Stuart Hall argued that all media contains encoded messages from producers that viewers must decode, but that decoding can occur in different ways for different viewers based on factors like family, culture, nationality, and ideology. Hall believed there were three main ways audiences decode messages - as the dominant, negotiated, or oppositional reading intended by the producer. The dominant reading accepts the producer's message, a negotiated reading accepts some of it but also imposes their own views, and an oppositional reading recognizes the message but rejects it.

1. Reception Study
Critical approaches

2. Reception Theory
Stuart Hall argued that all media, including film, TV
& videos has a message.
He believed that producers encoded a message
within their videos and viewers decoded the
message
but he believed that different viewers decoded the
message in different ways and with very different
outcomes.

3. He believed that people have a
relationship with media
This relationship was affected by many factors.

4. That relationship is affected by lots of
different factors
Family
Culture
Nationality
ideology

5. The producer encodes a message into
their video (or media)…

6. …and the audience decode the
message

7. The audience decode the message in
one of three ways
• Dominant
• Negotiated
• Oppositional

8. Dominant
• The audience decodes & accepts the message
that the media producer intends.

9. Negotiated
• The viewer might accept parts (or all) of the
intended message but also change it based on
their bias and past experience.

10. Oppositional
• The viewer recognises the message but rejects
it because they don’t agree with it
• This might be because of their ideology, social
or cultural upbringing etc…)

11. Task 1
Log onto Moodle and go to this weeks critical
approaches. Watch the two films and write
about how you reacted to the message. How
does repetition theory affect your response, and
why?