information 'injected' into them through their information medium (brain).

Negative point

This can be seen as negative as it can make people do terrible things just because of what they saw in a film or another media text. A prime example of this is the murder of Jamie Bulger and how his murderers (being children) had access to seeing an 18 rated film and was influenced by the film they watched which was Child’s Play. This portrayed a negative image into their heads that killing was not a bad thing to do.