THEORIES OF AN ACTIVE

AUDIENCE
 BRIEF EXPLANATION
Active audience theory is a perspective on media reception that argues
that media audiences are not passive recipients of media messages but
are active participants in the process of meaning-making. This means
that audiences do not simply accept the meanings that media producers
intend them to, but rather interpret and negotiate these meanings in
light of their own individual and social experiences.
 HOW WAS IT APPLIED THEN?
Early Reception Studies (1940s-1960s):
In the early years of media studies, scholars often assumed a passive audience model, where audiences were seen as
passive receivers of media messages. This perspective was influenced by behaviorist psychology. However, even
during this period, there were early signs of questioning this passive view, as some scholars explored how audiences
could interpret and resist media content.
The earliest idea was that a mass audience is passive and inactive. The members of the audience are seen as couch
potatoes just sitting there accepting media texts – particularly commercial television programmes. It was thought that
this did not require the active use of the brain. The audience accepts and believes all messages in any media text that
they receive. This is the passive audience model. They accept the preferred reading and don’t question it.

Cultural Studies and the Birmingham School (1960s-1970s):

The shift towards a more active audience perspective gained momentum with the emergence of cultural studies,
particularly the work of scholars associated with the Birmingham School in the UK. Stuart Hall, in particular, played a
key role in challenging the dominant notion of a passive audience. Hall's encoding/decoding model (1973) proposed
that audiences actively interpret and negotiate meaning from media texts.
 HOW WAS IT APPLIED THEN?
Reception Studies and Audience Ethnography (1980s-1990s):
During the 1980s and 1990s, scholars increasingly turned to reception studies and audience ethnography to
study how audiences make sense of media content in their everyday lives. Researchers such as David Morley
and Ien Ang conducted ethnographic studies that explored the complexities of audience interpretation,
considering factors like social context and identity.

Active Audience Theory (1980s-Present):

The term "active audience" gained prominence in the 1980s to describe the shift toward acknowledging the
agency of audiences in the interpretation of media messages. Scholars like John Fiske emphasized the idea that
audiences actively engage with media texts, interpreting them in ways that may go beyond the intended
meanings.
 HOW ABOUT NOW?
Digital Media and Participatory Culture (2000s-Present):
With the rise of digital media and the internet in the 21st century, the concept of the active audience has become even
more relevant. Henry Jenkins and other scholars have explored the notion of participatory culture, highlighting how
audiences not only interpret but also produce and share content in the digital landscape.

Henry Jenkins's early work (1990s) argued that fans are active, creative, critical, and social consumers of pop culture,
leading the way to a new relationship with media.
This book compiles Jenkins's research on fans, bloggers, and gamers, exploring his evolution from defending fan
culture to addressing moral panic and intellectual property issues.
Some things that were discussed:
Early defense of fan culture: Challenging the marginalization and stigmatization of fans.
Combating moral panic: Protecting Goths and gamers after the Columbine shootings.
Mapping fan studies: Exploring core theoretical and methodological issues.
Participatory culture on the web: Examining how web technologies empower fan engagement.
Blogging's impact: Analyzing how bloggers influence mainstream media.
Public policy implications: Discussing participation and intellectual property rights.
 NOTABLE AUTHORS
Stuart Hall
Stuart Hall's book on television communication (1973) challenges the idea of a one-way
message from sender to receiver. He argues that audiences actively engage with messages,
interpreting them based on their own social contexts and potentially changing their meaning.
This leads to several key conclusions:

Meaning is not fixed: The meaning of a message is not solely determined by the sender's
encoding.
Audience is key: The audience's decoding process, shaped by their social context, plays a
crucial role in shaping the final meaning.
Messages can be reshaped: Audiences can actively reinterpret messages to fit their own
understanding, even if the sender intended a different meaning.

In essence, Hall emphasizes the dynamic nature of communication, where meaning is co-
created between sender and receiver, with the audience playing a central role in interpreting
and potentially transforming the message.

https://academic-accelerator.com/encyclopedia/active-audience-theory
 NOTABLE AUTHORS
Paul Willis on The Counter School Culture (Learning to Labour, 1977)
Observed the “Hammertown Boys” in 1972 for 6 months (Second to last year
of secondary school)

Interpreted the culture as a “distorted version of class consciousness”

According to the boys, school was “irrelevant” for they did not need
qualifications to move into the manual work (Thompson, 2023)

Perceived school as: Assist middle class kids to get middle class jobs in
exchange for conformity

Revolves around the masculine identity, embracing patriarchy, traditional

gender divisions of labour

https://revisesociology.com/2016/01/25/learning-to-labour-paul-willis-summary-evaluation-research-methods/
 NOTABLE AUTHORS
Janice Redway
Professor of communication studies and
American studies

-Found women had strong opinions about

content, ensured to make sure books met their
needs.
- Reading the romance.
- Original interested in context of romances.
- Act of reading was very important.
OTHER NOTABLE AUTHORS

Nancy Baym
Nancy Baym, a scholar in the field of communication, has written about the ways in which audiences
engage with new media technologies. Her work often emphasizes the active role of users in shaping
their online experiences and communities.

Ien Ang
Ien Ang, a cultural studies scholar, has written about the active role of audiences in interpreting media
content. Her work, such as "Living Room Wars: Rethinking Media Audiences for a Postmodern World,"
explores how audiences negotiate meaning within the domestic space.
 APPLICATION TO MEDIA
Active audience theory revolutionized media studies by reframing audiences from passive
consumers to active participants. Not merely receiving messages, they interpreted, negotiated,
and even constructed their own meanings. This theory explored the diverse motivations
behind media use, from information and entertainment to identity formation and social
connection. It delved deeper, analyzing how media both reflects and shapes power structures,
amplifying dominant voices while potentially challenging the status quo.

Active audience theory's lasting impact lies in its challenge to traditional models of media
reception, paving the way for more nuanced understandings of how audiences engage with and
shape the media landscape. Its relevance endures, continuing to guide scholars as they explore
the complex interplay between media and audiences in an ever-evolving world.
 EXAMPLES BACK THEN
Paul Willis's study of young working-class men (1977)
Willis studied how young working-class men used subcultural styles to resist dominant media messages. He
found that these young men did not simply accept the messages of mainstream media, but rather used them to
create their own identities and to resist the dominant culture.

Janice Radway's study of women romance readers (1988)

Radway studied how women romance readers interpreted and negotiated the meanings of romance novels. She
found that these women did not simply escape into the fantasies of romance novels, but rather used them to
explore their own lives and relationships.

David Gauntlett's study of media fans (1999)

Gauntlett studied how media fans use media to create their own communities and to express their creativity. He
found that fans are not simply passive consumers of media, but rather are active participants in the production
and circulation of media texts.
 EXAMPLES FOR MODERN
Hugot Lines
Hugot Lines is an example in which the audience can feel the text or
scene emotionally and this would let the audience become engaged in
either reading or visualizing the context of the story more.

Fan Fiction
While the active audience theory doesn't directly create fan fiction, it
creates the conditions for its existence and growth. The theory
encourages active engagement, interpretation, and creativity, all of
which are essential ingredients for fan fiction to thrive.