Active consumption, passive participation?

All theories of international communications rely to some extent on the idea of an active or passive consumer.

Consumers of media aren't given enough credit by theorists, particularly the Frankfurt School. People can be products of their own environment, but in an age where there are more outlets for news and information - and more opportunities for individuals to shape the news themselves - the passive media consumer becomes more of an anomaly.

Bias always plays a role in media consumption, regardless of whether it is "left" or "right," or bias by the consumer or producer. An active consumer of media can opt to only watch Fox News, and only read papers run by Rupert Murdoch - but they still have their own bias in the balance of what information they choose to digest. That person is "active" in that they choose where to get their information, but their passivity is also indicated by a lack of variation in sources. To be fair, the same thing could be said of someone who exclusively gets their information from CNN.

Our society - for this purpose, I will define it as the developed world - has access to so much information, that choosing to participate is indicative of being an active consumer. The opportunities for editorializing, however, are a danger to critical thinking and passivity. Political commentators and pundits are constant features of 24 hour news networks, and often bring in a large segment of an audience. What I wonder, though, is how willing those audiences are to criticize and question what they hear.

With so much information and so many forms of media available for consumption and participation, one would assume that the idea of a passive audience found in the dependency theory and the propaganda models of communications would be outdated. But with the ease of obtaining such information, and the variation of channels through which it comes, analyzing the news and other forms of media may not be a consumer's priority. Since there are outlets for different ideologies and world views, people can actively choose what to consume, but consume it passively.

The more choice there is, the less critical thinking consumers do. But having decisions on what media to follow indicates active consumers with the ability to be critical in their choices - the hope is that at some point, they will be just as critical in processing information.