Theory: Reception theory Theorists: Stuart Hall developed this theory for media and communication studies.

What is the theory? The reception theory is all about looking at the way an audience receives the media and also how they then interpret and understand what the media has told them. This theory just mainly looks at how the audience comes to understand and process what the media has given them,this is very different from some other theories such as the uses and gratifications theory as it doesnt look at why the audience looks at different types of media it just focuses on how they actually interpret and receive the media. The reception theory also has two parts, the first part involves ecoding and decoding; Ecoding - this is when the media producer gives their product a message that can get through to their audience, it is a way of anchoring their product image with a message so the audience can clearly understand the image. Newspapers, magazines and informative books do this as they describe the image with a small caption, this ensures that the image is understood by the reader. It can also be a way of putting across an emotive headline or caption to get their audience to feel a specific emotion and feeling toward the image. Decoding - this is when an audience can get the message from the media producer without being specifically told how to feel and react to an image they have shown. This method also means that the audience have to decode the message from the image themselves, this can be confusing for some as it means the image has to be quite obvious and not have a lot of potential meanings for the audience. The second part of reception theory is all about how the audience can understand a media product, Stuart Hall came up with the idea that the audience can have many different ways of interpreting and understanding a media product. These ways are ; Preferred -this is when the reader looks at the product, understands it and completely agrees with it and its meaning. Negotiated - This is when the reader has slightly mixed views as they will mostly agree with it and stick to a preferred approach, however they will add their own opinions and thoughts that modify it based on their own experiences and interests. Oppositional - this is when the reader completely rejects the product and doesnt agree with it, however they do understand why other people can have preferred feelings towards the product but they just have the opposite view to them.

Does this theory see the audience as active or passive? Why do you think this? I think that unlike the others this theory has a very mixed audience as some will have to be passive and others are very active, whilst others have more of a mixed approach to media products. For example I feel that for a preferred outlook to a product the audience would have more of a passive outlook as they would agree completely with the product instead of using their own thoughts and opinions about it. For the negotiated people i feel that they would be a mixed audience type as they would remain passive in some ways as they agree with parts and understand the product, yet they bring in their own ideas from their past experiences and their own interests which gives them an active audience type also. Lastly the oppositional people definitely have an active approach to looking at media products as they dont agree with the product at all and completely have their own opinion on it which is very much opposite to the passive audience.

What are the criticisms of this theory? I feel that the criticisms of the reception theory would be that it is very structured and doesn't include any other options other than the three categories of either completely agreeing , mixed, or disagreeing completely which may not fit everyone in some cases. I also feel that this method is very dependant on the audiences past and the different experiences and interests that they have which can change their opinions a lot and also change them frequently. Therefore this method could be found as quite un-reliable as their audience type of being preferred, negotiated or oppositional can change all the time. I feel that a less specific grouping method may be better as it wont be as un-reliable as the people wouldn't be changing all the time purely based on their changing experiences and interests on things.