How Audiences Consume Media (Passively/Actively)

The ways that audiences consume media have changed over time, as the way people think of how they consume it differently each time passes. 

A passive audience is more likely to accept the messages encoded in a media text without challenge and are therefore more likely to be directly affected by the messages.

An active audience engages, interprets and responds to a media text in different ways and is capable of challenging the ideas encoded in it.

Passive Theories:

Hypodermic Needle Theory

The hypodermic needle theory is a model of communication suggesting that an intended message is directly received and wholly accepted by the receiver. This theory suggests that the consumer believes everything the media says essentially being Brainwashed! This theory is one of the first media theories to exist and it is not really considered accurate.

Desensitisation

Desensitisation theory proposes that with continual exposure to a stimulus our responses to that stimulus are decreased. Therefore, if aggression is presented to us on a daily basis, there is reduction in our response to the aggression.

Active Theories:

Uses & Gratification Theory

A theory where, we as consumers are actively using the media to satisfy our base social needs. These base social needs include:

• Diversion - A form of escapism from the stress and strain of everyday life. Maybe all media falls into this group. Audiences consume media texts to escape from their everyday lives. They choose entertaining texts that allow them to divert their attention from the real world, perhaps by watching a fantasy film like Harry Potter or reading a fashion magazine like Vogue.
• Personal Identity - The media supplies us with role models, ways of understanding our own place in society.  Some audiences like to watch or read media texts because they can compare their life experiences with those represented in it.
• Social Relationships - People make personal connections with the performers they see on screen, People can build their own relationships discussing media with friends  
• Surveillance -  People use the media to inform themselves about the world around them. Keeping up to date with entertainment/fashion trends. Satisfying curiosity.

Reception Theory

The cultural theorist, Stuart Hall, explored how people make sense of media texts and claimed audiences were active not passive. Reception theory is a version of reader response literary theory that emphasizes each particular reader's reception or interpretation in making meaning from a literary text. Reception theory is generally referred to as audience reception in the analysis of communications models.

• Preferred Reading - The audience decodes the text exactly as the producer intended. Maybe they have the same ideological position.
• Negotiated Reading - The audience understands the meaning and connotations of a text, but they may reject certain elements too. 
• Oppositional Reading - The audience rejects the texts meaning. Might not even engage with the text.