Active Audiences

 The ‘effects debate’ has long been criticised for being out-dated.  Commentators such as David Gauntlett (2004) suggests that there are major problems with the way that the effects model treats not only audience members, such as children, as inadequate but also sees the media texts as the root cause of the problem without taking sociological or psychological factors into account.  Such ideas can be placed with active audience theory. 

Active audience theories see audiences as responding actively to the media they consume. They may question the messages that a media product presents, disagree with it, or even interact with it (e.g. by reviewing it, commenting on it online etc). Active audience theories see audiences as consciously aware of they ways they are interpreting media products, and of the difference between media representations and reality.