Active Audience Theory

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Active Audience Theory

• The Communication Transaction

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Active Audience Theory

• Sara Henneberger
• Shifen Xu
• Curtis Franklin

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Decoding Meaning
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What Youll Hear in this Presentation

• An introduction to the Active Audience theory
• Background information on Active Audience
• The philosophical foundation of Active Audience
• Topics for further research
• Criticism of Active Audience
• Applications of Active Audience theory
• Questions and answers

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Active Audience

• Different audiences can understand a media
  message but can have different responses to it.
  Some people believe and accept the message,
  others reject it using knowledge from their own
  experience or can use processes of logic or other
  rationales to criticize what is being said.

Miller and Philo, 2001
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Early Development in Audience Theory

• Effects AnalysisHypodermic Needle Model
• Developed in the 1920s
• The first theory to explain how mass audiences
  might react to mass media
• Information passes from media to audience
  unmediated
• The audience is passive

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Early Development in Audience Theory

• Limited Effects Paradigm
• --Two-step Flow Theory
• Bring out by Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson,
  and Hazel Gaudet during a 1940 presidential
  election campaign in The People's Choice
• Opinion leaders Social factors

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Early Development in Audience Theory

• Function Analysis
• --Uses Gratifications Theory
• 1948, Lasswell suggests media texts have the
  functions of surveillance, correlation,
  entertainment and cultural transmission
• 1974, Blulmer and Katz expand the theory, state
  individuals choose and use a text for the purpose
  of diversion, personal relationships, personal
  identity and surveillance.

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Foundations of Active Audience

• Deconstructionism
• Jacques Derrida
• Michel Foucault
• Birmingham Center for Contemporary Cultural
  Studies
• Stuart Hall
• The Obstinate Audience
• Raymond A. Bauer

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Obstinate Audience Theory

• Obstinate Audience Theory
• --Raymond A. Bauer
• one-way influence? transactional model
• Bauer-Eberhart Study
• --Audience can filter out, distort or fail to
  recognize perceptual events which do not fit
  their points of view
• Zimmerman-Bauer Study
• --Audience plays a large part in influencing
  the message
• Advertising Study
• --People who like advertising found ads
  enjoyable while people who dont like advertising
  found ads annoying and offensive

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Audience Theory

• Interpretative Analysis
• --Reception Theory (Active Audience Theory)
• 1980s 1990s
• Stuart Halls encoding/decoding model of the
  relationship between text and audience
• Preferred reading

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Development of the theory

• 1970s-1980s
• Stuart Hall encoding/decoding model
• 1980s-1990s
• David Morley Nationwide Audience
• Dorothy Hobson women viewers of soap opera
  Crossroads
• Tania Modleski Janice Radway women
  consumers of soap opera and romance
• Ien Ang, Tamar Liebes Elihu Katz
• Kim Schroder Jostein Gripsrud
  international cross cultural consumption of
  American drama series, such as Dallas and
  Dynasty.

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Encoding and Decoding

• British sociologist Stuart Hall proposed a model
  of mass communication which highlighted the
  importance of active interpretation within
  relevant codes.
• Stuart Hall stressed the role of social
  positioning in the interpretation of mass media
  texts by different social groups.

Corner, 1983 Hall, 1980
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Encoding and Decoding

• Stuart Hall suggests three hypothetical
  interpretative codes or positions for the reader
  of a text
• --dominant (or 'hegemonic') reading
• --negotiated reading
• --oppositional ('counter
• -hegemonic')
• reading

Chandler, 2001
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Encoding and Decoding

• John Corners definition
• --the moment of encoding 'the institutional
  practices and organizational conditions and
  practices of production'
• --the moment of the text 'the... symbolic
  construction, arrangement and perhaps
  performance... The form and content of what is
  published or broadcast'
• --the moment of decoding 'the moment of
  reception or consumption... by... the
  reader/hearer/viewer' which is regarded by most
  theorists as 'closer to a form of "construction"'
  than to 'the passivity... suggested by the term
  "reception"'.

Chandler, 2001
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David Morley

• Professor, Dept of Media and Communications,
• Goldsmiths, University of London
• Field Audiences, User research, Technical
  rationality
• Selected publications

(2006) The Geography of the New Media, Modernity
and Technology (2005) Media and Cultural
Theory (2000) Home Territories media, mobility
and identity (2001) British Cultural (1996)
Stuart Hall Critical Dialogues in Cultural
Studies (1996) Spaces of Identity global media,
electronic landscapes and cultural boundaries
(1996) Cultural Studies and Communication
(1992) Television Audiences and Cultural Studies
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David Morley Nationwide Audience

• David Morleys study of the former television
  program Nationwide which was conducted at the
  Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS)
  at the University of Birmingham between 1975 and
  1979.
• In this study, Morleys major concern was 'with
  the extent to which individual interpretation of
  programs could be shown to vary systematically in
  relation to... socio-cultural background' (1981b,
  p 56).
• He was investigating 'the degree of
  complementarity between the codes of the program
  and the interpretive codes of various
  sociocultural groups... and the extent to which
  decodings take place within the limits of the
  preferred (or dominant) manner in which the
  message has been initially encoded' (1983, p.
  106).
• Although it has many limitations, Morley's study
  of The 'Nationwide' Audience (published in 1980)
  has become one of the most-widely cited studies
  of the television audience.

Morley, 1981 Morley, 1983
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Unanswered Question in Audience Research

• Models of the active audience
• Questions of cultural power
• Global media and transnational audiences
• Methodologies in audience research
• Problems of essentialism in the conceptualization
  of categories of audience members
• The strengths and limitations of the
  encoding/decoding model
• Models of intellectual progress in the field
• The new media and technologies of newness

Morley, 2006
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Concept of Resistance

• Audiences offer resistance against existing
  meanings by creating their own meanings
• Media is a cultural battlefield of resistance,
  incorporation, hegemony, and oppression
• Van Bauwel, 2006

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Van Bauwels Model of Resistance in the Media
structure
passive
resistance
practices of power
incorporation
active
agency
Van Bauwel, 2006
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Marxist Roots of Active Audience Theory

• Concept of resistance influenced by Marxism
• Media producers and consumers should have
  co-equal role in interpreting texts
• Active audience theory has received harsh
  criticism, in part because it seems to suggest
  moral relativism
• If every meaning is up for negotiation, there are
  no absolute meanings and no universal truths
• Can truth be constructed?

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Politics and Active Audience

• What determines audience members political
  opinions?
• According to John Zaller
• Political sophistication including political
  knowledge, interest, and intellectual engagement
  in politics
• Ideological or partisan leanings
• The greater ones political sophistication, the
  more likely she/he is to comprehend and retain
  political news provided by the media, and to
  filter the news through predispositional
  attitudes, leading to specific opinions
• Zaller, 1992

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Politics and Active Audience

• Lodge et al. found that political sophisticates
  who were asked to evaluate complex political
  issues drew upon information stored in their
  memory not just the information they were
  presented with.
• Political sophisticates are those who scored
  highest on a test of factual political knowledge
• Lodge et al., 1989

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Politics and Active Audience

• According to Zaller, political sophisticates are
  also the most susceptible to biases
• Although people filter political news through
  their own belief filter, the media still helped
  shape those foundational orientations in the
  first place
• Zaller, 1992

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Politics and Active Audience

• The way the media frames stories can determine
  which opinion are expressed
• Non-verbal cues and genre are more effective in
  shaping attitudes and eliciting specific opinions
  than reason
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vXsP-YdOLAu4
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vtMLoElp_s5cfeature
  related
• Zaller, 1992

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Does the audience actively choose how to engage a
web page?
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How do audiences actively choose from among
similar options?
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Case StudyChinas reality Show

• Super girl phenomenon
• 400 million viewers for the final episode
• 8 million votes in the final episode
• Active audience in shaping
• Chinas democracy?

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Question

• Media plays a crucial role in creating our belief
  foundations do our opinions reflect the biases
  of the media? Even when we play the role of
  active audience, are we just reflecting
  something we picked up on in the media?

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Criticisms

• Some audiences are inactive they attribute no
  meaning to what they see, resulting in
  meaningless media use
• May be difficult for audiences to fairly evaluate
  media messages when many of their core beliefs
  are already rooted in them

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Criticisms

• Some media texts very transparent how many
  meanings can they really have?
• Concept of active audience may be very
  different or nonexistent in other cultures
• If every media text is open to reinterpretation,
  slippery slope to moral relativism

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Question

• Has the active audience approach overestimated
  the capacity of audiences to construct their own
  meanings?
• Can we equate an active audience with a resisting
  public?

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Question

• Media plays a crucial role in creating our belief
  foundations do our opinions reflect the biases
  of the media? Even when we play the role of
  active audience, are we just reflecting
  something we picked up on in the media?

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Question

• Is active audience theory Anglo-centric? How do
  you think it might work (or not work) in
  different cultures?

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Question

• If every media text is open to interpretation,
  what happens to the idea of absolute truth? Can
  truth be constructed by the audience?

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References

• Chandler, D. (2001). Semiotics for Beginners.
  Retrieved Nov. 25, 2007 from http//www.aber.ac.u
  k/media/Documents/S4B/sem08c.html
• Connor, G. (2001). Audience. Retrieved Nov. 25,
  2001 from http//www.mediaed.org.uk/posted_documen
  ts/Audience.htmlThe20active20audience
• Delli Carpini, M. (2004). Mediating democratic
  engagement the impact of communications on
  citizens involvement in political civic life. In
  L. Kaid (Ed.), Handbook of Political
  Communication Research. Mahwah, New Jersey
  Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.
• Lodge, M., McGraw, K.M. Stroh, P. (1989). An
  impression-driven model of candidate evaluation.
  American Political Science Review, 83, 399-419.
• Morley, D. (1993). Active audience theory
  pendulums and pitfalls. Journal of Communication,
  43(4), Autumn.
• Morley, D . (1980). The nationwide audience.
  London BFI.
• Morley, D. (1981b). Interpreting television In
  popular culture and everyday life. Milton Keynes
  Open University Press.

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References

• Selmer, D. (2000). The obstinate audience theory.
  Retrieved Nov. 25, 2007 from http//www.colostate.
  edu/Depts/Speech/rccs/theory18.htm
• Van Bauwel, S. (2006). Rearticulating resistance
  as concept in the field of media studies a case
  study on the resistance against hegemonic gender
  identities in popular visual culture. Conference
  Papers International Communication Association.
• Zaller, J. (1992). The nature and origins of mass
  opinion. New York Cambridge University Press.
• Morley, D. (Eds). (1983). Culture
  transformations The politics of Resistance. In
  David, H., Walton, P (Eds.), Language, image,
  media. Oxford Basil Blackwell.
• Morley, D. (2006). Unanswered questions in
  audience research. The Communication Review, 9,
  101-121.

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Further Reading

• Bauer, Raymond A. "The Obstinate Audience The
  Influence Process from the Point of View of
  Social Communication." The Process and Effects of
  Mass Communication. Ed. Wilbur Schramm and Donald
  F. Roberts. Urbana U of Illinois P, 1971.
  326-346.
• Bauer, Raymond A., Stephen A. Greyser, Donald L.
  Kanter, William M. Weilbacher and Alice E.
  Courtney. Advertising in America. Boston
  Harvard, 1968.
• Bauer, Raymond A., ed. "Detection and
  Anticipation of Impact The Nature of the Task"
  Social Indicators. By Raymond A. Bauer.
  Cambridge The M.I.T. P, 1966.
• Bauer, Raymond A. "Risk Handling in Drug
  Adoption The Role of Company Preference." Public
  Opinion Quarterly 25 (1961) 546-559.
• Bauer, Raymond A. "The Initiative of the
  Audience." Journal of Advertising Research 3
  (1963) 2-7.
• Bauer R.A. and Claire Zimmerman. "The Effects of
  an Audience on What is Remembered." Public
  Opinion Quarterly 20.1 (1956) 238-48.
• Bauer, Raymond A. "Communication as a
  Transaction A Comment on 'On the Concept of
  Influence" Public Opinion Quarterly 27.1 1963
  83-6.
• Bauer R.A. "Americans and Advertising Thirty
  Years of Public Opinion." Public Opinion
  Quarterly 30.1 (1966) 69-78.
• Bauer, Raymond A. "The Obstinate Audience"
  American Psychologist 19 (1964) 319-328.
• Bauer, Raymond A. and A. Bauer. "America, Mass
  Society and Mass Media." Journal of Social Issues
  10 (1960)3-66.