Audience Theories

Desensitisation:
This is the idea that the more violence we see, the less shocked we are by it in real life.
I have had to use this for the picture on the front cover of my newspaper for the story 'HIT BY TEENAGE DRIVER'. I used a picture of only the car that had been in the accident, from the picture you can see the damages that were created upon impact with the child that had been hit, because of desensitisation I would not have been able to publish a picture of the actual accident or of the injured child as it would be too shocking for the audience to see as it is something that they would not be used to seeing.

Cultivation Theories:
This theory tries to prove that we form views and opinions about people over time as a result of exposure to media, and thus people become stereotyped.
I can apply this theory to both main stories on the front cover of my newspaper, but in different ways for both. For the story 'HIT BY TEENAGE DRIVER' I used the common stereotype that teenagers are too young to be able to drive and are also bad drivers, the audience reading this would not be surprised that the driver was a teenager and had hit a child whilst driving