Reception theory examines how audiences receive and interpret media texts. It proposes that media producers encode messages in texts but audiences can decode them in different ways - either correctly understanding the intended message, rejecting it, or misunderstanding it. Stuart Hall identified three types of audience decoding: dominant, where the message is understood as intended; negotiated, where the audience refines the message based on their own views; and oppositional, where the audience understands but rejects the dominant message.