What role do audiences play in media?

Before looking into how audiences consume media, we need to look at their importance in shaping media and how we as the producers use it. Active audiences are ones who participate form opinions and provide feedback. Passive audiences only accept opinions. Active audiences pay close attention to the message. Passive audiences, on the other hand, pay little attention to the message. According to Active Audience Theory, media audiences are not passive recipients of information, but are actively involved, often unconsciously, in making sense of the message within their personal and social contexts. This can be seen in the way users on social media apps interact with their audiences by sharing posts and so on. 

People's lives are influenced by mass media. It shapes human perspectives, captivates and enlightens, produces and demolishes people's images, and serves advertising, promotion, and other specific purposes in people's lives. Nevertheless, audience is also essential in mass media. The transfer of power has occurred. As a result, it is possible to argue that the audience shapes media meaning. What does it imply?

Due to mass media being a source of information directed at people, the audience is the source of inspiration for mass media. When creating various programs, releasing information, and so on, mass media bases its data on human beings who live in society.Audiences who participate form opinions and provide feedback. Passive audiences only accept opinions. Active audiences pay close attention to the message. Passive audiences, on the other hand, pay little attention to the message. According to Active Audience Theory, media audiences are not passive recipients of information, but are actively involved, often unconsciously, in making sense of the message within their personal and social contexts. This can be seen in the way users on social media apps interact with their audiences by sharing posts and so on.

For example, if a TV program is interesting, if the topic covered is current and deserving of attention, people will watch it, newspapers will write about it, and critics will discuss it. As a result, other programs will be directed in the same manner. 

People are interested in the data that strikes them when they consider media in the modern world because information is readily available. The media employs a number of specific measures to help them consider the audience's point of view. We can see this in the example of friends, a popular show off the 90s.

As a result, information is the primary factor that connects audiences and media. The media wishes to deliver information that is intriguing to the audience, and the audience wishes to see relevant data that pleases or directs them. If the media serves its purpose, the audience is satisfied.

What is an active and passive audience and what are the differences?

An active audience engages with, recognizes, and interacts to a media text in various ways, and is capable of challenging the ideas encoded in it.

A passive audience is more likely to accept the messages encoded in a media text without question and, as a result, to be directly affected by the messages.

The passive audience category uses the "Hypodermic Needle Theory" and "Desentisization"

It incorporates the "Uses and Gratification Theory" and the "Reception Theory" in the active audience category.

Passive audience

Hypodermic Needle theory 

The Hypodermic Needle Theory, also known as the (Magic) Bullet Theory, is a media and communication theory that proposes that media portrays viewing public viewpoint across information conveyed to specific people. Particularly, the model suggests that signals can strike consumers directly and personally, similar to a bullet puncturing a person's body. The message can cause immediate reactions after penetrating the body of a receiver. The Hypodermic Needle Theory prompted media researchers to investigate whether media can influence people's behaviors.

This approach to communication and media influence is no longer widely accepted. Many researchers recognized the limitations of this idea in the 1930s, and some question whether early media theorists gave it any serious consideration at all. Nonetheless, The Hypodermic Needle Theory continues to shape how we talk about media. People believe that the media has a strong influence. Parents are concerned about the impact of television and violent video games. News outlets publish headlines such as 'Is Google making us stupid?' and 'Grand Theft Auto led a teen to murder

Then, in 1938, Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre aired a dramatization of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds. Some listeners were led to believe that Earth was being invaded by martians because the program was presented in the format of a news bulletin. According to the New York Times, thousands of people were gripped by mass hysteria. While thousands of people were "panicked," they were only a small proportion of the six million people who spent the night listening to the radio.

Desentisization

Desensitization theory is most easily applied to violent media. People become jaded to violence as a result of constant repetitions of violence in the media. Because we are accustomed to seeing explosions, blood and guts, and mayhem on a regular basis as media consumers, the reaction becomes less noticeable. Desensitization is typically assessed using both psychological and attitudinal responses.

To better comprehend the consequences of repetitive exposure to violence, researchers propose that viewers become accustomed to violence that is initially distressing, much like they would if they were undergoing exposure therapy. D. Gordon Paul and Gordon Paul According to A. Bernstein (1973), exposure therapy is widely regarded as the most effective clinical therapy for training individuals to engage in previously inhibited behaviors. Many researchers, including Edna B. Foa and Michael J. Kozak (1986), have demonstrated that simply exposing a patient to frightening stimuli, whether in graduated form or not, will significantly reduce the anxiety or negative affect that the stimulus once evoked. This logic can be applied to the effects of repeated media violence exposure.

Concerns about the growing realism of video-game violence have recently prompted researchers to investigate the desensitizing effects of video games. These effects are evident; for example, in a study by Deselms and Altman (2003), men who played a high-violence video game received more lenient prison sentences than men who played a low-violence game, even an hour after exposure, and in another study (Funk et al. 2003), self-reported long-term exposure to violent video games was negatively associated with empathetic responses to vignettes.

Some aspects of media desensitization research have yet to be thoroughly investigated, such as the apparent gender differences in desensitization; the interactions between cognitive, emotional, physiological, and behavioral domains of desensitization; and the precise mechanisms governing media desensitization. Nonetheless, mounting evidence suggests that extensive exposure to media violence reduces depression, anxiety, empathy, physiological reactivity, and attitudinal and behavioral opposition to other people's violent acts, particularly among men.

Active audience

Uses and Gratification Theory

The Uses and Gratifications Theory is a Mass Communication theory that focuses on media users' needs, motivations, and gratifications. According to the theory, media consumers are not passive recipients of mass communications; rather, they participate actively in media consumption. Jay G. Blumler and Elihu Katz are credited with developing the theory. They published "The uses of mass communication: Current perspectives on gratifications research" in 1974, which provided a comprehensive picture of the Uses and Gratifications Theory. The theory, however, arose from Harold Laswell's research.

According to Bloomer and Katz, users of media have a desire to do so, resulting in the utilization of "use or gratification". That is, audiences select and use media for the four media purposes or uses and gratifications listed below:

1. Diversion or entertainment (escapism): To get away from everyday problems and routines.
2. Personal Relationships: Used in place of genuine emotional and interpersonal interaction.
3. Personal Identity: They form associations with characters in books and television shows, and they learn behaviors and values from media.
4. Surveillance: To meet their information needs.

This theory's foundation has been widely applied. Denis McQuail, a researcher, slightly altered the order and names in 2000:

• Information
• Personal Identification
• Social Interaction and Integration
• Entertainment

Reception theory

Recognizing Reception Theory

The audience receives the creative work and perceives its content in one of two ways: similar or different. The message's meaning can change depending on how they interpret it in their social context.

Encoding - Encoded messages typically include shared rules and symbols with other people. As a result, the (encoder) sender must consider how the message will be perceived by the receiver.

Decoding - Decoding would be a successful deliver only if the encoder's message was completely understood to its intended content.

It is difficult to gather the information required to analyze each individual audience's experience as a mass. As a result, media outlets and other social media platforms can be used to reach a larger audience and learn about their experiences and understanding.

Press releases and other forms of publicity, such as advertisements, fan letters, celebrity words, fan message boards, and reviews, are useful materials for analysts to assess how well the product has been received.

Here the perceiving of the work can scope in the two categories mentioned:

• Preferred reading
• Oppositional reading

Preferred reading

How well the producer wishes the audience to interpret the media text Members of the crowd will adopt this viewpoint if the messages are clear and if they are the same age and culture; if the storyline is easy to comprehend; and when it deals to subjects that are pertinent to the viewer.

Oppositional reading

The author's perspectives on the film's concept or the subject matter are not well received by the audience. It could be morally wrong, emotionally disturbing, unnecessary adult content of violence and blood gore, religious beliefs, political viewpoints, and so on, which would cause the audience to reject the idea. For example, in Indian films from 1970 to 1980, smoking was portrayed as a symbol of prestige, image, wealth, power, and flourishing happiness, despite the fact that it causes cancer. And the pleasant sensation of smoking is merely contrasted with an unpleasant odor and is perceived as a very unhealthy habit.