Reception Theory

• A different approach to audiences was developed by the Academic Stuart Hall at Birmingham University during the 1970's.
• The idea was to consider how texts were encoded with meaning by producers and then decoded by audiences.
• The theory suggests that: when a producer constructs a text it is encoded with a message or meaning that the producer wishes to convey.
• In some instances audiences will correctly decode the message or meaning and understand what the producer was trying to say.
• In some cases the audience will either reject or fail to correctly understand the message.

Stuart Hall identified 3 types of audience readings (decoding) of the texts:

• Dominent or preferred - the audience decodes the message as the producer wants them to do and broadly agrees with it. - E.g Watching a political speech and agreeing.
• Negotiated - the audience accepts, rejects or refines elements of the text in light of previously held views/ E.g Neither agreeing or disagreeing
• Oppositional - the dominent meaning is recognised but rejected for cultural, political or ideological reasons. E.g Total rejection of the political speech and active opposition