Criticism On Contemporary Western Audience Theory

As the destination of Culture Communication, the audience has become a key to understanding mass media and modern society. Also, the audience research is an important area of Cultural studies. Taking contemporary Western audience theory as the research object, this article attempts to criticize the existing research and find an explicit clue based on a new perspective.The first chapter is an overview of the Western audience research. First, the origin of audience research is traced. Second, the theoretical territory has been outlined by introducing the two paradigms and the three traditional of audience research. Finally, we attempt to re-sort contemporary Western audience theory upon the perspective of subjectivity, which is also the innovation of this article.The second to fourth chapter is a specific discussion on contemporary Western audience theory.The Frankfurt school's Adorno and Horkheimer put forward the concept of Cultural Industry, thinking that the audience is passive, who can be controlled and influenced by media. Habermas analyzed how public sphere had been occupied by mass media and the reality of the audience's being manipulation. Baudrillard is also pessimistic.On the other hand, Benjamin highlighted the democratic and participation potential of audience in Cultural Industry. Williams' culture theory exalted the status of audience. Hall's Encoding and Decoding theory let us pay due attention to the subjectivity of audience. Molly supports hall's views by ethnography research. Fisk regards active audience theory to the extreme.As media environment changes, the audience research turned to study the complexity of audience's subjectivity in practice. These researches tend to pay attention to audience's individual interpretation and specific cultural background. Fans have both the passivity and resist initiative. The studies of fandom pay more attention to the analysis of the complexity, which get out from the negative or positive theoretical definition, beyond the limitations of the dualism.New technology, media and the view of"audience is also disseminator"allow people to begin to question if the concept of "audience" is necessary. Abercrombie and Longhurst notice the insufficient of negative and positive audience theory of audience theory, shelved the subjectivity of the audience, put forward wonders/performing paradigm for audience research, providing a new clue and direction.The last chapter provides some suggestion of audience research in china.