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Audience theory
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Audience theory
Audience theory offers explanations of how people encounter media, how they use it, and how it affects them. Although the concept of an audience predates modern media, most audience theory is concerned with people’s relationship to various forms of media. There is no single theory of audience, but a range of explanatory frameworks. These can be rooted in the social sciences, rhetoric, literary theory, cultural studies, communication studies and network science depending on the phenomena they seek to explain. Audience theories can also be pitched at different levels of analysis ranging from individuals to large masses or networks of people.
James Webster suggested that audience studies could be organized into three overlapping areas of interest. One conceives of audiences as the site of various outcomes. This runs the gamut from a large literature on media influence to various forms of rhetorical and literary theory. A second conceptualizes audiences as agents who act upon media. This includes the literature on selective processes, media use and some aspects of cultural studies. The third see the audiences as a mass with its own dynamics apart from the individuals who constitute the mass. This perspective is often rooted in economics, marketing, and some traditions in sociology. Each approach to audience theory is discussed below.
Many audience theorists are concerned with what media do to people. There is a long tradition in the social sciences of investigating “media effects.” Early examples include the Payne Fund Studies, which assessed how movies affected young people, and Harold Lasswell’s analysis of WWI propaganda. Some have criticized early work for lacking analytical rigor and encouraging a belief in powerful effects.
Subsequent work in the social sciences employed a variety of methods to assess the media’s power to change attitudes and behaviors such as voting and violence. Sociologists Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld introduced the concept of a two-step flow in communication, which suggested that media influence was moderated by opinion leaders. By the late 1950s, most researchers concluded that media effects were limited by psychological processes like selective exposure, social networks, and the commercial nature of media. This new consensus was dubbed the “dominant paradigm” of media sociology and it was criticized for being too reductionist and understating the true power of media.
While the tenets of that limited effects perspective retain much of their appeal, later theories have highlighted various ways in which media operate on audiences. These audience outcomes include:
Humanists have also been concerned with how media operate on audiences. With a specific focus on rhetoric, some, such as Walter Ong, have suggested that the audience is a construct made up by the rhetoric and the rhetorical situation the text is addressing. Similarly, some forms of literary criticism such as Screen theory, argue that cinematic texts actually create spectators by sewing them into subject positions. In effect, audience members become unwitting accomplices in the production of meanings as orchestrated by the text. Hence media can promote widespread ideological outcomes such as false consciousness and hegemony.
Emphasizing the agency of audiences takes a different approach to audience theory. Simply put, rather than asking what media do to people, these theories ask what people do to media. Such approaches, which are sometimes referred to as active audience theories, have been the province of the humanities and social sciences.
The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, was founded at the University of Birmingham, England in the 1960s by Stuart Hall and Richard Hoggart. Hall was instrumental in promoting what he called the “encoding/decoding” model of communication (described below). This argued that audiences had the ability to read texts in ways that were not intended by the producer of the text. Subsequent work at the Centre provided empirical support for the model. Amongst these was The Nationwide Project by David Morley and Charlotte Brunsdon. Humanistic theories of audience agency are often grounded in theoretical perspectives such as structuralism, feminism, and Marxism. Notable examples include:
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Audience theory
Audience theory offers explanations of how people encounter media, how they use it, and how it affects them. Although the concept of an audience predates modern media, most audience theory is concerned with people’s relationship to various forms of media. There is no single theory of audience, but a range of explanatory frameworks. These can be rooted in the social sciences, rhetoric, literary theory, cultural studies, communication studies and network science depending on the phenomena they seek to explain. Audience theories can also be pitched at different levels of analysis ranging from individuals to large masses or networks of people.
James Webster suggested that audience studies could be organized into three overlapping areas of interest. One conceives of audiences as the site of various outcomes. This runs the gamut from a large literature on media influence to various forms of rhetorical and literary theory. A second conceptualizes audiences as agents who act upon media. This includes the literature on selective processes, media use and some aspects of cultural studies. The third see the audiences as a mass with its own dynamics apart from the individuals who constitute the mass. This perspective is often rooted in economics, marketing, and some traditions in sociology. Each approach to audience theory is discussed below.
Many audience theorists are concerned with what media do to people. There is a long tradition in the social sciences of investigating “media effects.” Early examples include the Payne Fund Studies, which assessed how movies affected young people, and Harold Lasswell’s analysis of WWI propaganda. Some have criticized early work for lacking analytical rigor and encouraging a belief in powerful effects.
Subsequent work in the social sciences employed a variety of methods to assess the media’s power to change attitudes and behaviors such as voting and violence. Sociologists Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld introduced the concept of a two-step flow in communication, which suggested that media influence was moderated by opinion leaders. By the late 1950s, most researchers concluded that media effects were limited by psychological processes like selective exposure, social networks, and the commercial nature of media. This new consensus was dubbed the “dominant paradigm” of media sociology and it was criticized for being too reductionist and understating the true power of media.
While the tenets of that limited effects perspective retain much of their appeal, later theories have highlighted various ways in which media operate on audiences. These audience outcomes include:
Humanists have also been concerned with how media operate on audiences. With a specific focus on rhetoric, some, such as Walter Ong, have suggested that the audience is a construct made up by the rhetoric and the rhetorical situation the text is addressing. Similarly, some forms of literary criticism such as Screen theory, argue that cinematic texts actually create spectators by sewing them into subject positions. In effect, audience members become unwitting accomplices in the production of meanings as orchestrated by the text. Hence media can promote widespread ideological outcomes such as false consciousness and hegemony.
Emphasizing the agency of audiences takes a different approach to audience theory. Simply put, rather than asking what media do to people, these theories ask what people do to media. Such approaches, which are sometimes referred to as active audience theories, have been the province of the humanities and social sciences.
The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, was founded at the University of Birmingham, England in the 1960s by Stuart Hall and Richard Hoggart. Hall was instrumental in promoting what he called the “encoding/decoding” model of communication (described below). This argued that audiences had the ability to read texts in ways that were not intended by the producer of the text. Subsequent work at the Centre provided empirical support for the model. Amongst these was The Nationwide Project by David Morley and Charlotte Brunsdon. Humanistic theories of audience agency are often grounded in theoretical perspectives such as structuralism, feminism, and Marxism. Notable examples include: