A theory of communication which suggests that the audience is

helpless to the effects and messages of a media text.

Lazarsfeld disproved the "Magic Bullet" theory and "Hypodermic

Needle Model Theory" through elections studies in "The People's

Choice“. Lazarsfeld and colleagues executed the study by gathering

research during the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940. The

study was conducted to determine voting patterns and the relationship

between the media and political power. Lazarsfeld discovered that the

majority of the public remained unfazed by propaganda surrounding

Roosevelt's campaign.

The Magic Bullet is not based on empirical findings from

research but rather on assumptions of the time about human

nature.

It was the first major theory concerning the effect of the mass

media on society.

The term hypodermic suggests that the information being

presented to an audience is done in a direct and very strategic

way

The Hypodermic Needle Theory is therefore an effects theory

that contends viewers are passive, and directly affected by what

they view

In February 1993, two young boys abducted Jamie Bulger who was two

years old at the time. He was taken from a shopping centre in Liverpool, after

his mother left his side for a second to get an item off the shelf. The two

boys, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, took little Jamie to the nearest train

lines before committing torture.

The little boy‟s behaviour was blamed on the fact they had watched „Child‟s

Play‟, the latest horror film, the night before they committed the murder on

Jamie Bulger. This was the evidence they had in court, this meaning it wasn‟t

actually their fault, it was all the films fault for encouraging the children to

commit the dreaded attack.

Hitler used propaganda as a way of controlling the people of

Germany at the time.

In many ways he used the needle theory by censoring certain

pieces of news in the press, allowing the public to only know what

he wants them to know.

He also used youth camps which collected young

children, warping their minds to believe in the Nazi ways, causing

them to even turn upon their own families by calling the gestapo to

take their parents away, if they suspected their parents weren‟t

following the “true” way.