Audience reception theory

IntroductionAudience reception is the way we ( people/ audience) react to things.• Audience reception receive and respond to text

very differently. This is because of everyone individuality and opinions. This in return generates varied Reponses which is normal as not everyone sees things in the same way but it an also cause disagreement.

• This is where Stuart Hall media theory comes into places as it explains how one person intended message can send a different message to another person. Also how to make sure that everyone gets your attended message.

Stuart Hall • Stuart Mcphail Hall was a Jamaican born cultural theorist and

sociologist who lived in the UK from 1951.

• He is the founder of many project and theory . Also the encoding and decoding model of communication and reception theory.

• His paper that he wrote at the begin of his career explaining the model of encoding and decoding in the television discourse in 1973, got him allot of success and attention this then lead to the discovery/ ideology of audience reception which was linked to his previous theory.

“The way a reader decodes a text is dependent on sociological factors such as age, past experience and their own belief.”

Encoding &Decoding Theory

• Encoding and decoding its how media messages are produced, circulated and consumed . You can have one media text representing one ideology and meaning however not everyone will accept it in the same ways . The text can be decoded by body language to understand emotion/ relationship.

• This is why Stuart hall argued saying that the meaning of a text is not fixed and determined by the sender /creator and that the message will not be received the same by the audience.

• He also said that there is a lack of fit between the moment of the production of the message which in “ encoding “ and the moment of its reception “ reception”.

• However , in order to get the intended reaction within the audience , the audience must correctly decode the intended message from the creator in order in order for the meaningful exchange to take place.

Audience reception • There three different ways that the audience will be able to receive a media

text. All deepening on their age, gender and cultural experiences.1. Preferred reading- This is when the audience agree and accept what the

producers/ creator encoded/ encoding.

2. Negotiated reading – This is when the audience partly agree with the encoding/ encoded.

3. Opposition reading- This is when the audience totally reject/disagree or decode the the text differently than its initial decoded .

Example 1

Example 2- Disney princess This is a good example of a preferred reading. It agrees with the encoded message

Example 3- The teletubbies 1997