Audrey DomasianDave Abuel

• AUDIENCE• Fatimah Awan citing Denis McQuail’s definition of Audience:

In his book Audience Analysis (1997), Denis McQuail states ‘The word “audience” has long been familiar as the collective term for the “receivers” in the simple sequential model of the mass communication process (source, channel, message, receiver, effect) that was deployed by pioneers in the field of media research’ (p. 1). He suggests that this definition has been utilised in everyday discourse to refer to that which is, in reality, a diverse and complex principal subject, associated with numerous and often conflicting theoretical approaches. (Awan, 2007)

• PASSIVE AUDIENCE• Often depicted in terms of the extreme stereotype of

mass society theorists (Durkheim, 1893/1964; LeBon, 1893; Reisman, 1950), the passive audience is grey, uniform, anomic, faceless, gullible, and defenseless against the power of the propagandist. (Biocca)

• ACTIVE AUDIENCE

• McQuail 2005 citing Biocca 1988

SelectivityWe can describe an audience as active, the more that

choice and discrimination as exercised in relation to media and content within media,

Utilitarianism Here the audience is the ‘embodiment of the self-

interested consumer’. Media consumption represents the satisfaction of some more or less conscious need, such as those postulated in the uses and gratifications’ approach.

• ACTIVE AUDIENCE

Intentionality

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.

Resistance to influence

Following the lines of the ‘obstinate audience’ concept (Bauer, 1964), the activity concept here emphasizes the limits set by members of the audience to unwanted influence or learning. The reader, viewer or listener remains ‘in control’ and unaffected, except as determined by personal choice.

• ACTIVE AUDIENCE

Involvement In general, the more an audience member is ‘caught up’ or ‘engrosed’ in the ongoing media experience, the more we can speak of involvement. This can be also called ‘affective arousal’. Involvement may also be indicated by such as talking back to the television.

• Interactivity as defined by H. Jenkins (2002)Rather than talking about interactive technologies, we should document the interactions that occur amongst media consumers, between media consumers and media texts, and between media consumers and media producers. The new participatory culture is taking shape at the intersection between three trends: (1) new tools and technologies enable consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content (2) a range of subcultures promote Do-It-Yourself (DIY) media production, a discourse that shapes how consumers have deployed those technologies (3) economic trends favoring the horizontally integrated media conglomerates encourage the flow of images, ideas, and narratives across multiple media channels and demand more active modes of spectatorship

• Interactivity as what may have been predicted by McQuail (2010):

• While the conversation pattern, in which control is individual on both sides, also seems to undermine the audience in the accepted sense , it does identify a situation in which a set of individuals can be connected with each other actively exchanging, sharing, and interacting in a communication relationship. This is made possible by computer-based interactive systems and restores the notion of an active audience, even in an enhance form.

• A new kind of audience becomes possible in which sender and receiver roles are not distinguished. At the very least, the presence of interactive facilities changes the situation of allocation, opening up possibilities for involvement and feedback on large scale, which were previously unknown in the typical mass medium audience situation

• Theories• Mass Media Effect

During the era of Industrialization, penny press of 19th century till World War I, the dominant paradigm with regards to mass media were the “mass society theories” which include the direct effects assumption which postulated the media had the power to reach out and directly influence the minds of people (Baran & Davis, 2000).

Mass society theories assumed the audience to be weak and fragmented from social bonds, thus allowing the media to prey on them and leaving the passive audience defenseless to the “malignant and cancerous” media (Baran & Davis, 2000).

• Theories• Magic Bullet Theory

Magic Bullet theory developed around the First World War thought media to operate like magic bullets that penetrated people’s minds, were people were powerless to resist manipulation (Baran & Davis, 2000).

Orson Welles’ radio broadcast of “War of the Worlds” caused mass hysteria is one demonstration of the Magic Bullet theory (Baran & Davis, 2000).

• Theories• Propaganda Theory

In propaganda theory, audiences were viewed as passive and fully receptive to the medium such that the Nazi party were convinced of using propaganda through radio and film to rally the loyalty of their people.

• Theories• Sender Message Receiver Model

Shannon and Weave’s SMR model concern was regarding the accuracy and effectiveness of sending the messages through transmission rather than audience activity (Nightingale, 1996)

• Theories• Agenda Setting Theory

Agenda-Setting theory assumes media sets the public’s mind on topics to be discussed

• Theories

• Symbolic InteractionismSymbolic Interaction was developed to see prove that the social environment in which learning takes place must be considered aside from mass communication consumption alone (Baran & Davis,2000)

• Phenomenistic TheoryJoseph Klapper’s Phenomenistic theory by 1960s also assumes the audience as active since it argues media is rarely the sole cause of change due to other social factors at play

• Framing AnalysisFraming analysis states that we view and use media through our expectations of everyday life, that is social roles and social cues, to make sense of a situation at any given time, including media use (Baran & Davis, 2000)

• Theories

• Carl Hovland’s Attitude ChangeCarl Hovland in USA held experiments to determine the power of the “Big Lie” with regards to attitude change and persuasion. Though he discovered that “movies were successful in increasing knowledge, they were not as effective in influencing attitudes and motivations” (Baran & Davis, 2000)

• Theories

• 2-Step Flow• Lazarsfeld’s Two-Step Flow theory and use of surveys

proved that media did not have direct consequences on audiences but rather media passed through opinion leaders and opinion followers (Baran & Davis, 2000). The audiences were awake and active, with their opinion being formed socially rather than directed by mass communication alone.

• Theories

• Selective ExposureSelective exposure is people’s tendency to expose themselves to or attend to media messages that they feel are in accord with their already-held attitudes and interests and the parallel tendency to avoid to which might be dissonance-creating (Baran & Davis, 2000.)

• Theories

• Uses and Gratification• Uses and Gratifications sees audience having power over

the media they choose to consume:• 1.) The audience is active and its media use is goal

oriented.• 2.) The initiative in linking his or her need gratification to a

specific media rests with the audience member. • 3.) The media compete with other sources for need

satisfaction.• 4.) People are self-aware enough of their own media

use, interests, and motives, to be able to provide researchers with an accurate picture of that use.

• 5.) Value judgments of the audience’s linking its needs to specific media or content should be suspended.

• Theories

• Encoding/Decoding theory• Encoding and Decoding methods of viewers left them

with 3 ways to understand a text. Hall’s preferred reading, negotiated reading, and oppositional reading, were based on how audience were receptive to the ideology in a text shows us how a theory may regard audience as both active or inactive, depending which reading they prefer (Nightingale, 1996)

• Theories

• Feminist Theory and Framing Analysis• Feminist reception studies and framing analysis both

focus on how the audience (as an individual) consume the media without necessarily subscribing to the ideals that media presents. Radway’s study by 1984 shows us women reading romance novels does not necessarily mean they subject to patriarchy. Framing analysis states that we view and use media through our expectations of everyday life, that is social roles and social cues, to make sense of a situation at any given time, including media use (Baran & Davis, 2000).

• Theories

• Convergence Culture• Convergence culture as “where old and new media

collide, where the power of the media producer and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways” (Jenkins, 2006)

• Convergence now happens not only via a technological shift but through social interaction of the public with the use of old and new media (Jenkins, 2006) distinguished by transmedia narratives .

• Theories

• Participatory Culture• “The term participatory culture contrasts with older notions of

passive media spectatorship. Rather than talking about media producers and consumers as occupying separate roles, we might now see them as participants who interact with each other according to a new set of rules that none of us fully understands” states Jenkins (2006)

• A participatory culture is a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship. Members believe their contributions matter and feel some dress of social connection with one another. (Jenkins, 2005)

• Theories

• Produsage• With Internet’s wide spread of information available at

a multitude of websites, French cybertheories Pierre Levy coins the term “collective intelligence” for how the public can now create their own alternative source of media power by pooling together their resources

• Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture. New York: New York University Press.

• “Bert Is Evil”• “The Daily Prophet” • Convergence can alter traditional producer and

viewer relationships while showing that media consumers do not merely process news and entertainment, but can manipulate elements to create their own version of it.

• Warner Bros bought the film rights from J.K. Rowling in 2001 they put a damper on the production of fan fiction which had otherwise been so encouraged by Rowling. Upon finding a website that had to do with Harry Potter, Warners Bros would suspend the sites activity until they could determine the legitimacy and purpose of said website. 

• In the majority of cases the websites would be deemed alright and Warner Bros would grant them permission to continue operations with the exception that they (Warner Bros) now had the right to shut them down at any time if they believed the website to contain “inappropriate or offensive material”

• Heather Lawven, the founder of the Daily Prophet website created the Defense Against the Dark Arts as a way to fight back against Warner Brother’s attack on fan sites. This group was created after it was discovered that Warner Bros had gone after a number of children in Poland.

• When Warner Bros attacked children in Poland they essentially attacked the world wide network of Harry Potter fans. Jenkin’s quotes Lawver as stating “We weren’t disorganized little kids anymore . We had a public following and we had a petition with 1500 signatures in a matter of two weeks. They [Warner Bros.] finally had to negotiate with us”

http://kkolesnikoff.wordpress.com/fair-use/case-studies/the-daily-prophet/

• Faced with being cast as a bully on the eve of its latest potential gold mine Warner Brothers backed down as representatives insisted no harm was intended. (“We are not a big, scary corporation,” one executive said.) Prof. Henry Jenkins of the University of Southern California, an enthusiastic champion of fan power, has framed the fight in near-revolutionary terms, writing on his Web site that PotterWar “may have been the first successful movement of fans to challenge the rather blanket copyright assertions of the major media producers.” 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/movies/the-fans-are-all-right-for-harry-potter.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

• Livingstone, S. (2003). The changing nature of audiences: from mass audience to the interactive media user. In: Valdivia, A. eds. (2003). Companion to media studies. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 337-359.

• The term audience was, and to some extent still is, satisfactory for mass media research, but it clearly fits poorly within the domain of new media for, arguable, audiences are becoming “users”.

• The term “audience” only satisfactorily covers the activities of listening and watching (though even this has been expanded to include the activities which contextualize listening and viewing).

• The term “user” seems to allow for a greater variety of modes of engagement, although it tends to be overly individualistic and instrumental, losing the sense of a collectivity which is central to “the audience”, and with no necessary relation to communication at all, leading one to wonder whether users of media technologies differ from users of washing machines or cars. Analytically, audiences are being relocated away from the screen, their activities contextualized into the everyday lifeworld.

  Scolari, C. (2012). Lost in the borderlines: between user generated content and culture industry. Transforming audiences, transforming societies, pp. 11-13. Retrieved from: http://www.cost-transforming-audiences.eu/system/files/essays-and-interview-essays-18-06-12.pdf [Accessed: January 10 2014].

• Scolari presents the Pardillos Experience, wherein a Spanish student created their his version of the hit ABC TV series Lost through multiple comic books. “Pardillos” presents Lost through a different medium (comics) but its characters and plotline were “naturalized” by being infused with Spanish pop culture references.

• Azaustre tried to publish it at first but was refused (perhaps due to possible copyright infringement) but in the end manages to self-release volumes of his work such that by 2011, 27,000 copies had been sold. The Pardillos experience is a demonstration of the blurred lines between the culture industry and user-generated content, the most recent movement of the “interactive audience” where Do-It-Yourself narratives can now spring off from the fans

•  McQuail, D. (1997). Audience analysis. Thousand Oaks [u.a.]: Sage Publ.

This book of Denis McQuail's defined audience activity as individual acts of Media choice, attention involvement, pleasure, critical or creative response, connection with the rest of life and so forth and audience passivity is defined as incapable of collective action.

•  • Mcquail, D. (2010). McQuail's Mass Communication theory.

London: Sage Publications.

This book of Denis McQuail cited Biocca which says audience activity has 5 version; Selectivity-audience choose media content; Utilitarianism-consumption of media means audience utilise for a need; Intentionality-audience engage through process of thinking; Resistance to influence-audience set limits to unwanted influence or learning; Involvement - audience is caught up with the media content.

• Awan, F. (2007). Young people, identity and the media. Ph.D. University of Westminster.

This thesis of Fatimah Awan particularly on its chapter about audience lectured much about arguments between theorists relating to audience activity. Awan cited Uses and Gratification theory in which she mentioned audience utilize media to gratify a need. She cited the theorist definition of gratification which says 'gratification’ means one and only one thing: it is a solution to a deficit in an individual which has been caused by problematic social experience. This means audience is active in choosing what media to consume that gratifies a need. Awan also used theories such as Encoding/Decoding. Hall's Encoding/Decoding theory claims that the active audience does not simply digest messages encoded by the producers, but ‘decode’ meanings from the media in accordance with their own social and cultural context. This also discussed Feminism which explains women's romance reading serves as a declaration of independence where they isolate themselves from their domestic situation.

•  Baran, S. J. & Davis, D. K. (2000). Mass communication theory. Australia: Wadsworth.• Biocca, F. (1988). Opposing conceptions of the audience: the active and passive hemispheres of mass communication

theory. In: Anderson, J. eds. (1988). Communication yearbook 11. California: Thousand Oaks, pp. 51-80.• Bird, E. (2011). Are we all produsers now? convergence and media audience practices. [online] Retrieved from:

https://www.academia.edu/4247450/Are_we_all_produsers_now_Convergence_and_media_audience_practices [Accessed: 10 Jan 2014].

• Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture. New York: New York University Press.• Jenkins, Henry, Puroshotma, Ravi, Clinton, Katherine, Weigel, Margaret, & Robison, Alice J. (2005). Confronting the

Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, available athttp://www.newmedialiteracies.org/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/NMLWhitePaper.pdf. [Accessed: 10 Jan 2014].

•  Jenkins, H. (2002). Interactive audiences? the 'collective intelligence' of media fans. [online] Retrieved from: http://labweb.education.wisc.edu/steinkuehler/curric606/readings/Jenkins2002.pdf [Accessed: 13 Jan 2014].

• Livingstone, S. (2003). The changing nature of audiences: from mass audience to the interactive media user. In: Valdivia, A. eds. (2003). Companion to media studies. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 337-359.

• Mcquail, D. (2010). Mcquail's mass communication theory. London: Sage Publications.• Nightingale, V. (1996). Studying the television audience. London: Routledge.• Scolari, C. (2012). Lost in the borderlines: between user generated content and culture industry. Transforming audiences,

transforming societies, pp. 11-13. Retrieved from: http://www.cost-transforming-audiences.eu/system/files/essays-and-interview-essays-18-06-12.pdf [Accessed: January 10 2014].

• Wicks, R. H. (2001). Understanding audiences. Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.

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