Stuart Hall's Reception Theory

The theory is an active audience theory which sees the audience as being actively engaged in the interpretation of media texts, rather than passive consumers. The idea is that individuals interpret texts in different ways. It demonstrates that even though one message is sent out, that not one understanding is received. Stuart Hall suggested there are three different positions that the reader of a text can occupy when trying to interpret a text, they are:

• Dominant/Preferred Reading – When the reader fully shares the text’s codes and accepts and reproduces the preferred reading i.e. the most dominant reading. 
• Negotiated Reading – When the reader partly shares the text’s codes and broadly accepts the preferred reading, but sometimes resists and modifies it in a way which reflects their own position, experiences and interests (the reader may agree and understand with the text however, disagree with other areas) – this position involves contradictions and includes a compromise between the dominant and oppositional readings.

• Oppositional Reading – When the reader, whose social situation places them in a directly oppositional relation to the dominant code, understands the preferred reading but does not share the text’s code and rejects this reading, bringing to bear an alternative frame of reference (radical, feminist etc.). The audience create their own meaning for the text.