Media Theories

After thinking about my magazine, I thought I should take some of the Media Theories into consideration, which could change my ideas on certain features of my magazine. The most commonly used and dominant theory is Uses&Grafitications Theory

• Personal Identify- Being able to recognise the product infront of you. This includes the feautres that influence you, such as role models on the front cover as they might have a mutual feeling as you. 
• Surveillance - to be able to give the audience information and knowledge and them take it in and understand it. In my magazine this could be considered new albums, concerts and interviews that give new information so that people can know what is going on.
• Diversion- you should be able to enjoy the product you are using and to divert yourself from your own life. To lose yourself within the magazine. I can make my magazine enjoyable for the targeted audience by including things that they want to read about and 'lose' themselves in.
• Personal Relationships- Using the product and the information it has to create social convention of small talk with someone which then can be created to a full conversation about the same topic. If my magazine is exciting enough, other people will be able to use this product within their conversations

The next common theory for magazines is the Hypodermic needle theory or the magic bullet theory which is known as when the institution shoot or 'inject' the audience with the desired information. However people may see this as people becoming biased and putting opinions into the audience's head. This can be well incorporated within my magazine as I can use information in which the audience would want to know and shoot it all at them, but the use of language can be so strong that they will assume it is correct.

A theory that links into this theory is the 'media dependency' theory where the audience and humans in general desire the use of the media to live. This shows that a lot of the public can be influenced of what certain writers may feel as they believe everything they say.

Other less common theories which can be incorporated within my magazine are:

• Two-step flow- when the media introduces the audience to certain ideas and then can use personal relationships to dicuss this idea and form an opinion of their own. This links into the work we did when analysing a magazine as there were two different issues you could buy depending on the opinion you had. This is a perfect example of how this theory would be used.
• Limited effect- the idea that nothing in the media affects us because we are used to information being thrown at us by previous events. This is less likely to be incorporated within my work but could argue that instead of it being for limited effect it can be used for diversion as it is not for an informative purpose but to entertain.
• Cultivation/ Drip Drip Drip Effect- this is when the audience are given a certain connotation within the text due to the repetition that they are affected and influenced by it. We can use this within the double page spread that we create as we may want the audience to create a certain opinion of this article and through language and the text we can influence them to feel a certain opinion through repetition.