ABSTRACT
Although the central concern in Taiwan's audience studies is the issue of subjectivity (Hwang 2003), audience subjectivity is usually conceptualized in terms of audience's agency as actively expressing resistance, opinions, and seeking pleasure, or passively accepting patriarchal ideologies (Chang 2011; Wei 1999). Despite theoretical calls for more contextualized studies on audience in order to overcome the active—passive dichotomy (Shaw 2000; Wei 1999), the conceptual polarization of audiences persists in internet studies following the political economic and cultural studies approaches in the West (Shaw 2000). This dichotomous thinking trickles down to popular discourses that oscillate between audiences as active citizens and audiences as a passive crowd prone to manipulation. However, popular invocations of audiences are always embedded in the anxieties, hopes, and needs of the people and the demands of the authorities.
