Reception Theory

 Reception Theory: 

50 cent advert

Applying Reception theory to adverts

Preferred Readings: The producer/creator intends to inspire us and have confidence in ourselves. The slogan ' I am what I am' helps achieve this. 

Negotiated Readings: From the fingerprints in the background, the producers intentions could've been to offer us a narrative of a possible criminal background or violence.

Oppositional Readings: The audience may be angry at Reebok as it might be thought that they are glorifying gang culture and crime and promoting it. 

Reception theory fact sheets 

1) vampire Diaries 

SENDER- Katherine Elaina Stephan Damon 

MESSAGE- A girl and her bfs find the supernatural world of vampires and werewolves 

CHANNEL - Netflix.

      RECEIVER - The person who watches the television show. 

2) What are the definitions of 'encoding' and 'decoding'?

encoding : constructing a message using a shared code and language. Someone else can then read it who shares that cultural understanding and is able to decode it.

decoding: The decoding of a message is how an audience member is able to understand, and interpret the message. It is a process of interpretation and translation of coded information into a comprehensible form

3) Why did Stuart Hall criticise the sender-message-channel-receiver model? 

Stuart Hall emphasised the importance of cultural and social context in understanding communication. He argued that the meaning of messages was not universal but context-dependent. Different cultural backgrounds, experiences, and social contexts could lead to varied interpretations of the same message, complicating the SMCR model's idea of a singular, straightforward message.                        

5) What does the fact sheet say about Hall's Reception theory? 

The reception theory shows us that he idea that audiences all understood media texts in a broadly similar way. It’s a way of exploring connections and relationships in the decoding process, the ‘non-linear’ processes between the construction of representations and audience interpretations of them.

6) Look at the final page. How does it suggest Reception theory could be criticised? 

We don’t know for certain whether everybody is able to recognise the dominant or hegemonic reading. The theory is valued for its recognition that communication between the audience and producers of a text is not a straightforward, one-way process.