Media audiences and effects: The question of the rational audience in the London Stock Exchange

This chapter suggests an alternative perspective on the media effects debate. Early work on media influence assumed a causal link between mass media and mass behaviour. Conservative elite fear of the malleable masses focused on the ‘magic bullet’ effect of the media. Critical elites, in turn, argued that conservative elites kept the ‘unconscious’ masses in check via control of mass media and culture. In contrast, decades of effects and audience research has established the inadequacy of this ‘strong effects’ paradigm. The main thrust of this counter research is the realisation that audiences actively consume and use the media for self-serving purposes. They are, in effect, independent individuals, capable of deciding how to use the media to fulfil their own personal interests and pleasures.