Active Audience Theory

Passive Audience - The media has a negative effect on different groups of people
Active Audience - Most people are able to filter the content themselves

Other school of thought - we are able to filter and adapt to content in the media
Gaulenlett - 1995 - The passive audience theory is a backwards model

We have uses and graduations (McQuail - 1972) theory - people use edia for their own purposes and pleasure. It is for their own enjoyment to have escapism and problem solving.
example - don't watch Hollyoaks to learn certain things like rape we watch it to talk to our friends about it

Active audience theory provides a more positive outlook in the effects of the media

Hall (1980) - encoding / decoding model.
Media products have encoded to d

Preferred reading - by audience depending on their background but accepts the dominant viewpoint

Negotiated reading - particularly agrees with meaning
Oppositional reading - meaning understood but don't agree and think the opposite
Aberant -  gets the completely wrong meaning entirely (copycat theory)

Audiences from their own background could have the aberrant reading due to their upbringing. Most people are the preferred reading or negotiated reading.

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat is a moral panic particularly on young people- Addiction (antisocial media), Stalking and obsession with another person becomes the norm, Obsession and unhealthy relationships become a problem, unrealistic body images and expectations for bodies, highly edited images, nudes and explicit images, cat fishing, pedophilia and grooming.


http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/24/health/teen-dating-abuse-thatsnotlove-one-love-foundation/index.html



"Identify the potential impact of a media product you have studied on the audience"