Audiences - active and passive

Learning objective:

Analyse the difference between mass and niche audiences and compare with passive and active audiences.

Key words: 
Encoding. How ideologies or meanings are embedded into texts.
Decoding. How an audience interprets meaning.
Polysemic: The capacity of a text to have multiple meanings. Can be read differently by different readers.

Media Audiences an Introduction 

Audience Reception: Encoding/Decoding model

As discussed we generally don't sit in front of the TV, play video games, watch movies and then copy exactly what we've seen - we won't lower our moral standards that easily and we may not even let it contribute to our outlook of the world at all....but we definitely react in some way.

     

The Encoders are those who produce the texts - in the case of a magazine this would involve:

• Editors
• Journalists
• Photographers
• Designers

Some media texts promote certain ideologies overtly - for example a newspaper will often make its political affiliations fairly obvious.

Other texts will be more subtle and ideologies may be more subtly encoded, for example many 1950s science fiction films whereby alien invaders routinely tried to take over the USA were often a metaphor for America's struggle in the Cold War and the threat of Communism.

Whether it's political or not all texts will have ideologies encoded into them. 

Let's have a look at some of the Ideologies which we can read from the Marie Claire magazine above...

• Looks and appearance are important
• Other people's opinions of you are important
• Feeling good about yourself and having self confidence is important
• Strong independent women should be celebrated - women hold positions of authority and influence
• Emotions and feelings should be discussed and reflected upon
• Celebrities are people too - with feelings and vulnerabilities
• Women need guidance to help them make the right choices
• Women are maternal
• A fashionable look is important but people (children) shouldn't be harmed in attaining this look
• Materialism

Task 1: 
Identify the coverlines and images on the front of the Marie Claire magazine which relate to the ideologies mentioned above. Discuss responses of the active audience.

Uses and Gratification theory