Active vs Passive Audience PDF

1.4. Active Vs Passive Audience Audience has been central in mass communication research from the very beginning- there are several models. Over the last 40 years of theory and research, there has been a theoretical tug-of- war between conceptions in mass communicati...

1.4. Active Vs Passive Audience Audience has been central in mass communication research from the very beginning- there are several models. Over the last 40 years of theory and research, there has been a theoretical tug-of- war between conceptions in mass communication as to whether the audience is active or passive. Passive audience: Initially, the audiences were perceived as: 1- perceived as an undifferentiated mass, as a passive target for persuasion and information. 2- as a market of consumers of media products Passive audience is “A conceptualization of people uncritically reading, watching, and listening to media content, simply absorbing whatever messages may be contained within.” Not really engaged in the process. They are seen as conformist, gullible, vulnerable, victims. In lay terms, they were considered as ‘couch potatoes’. Active Audience: Soon the audiences were realized to be active. The active audiences can be defined “as made up of real social groups and is characterized by networks of interpersonal relationships through which effects are mediated. They are individualistic, ‘impervious to influence’, rational, and selective.” The term active audience define the consumers of media content and implies that they should not be viewed as passive recipients of information but rather as agents who engage with media content and are impacted by the social environment in which they watch it. The elements that interact with media consumption include prior experience, present belief, family, employment circle, and friends. The audiences are polysemic, unstructured individuals rather than fixed, defined and homogenous. Even a person tagged as ‘couch potato’ has to decide what to watch, even though he/she looks passive. Cognitive activity of the audience: Consumption is an active process, even in the most apparently passive situations of media use. A great deal of cognitive activity goes on- the mind is engaged. The audiences have to focus attention on the screen. They have to process the dots on the TV set into recognizable images; Interpret those images as representations of some reality; Fill in the blanks in the narratives presented by the television screen; Make sense of messages coming from the screen.Audience is active while bending their medium for their own purposes. Example: using Newspaper not just for reading, but for other household purposes. Using a medium to record themselves. Making meaning: Audiences make meanings for the media products they consume. The producer (encoder) frames (or encodes) meaning in a certain way, while the reader (decoder) decodes it differently according to his/her personal background, the various different social situations and frames of interpretation. Though encoded meaning is the preferred meaning and at least some elements of the text would push the audience in the direction of the preferred meaning. Decoding is not a matter of misunderstanding but of the nature of communication as a struggle, from different social positions, over the meaning of the text. How they interpret a text is determined in complex ways by their social position, by the interests and resources they bring to the text. Example: 1980s ‘the Prisoner in cell-block H’, a minimalist, black-and-white, half-hour dramatization of everyday life in a woman’s prison. The children began to use the words and phrases used in the media content as Secret codes to each other to talk about their experience of school, without fear of being understood by adult. Stuart Hall identified 3 possibilities of decoding: Stuart Hall gives three possibilities of decoding done by the audience of a particular media content/ text: 1. Audiences can assent or correspond to the encoded or preferred meaning. 2. They can explicitly oppose the dominant ideology encoded in the text, at least on the particular topic of the text. 3. They can negotiate a position somewhere between assent and opposition. So, the audiences can arrive at a Preferred/oppositional/negotiated meaning at the end of decoding. The differences in the encoded and decoded meanings are because of the differences of the encoder & decoder’s Frameworks of knowledge, relations of production and technical infrastructure. The frameworks of the knowledge includes the real of idea: Ideology, education, experience of producing or consuming media. The relation of production is basically the way the media text gets made impacts its messaging. It is the hierarchy of power, factors like celebrity, famous directors, etc. The technical infrastructure- the extent to which the message is impacted by the technology used to create, transmit, and consume media. It may be live/recorded/watching/listening/reading. Example: watching a police killing a black man, police chase, protests turning violent. All these news when read it has a different impact, when watched has a different impact. These factors altogether makes the media content/text/programme a meaningful discourse. Audience constructs a sense of their own identity: While consuming a media, they construct their own identity. This required active involvement during the process. They sometimes build an emotional relationship. Example: Serials/ soap operas- They do not stop with just watching. They want to know about the characters; want to actively be involved in predicting the characters’ futures; often refer to the experiences of these characters to make sense of their own lives. Frank Biocca talked about five qualities that revealed about the engaged audience. A. Selectivity is the first. Active audiences are said to be picky about the media they utilize. We can describe an audience as active, the more that choice and discrimination are exercised in relation to media and content within media. This is mainly likely to show up in evidence of planning of media use and in consistent patterns of choice (including buying, renting or borrowing films or books). Very heavy media use (especially of television) is likely to be accounted as by definition ‘unselective’ and therefore inactive. B. The utility is the second characteristic. Media is stated to be used by active audiences to fulfill specific needs and objectives. Here the audience is the ‘embodiment of the self- interested consumer’. Media consumption represents the satisfaction of some more or less conscious need. C. Intentionality denotes the deliberate use of media content and is the third factor. An active audience, according to this definition, is one which engages in active cognitive processing of incoming information and experience. It is often implied by the various forms of subscription to media. D. The fourth trait is effort or involvement. Here, audiences are involved with, considering, and utilizing the media. In general, the more an audience member is ‘caught up’ or ‘engrossed’ in the ongoing media experience, the more we can speak of involvement.  This can also be called ‘affective arousal’. Involvement may also be indicated by such signs as ‘talking back’ to the television. E. The fifth trait is resistance to influence, or not highly susceptible to being convinced by the media by itself. The reader, viewer or listener remains ‘in control’ and unaffected, except as determined by personal choice. Thus, we can conclude that the audiences are very much active during the media consumption.