Audience Theory

PASSIVE AUDIENCES:

• They are seen as couch potatoes just consuming media texts, particularly commercial television programmes.
• The audience believe and accept all all the media text that they receive.
• This is known for not requiring the active use of the brain.

ACTIVE AUDIENCES:

• They are seen as individuals who are active and interact with the communication process and use media text for their own purpose.
• The are different people from different backgrounds with many different attitudes, values, experiences and idea.

www.kecasmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/making-sense-of-audience-theories.html

EXPERIMENTS:

PASSIVE AUDIENCES:

The hypodermic syringe model:

The idea is that the media injects messages into the audience, who 'receives' them like a drug. 

The Bobo doll experiment:

This experiment was performed in 1961. The children were put in a room with a life size doll and were made to watch a video of someone being violent towards the doll; kicking and punching it. In the experiment, the children then imitated the video and began to be violent towards the doll in the room.

ACTIVE AUDIENCES:

Uses and gratifications:

This type of audience behavior was first discovered in the 1950's. It sees the audience actively seeking media texts which fulfill a particular need or function for them.

The uses and gratification theory states that audiences use media texts to fulfill the needs they have or provide them with a sense of pleasure. Blumer and Katz (1979) theorised that these uses and gratifications feel into four broad categories; Diversion, Personal Relationships, Personal Identity, and Surveillance.

-chrisupsona2.wordpress.com/2012/11/OG/passive-audience-theory/

-mediaknowall.com/as_alevel/alevkeyconcepts/alevelkeycon.php?page10=audience

SUMMARY:

The PASSIVE audience is a negative view for the media, demonstrating frightening or damaging effects.

The ACTIVE audience is a positive view for the media, where they feel the need to study into media texts for pleasure.