The epistemic autonomy of mass media audiences

Abstract

This article draws on recent work in lay epistemology to reformulate the audience autonomy debate in epistemological terms. It outlines a model of the audience member as a lay theorist who develops a hierarchically structured theory system that is based on‐and continuously tested against‐everyday experience, including experience supplied by the mass media. The lay epistemic framework provides a common language into which competing claims about audience autonomy can be translated and then compared. The translation reveals that the views of the “pessimistic” and the “optimistic” sides of the debate are in significant ways complementary and compatible, disagreeing primarily on an empirical matter.