ABSTRACT
The audience has been central in mass communication research from the very beginning, but several of the models which have already been described point to a significant development of thinking about the audience. Initially the audience was perceived as an undifferentiated mass, as a passive target for persuasion and information, or as a market of consumers of media products. Students of media effects soon came to recognize that actual audiences are made up of real social groups and are characterized by networks of interpersonal relationships through which effects are mediated. Audiences can also resist influence, in part because they have their own varied reasons for choosing to attend to media messages. The initial mistake (following the basic one-directional model, 2.1 above) was to suppose that media choose their audiences. They aim to do so, but their selections are less decisive than the choices which audience members make of media channels and contents.
