A Re-evaluation of Literature in Active and Critical Audience Studies

The debate in audience studies between what are often termed "active audience theory" or "interpretive audience studies" and "critical audience studies" generally reflects broader debates around structure and agency. At the centre of the discussion then are questions about the audience's power to actively read texts and make their own meanings from them and the structural and textual limits imposed upon this process. These various arguments vary between celebrations of textual polysemy and pessimistic prognoses of structural determination. The debate is often a convoluted one, carried out on shifting grounds with complex and intertwining concepts. Depending on which literature is read, the same authors are portrayed as active audience proponents or critical media researchers.