Audience reception theory

1. Audience reception theory

2. • Gratifications have their problems and
limitations a different approach to audiences
was developed by the academic Stuart Hall at
Birmingham University in the 1970’s

3. • The theory suggests that:
• When a producer constructs a text it is encoded
with a meaning or message that the producer
wishes to convey to the audience
• In some instances audiences will correctly decode
the message or meaning and understood what
the producer was trying to say
• In some instances the audience will either reject
or fail to correctly understand the message

4. • Identified three types of audience readings (or
decoding) of the text:
• 1) dominant of preferred
• 2) Negotiated
• 3) Oppositional

5. Dominant
• Where the audience decodes the message as
the producer wants them to do and broadly
agrees with it

6. Negotiated
• Where the audience accepts, rejects or refines
elements of the text in light of previously held
views

7. Oppositional
• Where the dominant meaning is recognised
but rejected for cultural, political or
ideological reasons.