PCC - Press Complaints Commission

- Press Complaints Commission
- Voluntary regulatory body (self-regulating) non Governmental and had no legal powers
- Closed on 8th September 2014
- Criticism due to lack of action during the News of the World phone hacking affair
- Started in 1953
- Replaced by IPSO

Question One B - Audience Summarised

Hypodermic Needle Theory - Frankfurt School - Germany between the wars 1920s and 1930s - the rise of Hitler and the influence of mass media on the public, Propaganda - released into film as well as newspapers. The Effects Tradition, the media has the power to influence an audience.

Cultivation Theory - George Gerbner - keep seeing representation on the media and it reinforces a stereotype - people who watch soaps think there is more divorces, murders, dramatic events etc... in society than there actually is. Passive audience.

Roland Barthes - myths are created in society

2 Step Flow - Paul Lazarsfeld - opinion leaders influence society more than the original text does - this relates to film critics influencing you to watch a movie

Uses and Gratifications - a text can inform , entertain, cause/identify with the characters in the text, social needs.

Stuart Hall - Reception Theory - Preferred or dominant reading, oppositional reading and negotiated reading

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs - media texts meet the needs of an audience

Tzvetan Todorov's Theory

Todorov argued that there were five steps to a narrative story which can be applied to most 'mainstream' film narratives.

1) Initial EQUILIBRIUM (status quo)
2) The equilibrium is disrupted by an event (DISRUPTION)
3) There is a RECOGNITION of the disruption
4) An attempt to REPAIR the disruption
5) A return or REINSERTION of the new equilibrium

Applying Todorov's theory to The Lion King:

Equilibrium: Mufasa is King of the pride and the other lions really look up to him.
Disruption: Scar kills his brother (Mufasa)

The BBFC

1) The BBFC was founded in 1912 by the film industry when the local authorities started to impose their own strategies of censorship. It was originally called the British Board of Film Censorship but was later changed to the British Board for Film Classification. It is independently owned and has non-governmental intervention, they were made to impose age certificates and analyse whether films were acceptable nationally.


2) Some of the case studies that the BBFC looked at was A Clockwork Orange, Juno and others like Little Miss Sunshine.
To start with, A Clockwork Orange caused a stir due to a very violent rape scene. The film was originally classes as an 'X' rated film, uncut, however was later passed to an 18, still without cuts. Some of the issues were that, even though Stephen Murphy approved the film although having said he was mildly "disturbed although satisfied" there was an uproar with the public opinion and press stating that the violent behaviour could have been imitable. The press released stories on the news stating that there had been recent violent crimes due to imitable behaviour under the influence of A Clockwork Orange.

3) The licensing legislation is what gives the BBFC the power to regulate films while the Video Recordings Act of 1984 determine whether the material is suitable for viewing in the home.

The Hypodermic Needle Theory

The Hypodermic Needle Theory implies that the media is powerful enough to inject highly influential information into the brains of the audience, whether the information be true or false its up to the audience to decide if they believe it or not as they have no other sources of media information to compare it to so they have no option but to act upon it. 

Hypodermic Needle Theory promotes a few basic assumptions:

1. Humans react uniformly to stimuli.

2. The media’s message is directly “injected” into the “bloodstream” of a population like fluid from a syringe.

3. Messages are strategically created to achieve desired responses.

4. The effects of the media’s messages are immediate and powerful, capable of causing significant behavioral change in humans.

5. The public is powerless to escape the media’s influence. 

One example is when Orson Well's audio book was first aired on the radio in the US he decided he wanted his to be more realistic so when the people of America tuned in on the radio, they thought that there was martians invading New Jersey. This caused an outcry and people began panicking and buying emergency supplies of food, the police, firefighters and ambulances were flooded with calls as the audience had no form of media to compare it to. This was around the time that Hitler had began taking over Germany and he took over the newspaper and censored it followed by introducing highly influential Propaganda.