The document discusses how audiences engage with and respond to media texts through audience positioning and theories of encoding/decoding. It prompts the reader to analyze how camera shots and angles position audiences in a scene from Frozen, and how technical elements, language, and scene construction make audiences feel. The document also discusses how audiences may have preferred, negotiated, or oppositional readings depending on their backgrounds and identities, and not all audiences are passive decoders of intended messages.

1. Frozen and Audience
part deux
Continue looking at how audiences can be attracted to
a text
Consider how audience use and respond to a text

2. Audience positioning
• List as many camera shots, angles and
movements as you can
• Choose three and explain how this positions
and impacts on an audience

3. Close scene analysis
• Watch the scene from Frozen
• Make notes on how an audience is positioned
• This includes: technical, language, mode of address
and the construction of the scene.
• Comment on how these elements make an audience
feel
• E.g. a POV shot of… positions an audience in the role of
the character, allowing the audience to experience the
same events. In this particular situation the producers
have deliberately left the audience feeling
uncomfortable and on edge…

4. Appealing and targeting audiences
• You started to write a paragraph about how
genre, narrative and representation could
appeal to an audience.
• How can you extend on this using audience
positioning?
• Add this to your paragraph.
EXTENSION:
Add an audience theory to your paragraph

5. How audiences respond to a text

6. Responses to this positioning
• Audience positioning really assumes a passive
audience – one which will decode and accept
the messages contained within a text, exactly
how the producers want them to.
• But as we know not all audiences are passive
and we must therefore look at how an active
audience might react.

7. Encoding and decoding
• Stuart Hall and later David Morley
• Suggested that there are three ways an audience can respond to a text.
• Preferred reading – the one the producers want you to take. They accept
the dominant reading.
• Negotiated – the audience accepts some of the readings but rejects
others.
• Oppositional – audience totally disagrees, for whatever reason*, with
the ideologies encoded within the text.
*The reception theory states that audience will respond differently
depending on their backgrounds, history, prior consumption, culture,
age, gender etc...
(this encoding/decoding model is linked with the reception theory)

8. What else might impact how an
audience responds to a text?
Think about how different audiences might
react when watching the film
What has led to this opinion?
Create a list of elements you think could
create a specific audience response.

9. Some examples…
• Stereotypes and representations
• Challenging hegemonic beliefs
• Challenging audience expectations about
traditional fairy tales
• Language used
• Body Image
• Message of the film

10. Exam style question
• Explore the different ways in which audiences respond to your
chosen texts
• Discuss some of the points previously mentioned
• Include relevant terminology
• Use specific examples from the film
• Apply an audience theory (or two)