Given that the effects model and the Uses and Gratifications Model have their problems and limitations a different approach to audiences was developed by the academic Stuart Hall at Birmingham University in the 1970s. This considers how texts were encorded with meaning by producers and then decoded by audiences.
The theory suggests that:
When a producer constructs a text it is encoded with a meaning or message that the producer wishes to convey the audiences. In some instances audiences will correctly decode the message or meaning and understand what the produceer was trying to say. In some instances the audience will either reject or fail to correctly understand the message.
Stuart Hall identified three types of audience readings of the text:
1.Dominant
2.Negotiated
3.Oppositional
Dominant is where the audience decodes the message as the producer wants them to do and broadly agrees with it e.g. watching a political speech and agreeing with it.
Negoiated is where the audience accepts, rejects or refines elements of the text in light of previously held views. For Example neither agreeing or diagreeing with the political speech or being distracting.
Oppositional is where the dominant meaning is recognised but rejected for cultral political or ideological reasons. E.g. total rejection of the political speech and active propersition.
