An active audience is one that actively engages with the text.  

They question what they see and develop their own interpretation of a media product based on their life experience, education, family & cultural influences.  

Today's, social, economic and textual interpretation of the media is so much more sophisticated. Yes, audiences are influenced by the media, but that doesn't mean that they are not active in making meaning of their media texts.

The relationship between the media and its audiences is much more dynamic. 

The passive audience is a term that was once used to describe an audience who unquestioningly accepted media messages. The passive audience are those that do not interrogate the message that the media is sending. They simply accept the message in the way the media outlet intended.

It is now widely considered that although an audience may quietly consume a media text in a passive manner there is no such thing as a passive audience.

Audiences without thinking about it make decisions about whether or not to pay attention, what to believe, what to ignore, what to value, etc.