Active Audience Theory

Post-modernism and pluralism

Pluralist model

This is the idea that the audience have an active role to play in the understanding and creation of a media text. The pluralist idea is the opposite to the idea of hegemony. A pluralist model argues that there is diversity in society and everyone is different, and therefore there is also choice; the audience can choose what they want to believe and what not to believe. The text doesn’t tell us what to think and believe.I’d like the audience of my A2 film to be active in their opinion on my film’s ideology, and not be hyperdermic; subject to an ideology embedded in their minds. My film is one that will have a number of opinions, like audiences of most post-modern texts.

Post-modernism

Post-modernism directly relates to the pluralist model in that it stands by it’s meaning and theory. The audience of post-modern texts, as well as this being a post-modern idea in itself, are not deceptible to one hyperdermic meaning, and the audience can take different polysemic meanings from the same texts, especially post-modern texts.

Post-modern texts lend themselves to being polysemic in it’s ideology and lend themselves to have a pluralist model. The negative mood of my post-modern A2 text is one that lends itself to have an audience that follows the pluralist model.

The texts may not even have a preferred reading, let alone a hyperdermic ideology.

http://www.mediapluralism.eu

OCR Media Studies for A2 Third Edition by Julian McDougall