Audience reception

audiences all have different ways of receiving and responding to texts. the variety of effects generate a number of different responses. It is seen in a way that characterises and groups the audience interpretation.

Encoding Decoding Theory

• Stuart Hall, 1973
• The producers encode meanings/ideology into texts which the audiences then decode. 
• Audiences are known to be active when it comes to their interpretations and can either reject or accept the message the producer is trying to spread across.

Texts are able to be decoded through the use of body language  to understand emotions or relationships. they have multiple different meanings which are all able to be decoded in various ways. The message that is sent across will be interpreted in many different ways by different people. 

Preferred reading- Audiences will agree and accept what the producers are encoding

negotiated reading- Audiences will usually only partly agree with the encoded message

oppositional reading- Audiences will reject/disagree or decode the text in a different way

Example; 

Preferred reading ;

This is intended to encourage the feeling 

of hunger or craving for fast food. Audiences will 

get this feeling when passing by a McDonalds 

chain and want to go in and buy food. 

Negotiated reading; 

Audiences will usually go to 

McDonalds and enjoy having a Big Mac. Those

who are health conscious may tend

to respond with annoyance or anger, but they 

understand having it once a month isn't going to be damaging.   

Oppositional reading; 

"He is purple- the gay pride colour

and his antenna is shaped like a triangle which

is the gay pride symbol" 

"Tinky Winky also carries a magic pink bag"

"Modelling the gay lifestyle is damaging to the moral lives of children"

Grime 

a huge majority of audiences believe grime is about encouraging gangs, drugs and gun violence towards young people, this is more likely to be the oppositional readers. negotiated readers and preferred readers are more likely to listen to the music and realise that grime artists are not encouraging bad behaviour and instead they are telling people about their upbringing around gangs etc.  

This genre of music can benefit from being decoded as many people believe its used to promote negative things but if it were to be decoded properly people would find that they are rapping about drugs and violence but they are talking about how it affected them growing up. If anything grime has been used to send a message to young people about being streetwise and not trusting someone if your heart is telling you not to.