This theory was the first attempt at an explanation for how an audience will react to the media. It suggests that the audience will passively receive the information present in a media text, without challenging the data. This theory was developed whilst media was still quite new - radio and cinema had only been introduced less than 2 decades prior to the development of this theory. Governments were beginning to use advertising to communicate a message, and produced propaganda used in forms of media such as newspapers, cinema, radio and posters.
The theory suggests that the experience, intelligence and opinion of an individual are not relevant to the reception of the information within the media text. It suggests that, as an audience, we are manipulated by the creators of media texts, and that our behaviour and thinking might be easily changed by media-makers. It assumes that the audience are passive. This theory is still made relevent during moral panics, and is used to explain why certain groups in society should not be exposed to certain media texts, for fear that they will watch or read sexual or violent behaviour and will then act them out themselves.
