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 knowledge about an issue are important. The degree to which people see a certain problem as an important social issue affects their attitudes toward the issue in determining whether they are active or passive. For example, people who recognize the danger and threat of bioterrorism as a vital issue and gain more knowledge about it are more likely to become active audiences than those with less knowledge about the issue.

Second, personal involvement with the issue matters. Even when people recognize an issue as socially important, the extent to which they consider the issue as “their own” problem or the extent to which they believe the issue directly affects their lives determines their degree of liveliness as an audience. For example, people may not become active audiences when they realize the potential threat of bioterrorism as an important social issue because they do not believe it is “their” issue. They may not be concerned about it because they believe the government is responsible for solving the problem. The more personally connected to the issue people are, the more active they become.

Third, people do not perceive an issue only through what is termed the cognitive route. The level of emotional attachment to an issue can play an important role in differentiating active audiences from passive ones. Active audiences may form when people feel angry about, disappointed, or helpless about a certain issue or the way the issue is handled. A high intensity of public sentiment and emotion toward an issue creates active audiences. For example, many South Koreans reacted angrily at the Korean government's decision to reopen the Korean market to U.S. beef in the spring of 2008. U.S. beef products had been banned in Korea for several years due to the fear of mad cow disease. People saw the government's decision to reopen the market as a hasty and irresponsible move, sacrificing public health to the interests of foreign trade. Many scientific and technical arguments and heated debates among journalists, government officials, activist groups, and citizens surrounded this issue (such as whether the U.S. and Korean government inspection systems for mad cow disease are trustworthy, whether beef products from cows less than 3 years old are safer than older ones, and the actual risk probability of mad cow disease). However, knowledge and personal involvement alone are not enough to explain the hundreds of thousands of people who participated in street protests against the government day and night for several months. People were captivated by a strong fear for the safety of their health and an even stronger anger toward their government.

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