Television and the active audience

Abstract

The active audienceIt is something of a cliché in social science research to imagine a Martian arriving on Earth and being bewildered by what it sees.Yet as an exercise, it de-familiarises the familiar, allowing us to understand reality as a social construction and so to recognise the 'work' which goes into making sense of things which otherwise appear obvious to us.Television is a prime example of the obvious, in this sense: for regular viewers, a mere glance at the box in the corner reveals the latest development in the narrative, whether a narrative in the news or in our favourite soap opera.The meanings appear given, unavoidable, they exist 'in' the programmes and leap out at us when we watch.Taking in these meanings seems a routine and effortless process for most people.Kubey and Czikszentmihalyi's research on the television audience (1990) confirms our commonsense view that television viewing is a mindless and relaxing experience, for although television in its early years was startling and new, it has rapidly become 'moving wallpaper' in most homes.This common-sense view of television as moving wallpaper and of viewers as mindless absorbers of images fits with a longstanding trend in mass communication theory.Whether influenced by sociological theories of ideology and hegemony or by social psychological theories of media effects and attitude or behaviour change, many media researchers have regarded the audience as homogenous, vulnerable, and easily manipulated in the face of a powerful and all-pervasive mass media.Yet, certain traditions of mass communications, both old and new (Curran, 1990), contradict this view and argue instead for active, resourceful and motivated audiences.Children are often in the position of the Martian, and work on children's understanding of television in particular has served to counter the notion of television viewing as an effortless experience.Many of young children's experiences of television show vividly the kinds of work that experienced viewers do in making sense of television.Greenfield (1984) reports her three-year old son's confusion when his mother, while appearing on television, failed to wave back at her son at home.Dorr (1986) describes how children can't understand how the Six Million Dollar man ever catches anybody, for he is always shown in slow motion at the point of capture.She also notes how five year olds regard advertisements as helpful displays of available products, with no idea that they are also persuasive, designed to sell to children.As Dorr (1986) and Hodge and Tripp (1986) reveal, even when children begin to understand the conventions of television --the use of televisual codes such as ellipsis, action replay, or special effects --they remain confused for some time.Dorr describes a seven-year old who, knowing that bullets in an actionadventure drama are fake, nonetheless remained anxious about the stray real bullet which may have been included by mistake.Christensen (1986) shows that even when children have figured out the relations between characters, actions, motives and consequences, they still find it hard even by the age of twelve to abstract the intended moral message in 'pro-social' children's drama.None of this is to disparage children: as new members of society, they must learn the codes and conventions of all aspects of their culture, including television, if they are to become part of the culture, and they are inventive, sophisticated, and motivated in doing

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