Stuart Hall - Reception Theory

Today we looked at Stuart Hall and Reception Theory. It is an active audience theory. It states that the producer "encodes" the media with a message but this message can be interpreted in different ways. The viewer can "decode" a different meaning from the media because of the way they view things because of factors such as:

•Life Experience

•Mood at time

•Age

•Culture

•Beliefs

•Gender

This means that aberant decoding can occur where the audience does not accept the encoded meaning and instead interprets their own ideologies into the text. Preferred reading is the meaning that the producer wants to convey to a mass audience but it can be misinterpreted making the message noneffective. An example of this is the Miley Cyrus music video "We Can't Stop" 

The producer wanted to make people forget about the Hannah Montana girl, and create a new image for Miley Cyrus but when it was decoded by the audience. The main view was that she was "slutty" and "disgraceful" but this was not the same for the whole audience. 

Hall included three types of audience decoding:

•Dominant or preferred

•Negotiated

•Oppositional

Dominant- How the producer wants the audience to view the media text. They agree with the message.

Negotiated- A compromise between the dominant and oppositional readings.

Oppositional- The audience rejects the encoded message and creates their own meaning for the text.

Another example is Al Gore's documentary that presents a dramatised view of global warming. Some people will agree that the world is in catastrophe (e.g. A person who has experienced a natural disaster) but some will say that he is over-reacting (e.g. A person in a good mood)