Over the years, there
had been so many debates about what the audiences are doing with the media and
its influence on them. The biggest question then was “who are the target
audience of mass media?”
Frank A. Biokka, a researcher at the center for research in journalism and mass communication, university of North Carolina, USA, has attempted to, in his work titled “Opposing conceptions of the audience: The active and passive hemispheres of mass communication”,
Biocca, citing many scholars, broadly classified the mass media audiences into two broad dichotomies, namely: the passive audience and the active audience. This work therefore intends to review these two opposing conceptions, provide further clarifications and present constructive criticisms on it.
The active audiences
According to Biocca, scholars of the uses and gratification paradigm (minimal effect) believed that the audiences have beliefs and aspirations. These, of course, plus many other social classes like gender, economy, culture, etc play a very vital role in widening their horizon, as to how they perceive media messages. Hence, the audiences are active. Their backgrounds always determine how they behave. Individually, they are encased in an unseen bubble.
He also went ahead to define an active audience as individualistic
The passive audiences
Scholars of the powerful effect paradigm see an audience as passive. For according to them, they don’t know when the media is asking them to do some things, as it targets their subconscious minds, in that they respond to external stimuli positively.
The researcher also referred to a passive audience as conformist, anomic, irrational and vulnerable victim of media messages, who is nothing rather than a product of the media he is exposed to. (Marcel, 1983b)
The passivity-activ
After looking at these two counter opinions about the audience, how can we justify the “activity” or “passivity” of the audience? Biocca, citing Blumler (1979), argued that the ‘activity of the audience is both cognitive and sociostructural
Not only for Blumler, Raymond Bauer is of the opinion of audience independence. He considered the passivity of an audience as of ‘one-way influence’ which he associated with an odd alliance of exploitative communicators and mass culture critics.
“The issue is not just the findings of social science. The real issue is weither our social model of man –the model we use for running the society – and our scientific model or models –the one we use for running subjects –should be identical”. Bauer (1963:319)
Despite these arguments about the activity of the audience, there are still some questions its proponents left unanswered. Some of them are: The active audience proponents emphasized more on selectivity and intentionality,
These and so many questions led some scholars among whom is Blumler, to call for a “rejection of audience imperialism”. The audience member is not an unconstructed master of his/her cultural faith”. Blumler et al (1985:29).
They therefore advocated for two versions of the active audience: the strong one and a weak one. The strong one emphasizes the autonomy of the audience, his self determination, etc. While the weak version points to motivational and behavioural phenomenon such as selectivity and utility. At last, they suggested the abandonment of the strong version of the audience activity.
Consequently, Biocca drawn our attention to another emergent level of conception of the audience. He called it information processing level. According to him, how we select, attend, expose and retain the media messages is “normative”, as such we cannot directly be called passive or active. Audience exposure to media messages when he is happy, sad, and hungry, all differs. Equally, their effects on him must differ.
Biocca, citing McQuail (1972), noted that individuals have different level of attention and involvement. Theorists characterized media use as intentional, goal-oriented and motivated behavior.
Finally, Biocca suggested a more decent appraisal of activity between these two opposing conceptions. Of course, even the proponents of the activity of the audience cannot deny the fact that media has influence on audience no matter how little it is. Media constitutes a larger (if not all) part of our life that we can’t do without it. It is as the result of how media is interwoven to our life, that we cannot even understand its influence on us. Of course, audiences are active, but not active always and on every issue. Sometimes the audiences, despite their selectivity freedom have to rely on the media for information. As such, it targets their sub conscious minds and makes them passive “unconsciously”
Frank A. Biokka, a researcher at the center for research in journalism and mass communication, university of North Carolina, USA, has attempted to, in his work titled “Opposing conceptions of the audience: The active and passive hemispheres of mass communication”,
Biocca, citing many scholars, broadly classified the mass media audiences into two broad dichotomies, namely: the passive audience and the active audience. This work therefore intends to review these two opposing conceptions, provide further clarifications and present constructive criticisms on it.
The active audiences
According to Biocca, scholars of the uses and gratification paradigm (minimal effect) believed that the audiences have beliefs and aspirations. These, of course, plus many other social classes like gender, economy, culture, etc play a very vital role in widening their horizon, as to how they perceive media messages. Hence, the audiences are active. Their backgrounds always determine how they behave. Individually, they are encased in an unseen bubble.
He also went ahead to define an active audience as individualistic
The passive audiences
Scholars of the powerful effect paradigm see an audience as passive. For according to them, they don’t know when the media is asking them to do some things, as it targets their subconscious minds, in that they respond to external stimuli positively.
The researcher also referred to a passive audience as conformist, anomic, irrational and vulnerable victim of media messages, who is nothing rather than a product of the media he is exposed to. (Marcel, 1983b)
The passivity-activ
After looking at these two counter opinions about the audience, how can we justify the “activity” or “passivity” of the audience? Biocca, citing Blumler (1979), argued that the ‘activity of the audience is both cognitive and sociostructural
Not only for Blumler, Raymond Bauer is of the opinion of audience independence. He considered the passivity of an audience as of ‘one-way influence’ which he associated with an odd alliance of exploitative communicators and mass culture critics.
“The issue is not just the findings of social science. The real issue is weither our social model of man –the model we use for running the society – and our scientific model or models –the one we use for running subjects –should be identical”. Bauer (1963:319)
Despite these arguments about the activity of the audience, there are still some questions its proponents left unanswered. Some of them are: The active audience proponents emphasized more on selectivity and intentionality,
These and so many questions led some scholars among whom is Blumler, to call for a “rejection of audience imperialism”. The audience member is not an unconstructed master of his/her cultural faith”. Blumler et al (1985:29).
They therefore advocated for two versions of the active audience: the strong one and a weak one. The strong one emphasizes the autonomy of the audience, his self determination, etc. While the weak version points to motivational and behavioural phenomenon such as selectivity and utility. At last, they suggested the abandonment of the strong version of the audience activity.
Consequently, Biocca drawn our attention to another emergent level of conception of the audience. He called it information processing level. According to him, how we select, attend, expose and retain the media messages is “normative”, as such we cannot directly be called passive or active. Audience exposure to media messages when he is happy, sad, and hungry, all differs. Equally, their effects on him must differ.
Biocca, citing McQuail (1972), noted that individuals have different level of attention and involvement. Theorists characterized media use as intentional, goal-oriented and motivated behavior.
Finally, Biocca suggested a more decent appraisal of activity between these two opposing conceptions. Of course, even the proponents of the activity of the audience cannot deny the fact that media has influence on audience no matter how little it is. Media constitutes a larger (if not all) part of our life that we can’t do without it. It is as the result of how media is interwoven to our life, that we cannot even understand its influence on us. Of course, audiences are active, but not active always and on every issue. Sometimes the audiences, despite their selectivity freedom have to rely on the media for information. As such, it targets their sub conscious minds and makes them passive “unconsciously”
In fact, even the individual relation to the media and media
contents is largely by social or sociopsychologi
