Reception theory emphasizes the reader's interpretation of a text based on their background and experiences. It originated from Hans-Robert Jauss' work in the 1960s. The audience is not passive in their reception - they negotiate meanings or oppose the intended meaning. Stuart Hall identified three interpretative codes: dominant reading fully accepts the text; negotiated reading partly shares and modifies the message; oppositional reading directly opposes the dominant code and creates an alternative interpretation based on their social situation.

1. Audience Theory
Francesca Orton

2. Audience Theory
Reception theory is a version of reader response literary
theory that emphasizes the reader's reception of a
literary text. It is more generally called audience
reception in the analysis of communications models. In
literary studies, reception theory originated from the
work of Hans-Robert Jauss in the late 1960s.

3. Audience Theory
The audience is split into negotiation and opposition, they
are not passive.
This means that a text (a book, a movie, a magazine, or
newspaper) is not simply passively accepted by the
audience, each individual interprets the meanings of the
text based on their individual cultural background and life
experiences.
The meaning of a text is not within the text itself, but is
created within the relationship between the text and the
reader.

4. Audience Theory
Stuart Hall - the role of social positioning in the
interpretation of mass media texts by different social
groups
He suggested there are three hypothetical interpretative
codes that audiences may have

5. Audience Theory
Dominant reading: the reader fully shares the text's
code and accepts and reproduces the preferred reading
(a reading which may not have been the result of any
conscious intention on the part of the author - in such a
stance the code seems 'natural' and ‘transparent')

6. Audience Theory
Negotiated reading: the reader partly shares the text's
message and broadly accepts the preferred reading, but
sometimes resists and modifies it in a way which reflects
their own position, experiences and interests
(local and personal conditions may be seen as
exceptions to the general rule) - this position involves
contradictions;

7. Audience Theory
Oppositional reading: the reader, whose social situation
places them in a directly oppositional relation to the
dominant code, understands the preferred reading but
does not share the text's code and rejects this reading,
they create their own alternative interpretation (radical,
feminist etc.)
(e.g. when watching a television broadcast produced on
behalf of a political party they normally vote against).