Audience responses

Learning objectives:
To apply Stuart Hall's Reception Theory to texts,

Key words: Stuart Hall

The positioning of audiences by media texts suggests that the audiences shouls accept the messages contained within the text and decode the text in the way expected by the text's producers. However, audiences do not all respond to the texts in the same way.
They may accept or challenge the messages encoded within the text.
Stuart Hall accepted that audiences were active, not passive and suggested that there were three main ways in which audiences may respond to a media text.

There are a few important things to remember about the three different positions that we can take.

Preferred Reading

Is not just about 'liking' a text - you must understand what the purpose of a text is and agree with its ideologies and the messages it carries.

Oppositional Reading

Is not just 'disliking' a text - there are many reasons why someone may take an oppositional reading - but whatever these reasons are, the audience member must understand what the intentions of the text are, but reject them.

Negotiated Reading

Can be the case whereby an audience member agrees with some ideologies and not others, but it can also be the case where the audience doesn't fully understand the intentions of the text - or is confused about the purpose of the text.

Task 1:

Discuss reasons for the three different possible readings of the newspaper front page below.

Work in pairs. Bullet points.