The Reception Theory

The Reception theory provides a means of understanding media texts by understanding how these texts are read by audiences. Theorists who analyze media through reception studies are concerned with the experience of cinema and television viewing for spectators, and how meaning is created through that experience. An important concept of reception theory is that the media text—the individual movie or television program—has no inherent meaning in and of itself. Instead, meaning is created in the interaction between spectator and text; in other words, meaning is created as the viewer watches and processes the film. 



Given that the Effects Model and the Uses and Gratifications have their problems and limitations a different approach to audiences was developed by the academic Stuart Hall at Birmingham University in the 1970's, this considered how texts were encoded with meaning by producers and then decoded (understood) by audiences. The story suggests that when a producer constructs a text it is encoded with a meaning or message the producer wishes to convey the audience, in some instances audiences will correctly decode the message or meaning and understand what the producer was trying to say.


In some instances the audience will either reject or fail to correctly understand the message, Stuart Hall identified three types of audience readings(or decoding) of the text which are dominant or preferred,negotiated and oppositional.Dominant is where the audience decodes the message as the producer wants them to do and broadly agrees with it e.g. watching a political speech or being disinterested. Negotiated is where the audience accepts,rejects or refines elements of the text in light of previously held views e.g. neither agreeing or or disagreeing with the political speech or being disinterested. Oppositional is where the dominant meaning is recognised but rejected for cultural,political or ideological reasons e.g. total rejection of the political speech and active opposition.