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.