The Hyperdermic Syringe

This theory implies that the media has a direct impact on the audience:

- A child will play a arcade fighter video game, then attack his friend at school the next day.
- A man will see a woman washing up, and will assume that it is a woman's job to do the cleaning.

The Hyperdermic Syringe is thought of as quite a basic way to distinguish the distrubution of ideologies- but on a large scale, it seems to come together. For example; after the release of the uncut version of Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, in the years 1972-73 p,olice had linked several cases to the film that had been committed by teenagers after one of the ascused admitted to reading the book. As a result of this, Kubrick even attempted to get the film banned itself

However, the flaw in this theory is that people respond to the media in different ways. So Man A will believe that it is a woman's job to do the washing up after watching Bree Van de Kamp on an episode of Desperate Housewives- but Man B might think 'Hey, that's really awful that woman need to do all the housework- I'm going to do the ironing for my girlfriend when I get home'. The hyperdermic syringe theory sees all of the audience as a mass, and not as individuals.