Media Powerpoint

1. Audience Reception
Encoding Decoding Model

2. What is audience reception?
• Audiences receive and respond to texts very
differently. The different effects generate varied
responses.
• It is a way to characterise and group together
different audience (consumer) interpretations.
• Audience reception = the way we react

3. Encoding Decoding Theory
• Stuart Hall, 1973
• Producers encode meaning/ideology into texts, which
audiences decode
• Audiences are active in their interpretations and can
accept/reject the producers message.
• ENCODE : meaning, ideology
• DECODE : ???

4. Encoding Decoding Model
Producers
‘ENCODE’
Put meaning
into a text
THE TEXT
(Music Videos,
Adverts, TV,
Film)
Audiences
‘DECODE’
Take meaning
out of the text

5. Encoding Decoding Theory
• Texts can be decoded by body language to understand
emotion/relationships.
• They have multiple meanings and can be decoded in various
ways. The messages can mean something different to different
people.

6. Encoding Decoding Theory
• Preferred Reading – audiences agree and accept what the
producers are encoding
• Negotiated Reading – audiences partially agree with the
encoded messages
• Oppositional Reading – audiences reject/disagree or decode
the text differently
Age, Gender, Cultural Experiences
David Morley

7. Audience Readings –
Macdonald’s Advert
• Preferred Reading
• Intended to encourage feelings of
hunger and desire. Audiences will
recall these feelings when passing by
the big chain and want to buy some
food
• Negotiated Reading
• Audiences will enjoy eating the
products, but those who are health-
conscious may respond with
annoyance, but understand eating
products once a month isn’t damaging.

8. Audience Readings – The
Teletubbies 1997
• Oppositional Reading
• “He is purple – the gay
pride colour; and his
antenna is shaped like a
triangle – the gay-pride
symbol.”
• “Tinky Winky also carries a
magic pink bag”
• “Modeling the gay lifestyle
is damaging to the moral
lives of children”

9. Audience Reading Activity
Think about how the mis-en-scene may have an impact…

10. Encoding Decoding Music
Videos
• Managers encode artists (i.e. The Spice Girls, The Pussycat
Dolls, JLS) with specific ideology.
This is ultimately to increase financial gain.
• The target audience will always have a preferred reading.
They accept all messages and decode the text in the way that
was intended.
• Usually the secondary audience will decode a negotiated
reading.
• Parents/audiences who hate the music genre will have an
oppositional reading.

11. Encoding Decoding Music
Videos
• Think about how the producers have encoded the music video
and how it may be decoded.
• What would be a preferred reading of the text? Why?
• What would be a negotiated reading of the text? Why?
• What would be a oppositional reading of the text? Why?
• What is your reading of the text? Why?

12. Blog Task
• What is audience theory?
• What is Hall’s Encoding Decoding Model? Provide
examples of how one may decode pictures
differently.
• Discuss Morley’s audience reception theory and
use the advert examples we discussed
• How is the Encoding Decoding Model relevant to
music videos? Discuss the three readings in
relation to two music videos.
Choose a genre/artist you like/a genre/artist you
don’t like.