In the mass media perspective, have two types of audience which is the passive audience and the active audience. But sometimes, they maybe act both of these types. So, in discuss this both type of the audience, I have pick up the difference theory to explained how their style can give the powerful effects to mass media or by their attitudes make the mass media have the limited impact on them.
Lots of theory that has been discussed on passive audience, and state that people are easily influenced by the media. While active audience concept can be viewed as a theory that focuses on accessing what people do with media. This concept said that the people make more active decisions about how to use the media (Stephen W. Littlejohn and Karen A. Foss, 2008). For that reason, this concept can be referred to as audience-centered rather than source dominated. Baran and Davis (2006) suggested that this concept should be looked under micro level perspective rather than macro level perspective. These ideas of audience are associated with various theories of media effects. The powerful effects theories tend to be based on passive audience, whereas the minimal effect theories are based more on an active audience.
During the 1970s and 1980s, more researchers became increasingly focused on media audience. Most of them focus to gain more useful understanding of what people do with the media in their daily lives. As this research develop, new and less pessimistic conceptualization of audience began to develop. Empirical researcher start to reexamined limited-effect assumption about audience and argued that people were not as passive as these effects theory assumed (Baran and Davis, 2006).
Media audience is a group of people who participate in an experience or encounter a work of art, literature, theatre, music or academics in any medium. Audience members participate in different ways in different kinds of art; some events invite overt audience