Stuart Hall - Reception Theory

Question 1

What does having a Preferred reading mean?

Answer 1

That the particular messages have been received by the audience, accepted by them and that the audience totally gets what the producer wanted them to understand.

Question 2

What does having a oppositional/positional reading mean?

Answer 2

Audience interprets media product and they don’t agree with the messages that the producers wanted them to take onboard e.g. Mrs Weatherson and Barbie.

Question 3

What does having a Negotiated reading mean?

Answer 3

We accept some of those messages but we reject other parts of it.

Question 4

What is Reception Theory?

Answer 4

Media texts contain a variety of messages that are encoded (made/inserted) by producers and then decoded (understood) by audiences - what we see is simply a ‘re-presentation’ of what producers want us to see.

Question 5

Why might audiences read texts in different ways for different reasons?

Answer 5

• Genders.
• Ages.
• Different historical time periods.
• Brought up in different areas of the country.
• Backgrounds.
• Ethnicities.
• Sexualities.