Stuart Hall's Reception Theory

Main features of the Reception theory

  • People are not passive.
  • This approach says that the audience can negotiate the meaning of a text and opposes what is being presented to them.
  • The text is not passively accepted by the audience. They can interpret the meaning behind it differently due to each of their cultural backgrounds and experiences they have had in their life.
  • The audience is active and engaged in the interpretation. 
  • Stuart Hall claimed that the text goes through encoding and decoding stages. 
Encoding: the meaning the producer puts into a text.                                              
Decoding: the meaning the audience receives or takes out of the text. 
  • Texts are encoded by the producers and include the ideologies of the people who make it.
  • Texts are decoded by the audience who interpret their own ideologies in the text. 
  • When a producer creates a text they use preferred reading which is when they encode it with a certain meaning or message that they want to convey to a mass audience. 
There are 3 different ways for an audience to decode a media text:
  • DOMINANT/PREFERRED READING - the audience view the text in the way the producer wanted them to and they agree with the message. The encoded meaning is the same as the decoded meaning. This is a positive thing for a producer as it means they have been successful in portraying the message. 
  • OPPOSITIONAL READING - the audience disagrees with the encoded meaning and creates their own interpretation which is usually the opposite of what the producer intended. They completely reject the message which is being conveyed. 
  • NEGOTIATE READING - a compromise between 
How would an audience have each of these readings?

DOMINANT/PREFERRED READING
  • The text has a clear message. 
  • Audience is of a similar age so they can relate to the text.
  • They are from the same culture as the people who made the text.
  • The meaning is easily understood and relatable.
OPPOSITIONAL READING
  • Controversial themes are included in the text.
  • Disagree with the view that is portrayed.
  • Do not understand the text or the meaning.
  • Dislike the genre of the media text.
  • They are from a different culture so they may have a different understanding.
  • The narrative structure is not relatable. 
NEGOTIATE READING
  • Have different life experiences. 
  • Different ages could mean that there is a wide variety of meanings and understandings.
  • Do not understand the narrative so find it difficult to relate to it.
  • Do not know what the intended dominant reading is so they do not fully understand what messages are being portrayed to them. 

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