Reception Theory – Hall

Hall’s ‘encoding-decoding’ model argued that media producers encode ‘preferred meanings’ into texts, but these texts may be ‘read’ by their audiences in a number of different ways:  The dominant-hegemonic position: a ‘preferred reading’ that accepts the text’s messages and the ideological assumptions behind the messages  The negotiated position: the reader accepts the text’s ideological assumptions, but disagrees with aspects of the messages, so negotiates the meaning to fit with their ‘lived experience’  The oppositional reading: the reader rejects both the overt message and its underlying ideological assumptions.

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