Do Theories of Effects in media use affect people?

Hypothesis: All theories work in some situations but not in others.

Negative theories:
Hypodermic Theory - Injects an idea into the audience - if an audience watches a violent film, it predicts that the audience will react to the film in a certain way. if the film promotes violence, it may make the audience behave in a more violent way. Telling audience it is okay to behave in that way. May show drug use as positive, no negative effects, suggests drugs are okay.

Inoculation Theory - Gives a small bit of information to desensitise the audience and protect them from the big rush of information. Little bits of violence/antisocial behaviour shown every so often, which makes the audience immune to violence, don't see it as bad or unusual, more likely to behave violently themselves.

Moral Panics - When the media picks up on an event and hypes it up, builds mountains out of molehills. Examples: Batman shootings in America in the cinema , was the Batman film to blame? Long haul flights, rubber flight socks for sale, everyone panicking they would get  deep vein thrombosis if the didn't use them. 

Positive Theories:
Uses and Gratifications - The audience using the media to give them what they want. The audience chooses to watch/listen to/play things for certain reasons such as:

• Education - Documentaries, kids learning games
• Entertainment - films, music, video games
• Role models - may watch a film because you admire certain actors/genres
• Socialisation - to be able to interact with others, eg: talk about a film

Catharsis - Self healing, seeing violence in films makes the audience less violent, eg: playing a physical game on a console like Wii Boxing will make people less likely to be violent in real life.

Richard Dyer -  Theory of Entertainment and Utopia. Entertained in 5 different ways:

• Energy
• Abundance
• Intensity
• Transparency
• Community

These emotions are feelings you get from watching ideal films. Much of the media based on these theories makes the audience feel good. Therefor, the audience may use media to produce these feelings. For example, watching an uplifting film would increase the feeling of energy and abundance in the audience. Receiving 'likes' on a post on social media sites such as Facebook increases the feeling of transparency and community.