Active audience approaches

Active audience approaches

1. The two-step flow model

   • Katz and Lazarsfeld suggest that personal relationships and social networks are dominated by ‘opinion leaders’ – that is, people with influence because other social network members admire and listen to them. These opinion leaders typically have strong beliefs about a range of matters, which they have formed by exposing themselves to different types of media and content. Katz and Lazarsfeld argue that media content goes through two steps before it has an effect: 1. The opinion leader is exposed to the media content. 2. The opinion leader disseminates their interpretation of the content, and those who respect the opinion leader are influenced by this interpretation.
     • As a result, media audiences are not directly influenced by the media, but by the opinion leader. The audience, in the form of the opinion leader, is active. However, there are two problems with this model: 1. There is no guarantee that the opinion leader hasn’t been subjected to an imitative or desensitizing effect themselves. A leader of street gang may convince other members that violence in acceptable because they have been exposed to screen violence that transmits the message that violence is a method to solve problems. 2. Those who are at greater risk of being influenced by the media are often socially isolated individuals who are not members of any social network. As such, they will not have an opinion leader to help them in interpreting media content in a healthy way.

2. The selective filter model

3. The uses and gratifications model

4. The reception analysis model

5. The cultural effects model

6. The postmodernist model