CITATION AND COPYRIGHT INFORMATION:
Cite as: Dervin, B. (1989). Audience as listener and learner, teacher and confidante: The Sense-Making approach. In R. E. Rice & C. K. Atkin (Eds.), Public communication campaigns (2nd ed., pp. 67-86). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Reprinted in: B. Dervin & L. Foreman-Wernet (with E. Lauterbach) (Eds.). (2003). Sense-Making Methodology reader: Selected writings of Brenda Dervin (pp. 215-232). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
© Hampton Press and Brenda Dervin (2003), reprinted by permission of Sage Publications (1989).

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ABSTRACT:
This is the second of three versions of chapters Dervin has written for the Sage Publications edited volumes entitled Public communication campaigns. This version, originally dated 1989, advances the presentation of the 1981 chapter. It proposes that campaign design and research needs to undergo two fundamental reconceptualizations regarding the nature of audiences and the nature of campaigns. Dervin suggests that the way in which communication campaigns conceptualize and attempt to predict audiences freezes them in time-space and instead of treatment them communicatively treats them as objects—in effect, the populace becomes audienced. Further, the messages of the campaigns are premised on conceptualizations of information which apply to at best only a small slice of human situations because they emphasize unchanging truth. The result is that campaigns are designed on communication-as-transmission premises when they need to be designed on communication-as-communication premises. Dervin explicates each of these challenges and their implications for the designs and impacts of communication campaigns. As in the 1981 chapter, she then reviews how Sense-Making Methodology has attempted to address the challenges and illustrates with example studies and applications. In all of Dervin’s writings, later works introduce new terminology and alter assumptions—for example, later Sense-Making is described as beyond constructivism. Most of the fundamental assumptions and arguments remain the same, however. The Dervin chapters in the two other volumes of Public communication campaigns are substantially different and are, in effect, entirely different presentations. See Dervin 1981 and Dervin & Frenette 2001.

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