Stuart Hall's Audience Response Theory

Stuart Hall's Reception Theory says that media texts are encoded by the producer, meaning that there is lots of hidden messages that the producer has deliberately decided to incorporate into their work. However the text is then decoded by an audience and they will see the piece of media in a different way, not necessarily in the intended way it was meant to be seen.

According to Stuart Hall their are three different ways the audience will decode a text.

• Preferred Reading - How the producer wants the audience to view the media text.
• Oppositional Reading - When the audience thinks the opposite of the preferred reading and creates their own meaning of the text.
• Negotiated Reading - A middle ground between the two readings in which the audience accepts the producer's views, but incorporates their own views on parts as well.

He says that there are lots of different reasons why an audience will see a text differently and it is up to the producer to target the right people if they wish to gain one of these readings either for publicity or the fact they create an enjoyable piece of media. The different reasons could be because of age, culture, gender and even the mood in which the audience are in the time of watching the clip.