The uses and gratifications paradigm, like the initial conceptions of media effects, can be viewed as a compatible elaboration of contemporary social and political theory. The fundamental assumptions of the uses and gratifications approach, particularly the assumptions regarding the nature and extent of audience activity and the ability of the audience to recognize and act in their own best interest, implicitly bind the approach to a limited conception of the distribution and maintenance of political power. Just as the strictly behavioral orientation of the pluralist theory promotes an overly narrow conception of the exercise of power, so the behavioral orientation of the uses and gratifications paradigm, by placing so much faith in the audience's ability to self-report the immediate as well as larger implications of their media orientations, over-emphasizes the degree of audience autonomy. If the uses and gratifications paradigm is to truly reflect the audience's media experience, it must reject the optimistic and simplistic notion that an active audience implies a powerful audience. (HOD)