Audience Theory- The Reception Theory.

The Reception Theory is a theory created by academic, Stuart Hall in the 1970s.

This theory considered how texts were encoded with meaning by producers and then decoded by audiences. The theory suggests that: 

• When a producer creates a text, it is encoded with a meaning or message that they want to convey to the audience.  
• In some cases, the audience will correctly decode the message and understand what the producer is conveying. 
• In other cases, the audience reject or fail to understand the message that the producer is attempting to convey.
  

Hall identified these three readings as:

• Dominant or preferred.
• Negotiated.
• Oppositional.

Dominant readings.

This is when the audience decodes the message as the producer wants them too, and largely agrees with it. An example of this would be watching a political speech and agreeing with it,

Negotiated readings.

This is when the audience accept, reject or refine the message in light of previous views or texts that they have seen. An example of this would be, watching a policital speech and neither agreeing nor disagreeing to it.

Oppositional reading.

This is when the audience either decode the message wrong, or reject the message portrayed by the producer. An example of this would be watching a political speech and disagreeing with it completely.