Mark Dixon Summary

 Albert Bandura

• In the book, the Bandura chapter appears under “Media modelling effects / Audience” — as one of the core audience theories.  
• The chapter emphasises that Bandura’s work challenged older ideas that human behaviour was fixed by innate traits or purely biological impulses. Instead, behaviour is shaped significantly by our environment — especially the human/social environment.  
• The principle drawn from Bandura is: people (especially children) learn not only through direct reinforcement but by observing others — watching models, imitating their behaviour, and internalising actions.  
• A key example: the Bobo doll experiment, which demonstrated that children exposed to an adult model behaving aggressively were later more likely to imitate that aggression — even without direct reward or punishment.  
•  In media context: this theory supports the idea that media — films, TV, online content — can influence audience behaviour: repeated exposure to certain behaviours or roles may lead people (especially youth) to model what they observe. Dixon uses Bandura’s theory to explain “media modelling effects

The drive- Shelter Advert

 

I chose to watch Shelter’s “The Drive” video which follows a simgle mother and her daughter as they are forced to sleep in their car after losimg their home. The narrartive is very intimate and shows the physical and emotional strain of homelessness. Rather than using statistics to deliver the messsage of what homelessness looks like, the video focuses om every day moments- school drop offs/pick ups and estimg in the car- to create empathy and for the audience to understand the seriousness of the situation better by feeling like they are actually living it aswell. 

This video aims to show how homelessness is not a distant problem, but a terrible thing that can happen to amy ordinary family. In terms of altruism, the video/film works by truggering empathatic concern. Watching a mother struggle, amd the daughter being cinfused and upset, initiates a reaction for those viewing it to become sypathetic towards this struggling family and creates a desire to help those in these situations.