Active and passive audiences, interpretation and response — AQA GCSE Media Studies 8572
AQA GCSE Media Studies · 8572
Active and passive audiences, interpretation and response
Media audiences
What you need to know
Active and passive audiences, and the debate about how far media messages affect audiences.
Interpretation: preferred and aberrant readings, and how social differences (age, class, gender and ethnicity) and individual ones shape responses.
How responses change over time: how changing ideas about gender roles and ethnic identity affect the way audiences now see older products, such as the OMO advert or the first episode of Doctor Who.
Useful perspectives, though not ones the specification requires: Stuart Hall's reception theory; the passive, effects view of audiences, with Packard's ideas about advertising and Bandura's Bobo doll experiments as examples; cultivation theory; and Katz and Lazarsfeld's two-step flow.
The Close Study Products for 2027 and 2028 exams are His Dark Materials ('The City of Magpies') and Doctor Who ('An Unearthly Child'); the Daily Mirror and The Times; Marcus Rashford's and Kim Kardashian's online presence; Lara Croft Go, with Blackpink The Game for 2027 exams and Lego Fortnite for 2028 exams; the Galaxy, Represent and OMO adverts; the Tatler and Heat covers; Black Widow and I, Daniel Blake; the Arctic Monkeys and Blackpink videos; and Radio 1's launch and Kiss Breakfast. Kim Kardashian: Hollywood was set only for 2025, so past questions on it are practice only.
