Active Audiences and Science

Active audience is a term referring to a group of people who are knowledgeable about a certain public issue, highly involved with it, and furthermore, willing to act upon it. An audience is usually considered as an unorganized aggregate of people or a loose form of mass public in a society, not necessarily associated with a particular issue. However, when it comes to active audiences, the concept is similar to the concept of active publics, whereby a group of people are well aware of an issue of interest, personally involved with it, and active participants in solving the problem.

As the definition of active audiences indicates, several factors stand out to differentiate active audiences from passive ones. First, cognitive factors such as level of awareness or ...