Active and Passive Audiences: Audience Theory

Active Theories

An active audience is an audience that makes sense of an encoded message within their personal and social contexts.

Stuart Hall - Encoding and Decoding

Hall argued that, when made, media texts have messages encoded by the institution that favour the current social, economic, and political society (i.e. documentaries). He also claims that when an active audience receives a text it is decoded, allowing them to interpret the message in the following three different ways:

• Dominant reading - the intended interpretation that the institution had.
• Negotiated reading - the agreement and disagreement that the audience may have with different parts of the text.
• Oppositional reading - the disagreement with the text as an audience member is in conflict with the text themselves.

Blumler and Katz - Uses and Gratifications Theory

This theory suggests that audiences view films for seven reasons;

• Escapism - allowing them to seek distraction from their realities by engaging in fantasies.
• Diversion - as a means of forgetting their problems, relaxing, and filling time. It is also a form of emotional release.
• Information - letting them know about the world and affairs that are occurring through time.
• Counter-cultural experience - allowing them to observe cultural diversity that they may not be exposed to.
• Comparison - making them feel better about their current situation and realising that their life isn't as bad as it seems. Things could be worse.
• Sexual stimulation - giving them arousal that they do not experience outside of media.
• Social interaction - enabling them to socialise with others and share similar interests with them regarding the film that they go to view. This strengthens their happiness and self-esteem.

Passive Theories

A passive audience is an audience that follows popular beliefs embedded in a film and that is susceptible to indoctrination.

The Effects Theory

This theory focuses on the belief that the consumption of media texts has an effect or influence on the audience. This effect is considered as negative as the audience is passive and powerless, failing to obstruct the influence. The power is taken by the message in the text.

Lasswell - Hypodermic Needle

The hypodermic needle is a metaphor for the messages in a text being injected into the audience's mind. The message is like a drug; it will intoxicate you and influence/change your mindset. A medium that frequently uses this technique is the documentary.

The Bobo Doll experiment

In this experiment, a group of children were asked to watch a video where an adult very violently attacked a clown toy; the Bobo Doll. After this, the children were taken to a room with aesthetic toys - they were not permitted to have contact with these toys. The children were then led to another room of toys, only this room contained Bobo Dolls. It was then released that 88% of these children imitated and inflicted the same violent behaviour they had earlier been exposed to on the dolls. 8 months after this experiment, 40% of the test group reproduced his some behaviour.

This theory states that certain actions present through media texts can be interpreted and performed by the audience. They will then apply these actions throughout their lives as they are made to believe it is a normal thing to do.

Why is it important that I know this?

Producers need to be aware of these types of audiences in order to construct and promote their media product as some audiences are more mature than others, so they have to make sure their products comply with this level of maturity. I need to apply these theories to my target audience in order to satisfy their needs and expectations.