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1、Active audiences1. IntroductionIn the media age, audiences were once previously considered to be inactive, i.e., the audience cant feedback or to participate in social events of the reports and narrative, or even cultural production. After the two-step flow of communication model hypothesizes introd
2、uced by sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld and Elihu Katzin 1955(Lazarsfeld & Katz, 1955), Hall and Morley developed the active audience theory into the context of contemporary cultural studies. Now we are living in the new media era, the digital era of mass communication. Audiences are not only recipients
3、 of information, but active. They have their own mind and use specific media content and information to get gratifications. An active audience can mean that people do not simply accept and believe everything they receive from the media. It is undoubtedly that different audiences may have different i
4、deas and attitudes toward a media message with their own minds and can have different responses to it. These responses are not chaotic, but are associated with the audiences age, education level, common communication channels and other personal characteristics. (Miller & Philo, 2001). As time went b
5、y, the researches focus to study the active of the audience, rather than a passive audience. Different experts put forward a different point of view to support the idea that audiences are active. With the advent of network convergence technology，it has become a common phenomenon that audiences use b
6、log, mobile phones, Facebook, twitter and other forms of communication to participate in cultural production actively. The increase of the mass media also makes the attitudes of the audiences undergone a major change.2. Early development in audience theoryAn audience is a group of people who partici
7、pate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature, theatre, music, video game, or academics in any medium. Audience theory is an element of thinking that developed within academic literary theory and cultural studies.2.1The hypodermic needle modelThe hypodermic needle modelthat developed in the
8、1920s is the first theory to explain how mass audiences might react to mass media. This model can be seen as some kind of force injected the repressive ideology directly into the public consciousness and thought. In this theory, it is considered to have an effect on the audience after the consumptio
9、n of media texts and it is thought that this effect is often negative. According to the name of the theory, the media is compared to a hypodermic needle which injects messages, attitudes and ideas into the audiences and the audiences are passive and powerless to prevent it. In the audience eyes, the
10、 media is like a drug and they can do nothing by to accept the influence. Of course, during the past time this theory may work in some case. But different audiences may have different minds and are affected in different ways by different media. On the other hand, nowadays the audiences are more and
11、more independent and have critically aware of the media. So this theory rooted in the 1930s has largely been considered obsolete in todays new media age (Berger, 1995).2.2 Two-step flow of communication theoryThe two-step flow theory was first introduced by Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Haz
12、el Gaudet in 1944. They did a study to find out the process of decision-making during a Presidential election campaign. Around the mass media campaigning they did a lot of researches, to investigate the voters, in order to confirm that the influence of the mass media to the voters will have a very p
13、owerful force. Finally they discovered that mass communication did not have the power to affect the voting intention of voters and the informal personal contacts played a major role to influence the voters voting behavior. With a further study with this result, Katz and Lazarsfeld developed the two-
14、step flow theory of mass communication in 1955(Lazarsfeld & Katz, 1955).The hypodermic needle model considers that the effects of the mass media are direct, but the two-step flow model stresses choices of the audience a lot. It suggests that if we discuss with other people it will be more likely for
15、 us to be influenced by the media. On the other hand, our opinions affected by the way our friends who have already viewed the media. The model proposes a concept called opinion leader. The opinion leader is the activist which provides information for others and affects them in the interpersonal com
16、munication networks. This theory suggests that most people make their own opinions based on the opinion leader. It is said that the information from the media moves in two distinct stages. First, the opinion leaders receive the information and have their own understand of it. And then the opinion le
17、aders transmit the information to other people after their reprocessing of the information. They have the ability to affect the attitudes of others and they are involved in mass communication, speed up the propagation velocity and expand the influence. Opinion leaders, as the relay and filter links
18、in the media, have significant influence in mass communication. In fact, this mode of transmission is not just between the two levels, and often multi-level spread of one to ten, hundred, thus forming the diffusion of information. And the two-step flow theory soon developed into the multi-step flow
19、theory of mass communication or diffusion of innovation theory.2.3 Uses and gratifications theoryIt takes a long time for the development of the uses and gratifications theory since the 1940s. Uses and gratifications theory stands on the position of the audience, by analyzing the audience using moti
20、vation of the media to examine the effectiveness of mass communication to the human psychological and behavioral. It stressed that the initiative of the audience and highlighted the status of the audience. There are five basic assumptions of the uses and gratifications theory:1) “The audience is con
21、ceived as active.”(Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, 2011)2) “In the mass communication process much initiative in linking gratification and media choice lies with the audience member.”(Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, 2011)3) “The media compete with other sources of satisfaction.”(Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch,
22、2011)4) “Methodologically speaking, many of the goals of mass media use can be derived from data supplied by individual audience members themselves.”(Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, 2011)5) “Value judgments about the cultural significance of mass communication should be suspended while audience orientat
23、ions are explored on their own terms.”(Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, 2011)This theory suggests that with the positive use of media the audiences interpret and integrate media into their own lives and points out that the use of media is based entirely on the individuals needs and aspirations. It also r
24、eminds the audience that the purpose of using media can be different and makes us pay more attention to the audience. This theory considers audience exposure to media is based on individual needs and emphasizes the audiences initiative (Namsu, Kee, & Valenzuela, 2009). But the scientific basis of th
25、e theory is not reliable and it emphasis too much on the personal and psychological, ignore the social conditions and constraints of the environment. Whats more, the theory cannot fully reveal the social relations of the audience and the media.3. Active audience theoryAs the development of technolog
26、y of mass media, the theories mentioned above have their problems and limitations. So a new theory of the audience was developed since the 1970s. And that is the active audience theory. It suggests that people do not simply accept and believe everything they receive from the media. It is undoubtedly
27、 that different audiences may have different ideas and attitudes toward a media message with their own minds and can have different responses to it. These responses are not chaotic, but are associated with the audiences age, education level, common communication channels and other personal character
28、istics. (Miller & Philo, 2001). This theory was developed by a lot of communication theories and their researches.3.1 Encoding and DecodingIn 1970s, British sociologist Stuart Hall proposed a model of mass communication, the encoding and decoding theory. This theory suggests that that the audience i
29、nterpretations of the media and cultural products are related to their positions in the social structure. Encoding and decoding theory was developed from the critique of traditional mass communication model. The traditional theory of communication considered that the communication is the linear moti
30、on of a message from the sender directly to the recipient and the movement has linear characteristics. The limitation of this theory is that it just considers the flow of information as a linear motion, but not considers the situations of all kinds of interference and other information that may appe
31、ar in the circulation process. The model of the relationship between texts and audiences considered how texts were encoded with meaning by producers and then decoded by audiences. Hall believes that mass media texts just like commodities will also get through Marxism described four areas of commodit
32、ies: the production, distribution, use and reproduction. He summarized and presented three different receiver decoding mode: dominant-hegemonic position, negotiated code and oppositional code. In the dominant-hegemonic position, it presents linear characteristics between the transmitting and receivi
33、ng information so that same as decoding and the two codes shave isomorphism with each other. So the decoding can be done in the same way according to the encoding. In the negotiated code, decoding contains a mix of compatible and confrontation factors, which mean the decoding side does not have the
34、ability to contend for the encoding side. And the contradiction between the two sides in the dissemination of misunderstandings and failures can be generated. The last one, in the oppositional code, decoding completely criticizes and resists the intent of encoding and creates a new meaning in the pr
35、ocess. The theory suggests that the media texts are encoded with meanings or messages what the producers expect to convey to the audience when they construct them (Rubens , 1984). The theory states that the producers conduct codes in media such as newspaper, television, and magazines. Then the audie
36、nces are interpreting the messages and decode it with their own understanding. Active audiences are claimed to be active because they decode the messages quite well. Audiences can decode messages by preferred, negotiated, or oppositional readings. The model restores the primitive position of the aud
37、ience in the dissemination of research and the relationship between the communicator and the audiences are equal. Most of the time, audiences will decode the messages or meanings correctly and understand what the producers were trying to say. But in some specific conditions the audience will fail to
38、 understand the messages correctly (Hall , 2005).3.2 David Morley: Nationwide AudienceIn 1980 David Morley did a study of the former television program Nationwide to see how viewers interpreted a television show at the time (Morley, 1981). In the study, he learned from Halls theoretical framework as
39、 its starting point and used the ethnographic surveys to explore exactly how the decoding works. In the encoding and decoding theory, Hall except the three different receiver decoding mode can be verified and refined from experience and Morleys research of audience is the validation of the Hall mode
40、. Traditional audience studies assume the existence of the communication model of “sender to receiver”, that is, the audience as atomized individuals, and receive information directly. But Morley pointed out that the fact that this model does not exist and watching television was activity of daily l
41、iving which may have a specific context. Therefore, a prominent feature of Morleys audience research emphasis on intermediate link. He thought that only considered the “articulation” of the viewing context and other texts can we make an objective study of the audience decoding. And he concludes that
42、 the information encoded in a way is always able to read in a different way. Although it has many limitations, Morleys study of Nationwide Audience has become one of the most-widely cited studies of the television audience (Morley, The Nationwide Audience: Sturcture and Decoding, 1980). And the acti
43、ve audience theory developed by Morley has become the fundamental theorem of the study of Modern Communication Science.3.3 Active audience in the new media eraWe are now living in the new media age, the digital age. With the advent of network convergence technology，it has become a common phenomenon
44、that audiences use blog, mobile phones, Facebook, twitter and other forms of communication to participate in cultural production actively. From the generation of news, the audience of the new communication era is showing clear signs of turning from passive consumption to collaborative production. Th
45、e development of the new media technology has brought the changes of the formation mechanism of news and in the new communication era audiences forced media reconstruction become an emerging trend. It is sure that the media which respect the audiences choice are most likely to grow together with the
46、 audience, while the media which ignore the audiences feeling must be finally abandoned by the audience. In the traditional “media to audience” communication structure, the views of the audience are often in the position of “relayed”, while the power of information screening, expression and evaluati
47、on belong to the media. Nowadays the rapid development of network communication technology is to subvert the original pattern of Journalism and Communication. And what have been changed is not only the media itself but also the media audience. More and more media audiences are no longer satisfied to
48、 act as a passive role. The widely use of blog, micro blogging, micro video, MSN and other social communication tools open up a new way for the audience to change their single identities as information consumers and the new technology makes the audience more active and positive.4. Criticisms of the
49、active audience theoryAs active audiences, by creating their own meanings, they may offer resistance against existing meanings and the media become a “cultural battlefield” of resistance. The theory may seem to suggest moral relativism and if everyone has his own meaning of the message, there are no universal truths and no absolute meanings. So the active audience theory has already received criticism. As the core beliefs are already rooted in the audiences, it is difficult for them to calculate the meanings of the m