What is the difference between passive and active audiences in terms of media?

[Spike]

it's for media studies

thanks!

[MAUREEN L]

The active audience

Instead of picturing the audience as a heterogeneous vulnerable, and easily influenced mass that is open to persuasion, the general notion nowadays pictures the audience as active and selective with special interests and interpretations of media polysemic texts, on the grounds that people have different social experiences and cultural backgrounds as well as different personal histories of learning and development. A general shift from perceiving the viewer as easy to manipulate towards an interpreting user can be noticed. Acknowledging the concept of an active and selective audience is a step towards believing in the intelligence and autonomy of people and furthermore grants people some power and agency in their use of media (Croteau & Hoynes, 2003:266-269). Croteau & Hoynes (2003:268) point out that audience activity not only resolves in actively interpreting media messages, but rather includes that audiences interpret media messages socially. Considering the media as part of our social lives, people sometimes partake of media in groups and other times media perception becomes part of broader social relationships. An interesting case in point is mentioned by Burkart (2002:382), who refers to so-called “Kitt-Themen” (“lute-topics”) provided by the media, meaning contents that people talk about and therefore interact and socialise actively – media messages that lute people together. However, in the case of television Morley (1986:158) argues that it is mostly women talking about what they viewed, as men are much more reluctant to talk about their viewing. From this, it follows that the general consumption of television material (in this case) between men and women is seemingly of a different natur

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... shift in the notion of audiences from a mass of passive spectators to active and ... media-industry point of view, audiences can be defined as segments, in ...academic.sun.ac.za/gmja/grad2.htm - Cached