ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the major arguments and trends within the existing literature on audiences and fan culture. With the codification of sport, which introduced boundaries to the playing area and restricted the number of participants, came the rise in mass spectating. Walter Benjamin argued that being witness to art and culture in a state of 'distraction' paying only partial, or even a subconscious attention to the piece. He suggests a level of appreciation and knowledge, where the original 'aura' of the piece recedes and one is able to appreciate it from the perspective of a true critic. In relation to the notion of the active audience, three criticisms of this are made by N. Abercrombie and B. Longhurst. The simple was the dominant form in the pre-modern period, while the mass audience has its origins in the development of mass media in the early to mid-modern period. The diffused audience is a phenomenon of a media saturated late-modern period.
