Media studies theories - The hypodermic needle theory

The hypodermic needle theory was first introduced in the early 1900s; the theory was an attempt to explain how the general public would react to mass media. The theory suggests that audiences passively receive the information transmitted via the media without any attempt on their part to process or even challenge the data.

This theory was developed in a time when the mass media (newspapers and magazines) were still fairly new to the general public - radio and cinema were less than two decades old. The governments of the world were just beginning to realise the power that advertising could have in order to get across their message.

The Hypodermic Needle Model suggests that the information from a text passes into the mass awareness of the audience without the audience really having to think about what the message really is, the theory suggests that the audience are manipulated by the creator of the media product, the modern day issue raised by the hypodermic needle theory is that the amount of violence seen in video games, films (especially horror films and music videos for example will cause the viewer(usually a younger person) to be affected by the violence impassively or not. This could be part of the reason that horror films are typically rated as 15 or 18.