Active audience approaches

• Active audience approaches


  • Media content doesn't lead to imitation or desensitisation
  • Assumption that audiences share similar characteristics is flawed
  • Audiences have very different social features that influence how they respond to and use the media
  • Audiences are not merely passive recipients of media content
• Two-step flow model - Katz and Lazarsfeld

  1. Opinion leader being exposed to media content

  2. Opinion leader spreads their interpretation of content to those who respect the opinion leader
• Opinion leader


  Those with influence, who have strong ideas or opinions about a range of matters
• Katz and Lazarsfeld suggest personal relationships and social networks are dominated by 'opinion leaders'
• Media audiences are not directly influenced by the media, they are influenced by their opinion leader
• Selective filter model - Klapper


  1. Selective exposure

  2. Selective perception

  3. Selective retention
• Selective exposure


  The audience must choose to view, read or listen to the content of specific media
• Selective perception


  The audience may view media content but decide to reject it because it doesn't fit their perception of the social world
• Selective retention


  Media content has to stick in the mind if it is to have an effect, but research indicates that most people have a tendency to remember only the things they broadly agree with
• Postman argues that we now live in a 'three-minute culture'. The attention span of the average member of society is 3 minutes or less
• Klapper suggests that these 3 filters involve a degree of active choice on the part of the audience
• Uses and gratification model - Blumler and McQuail


  • See media audiences as active users of media content
  • Suggests that people use the media in order to satisfy particular needs that they have
• Needs that people use TV to satisfy

  • Diversion
  • Personal relationships
  • Personal identity
  • Surveillance
• Diversion

  We may use the media to escape from routines. People immerse themselves in the media to make up for the lack of satisfaction at work or in their daily lives
• Personal relationships


  The media can compensate for the decline of community in our lives
• Personal identity


  People may use the media to modify their identity
• Surveillance


  People use the media to obtain information and news about the social world in order to help them back their minds up on particular issues
• Cultural effects model - Marxist


  • Focuses on how the media transmits messages to their audience to alter the way in which individuals think
  • As the ruling class control the media, they are able to transmit the dominant ideology of the ruling class through these media sources over time
  • Dominant ideology is transmitted to the masses without critical analysis
  • The individual interprets the message and has the potential to accept or reject the messages that are transmitted based upon their own experiences and world views
  • Media owners repeat their messages, this repetition causes individuals to question their own views
  • Overtime this repetition leads to the majority of the audience accepting the view as their interpretations are narrowed overtime
  • Recognises that audiences interpret media messages in different ways but with certain confined limits
• Postmodernist model


  • Focuses on how individual members of audiences create their own meanings from a media text
  • Sees media content as producing multiple definitions of reality, each of which has the same degree of importance as the others
  • These interpretations of media reality are constantly changing and being modified
  • There are no fixed reality or truth to distort
  • It is all relative to who is looking