Transcript Reception Analysis

Reception Analysis
Morley, 1980 and 1986,
Buckingham 1993
and Ang 1985
Moving beyond the idea that audiences
use the media in different ways.
Reception Analysis takes a
closer look at what is actually
going on when an audience
encounters a media text.
Reception Analysis concentrates
on the audience themselves and
how they come to a particular
understanding view of a text.
Media are seen as
PASSIVE/WEAK
Audience are seen as
ACTIVE/STRONG
To some extent it is obvious
that each of us will decode
texts in ways that reflect
our personal biographies, our
own histories.
What factors may
mean that we decode
texts in different ways?
Age
Religion
Class
Gender
Race
The researchers have
attempted to link the social
position of the audience with
their readings of media
texts.
They also place an emphasis
on the idea of ‘pleasures’
and ‘audience interpretation’.
This theory is very
popular in
‘Cultural Studies’
and would describe
watching television as a
‘cultural practice’.
Once it is accepted that audiences are
active, that they construct meanings,
there are obvious implications for
research methodology.
How would you research peoples’
differing reactions to media text?
Think qualitative and quantitative
analysis!
Quantitative research is not suited to
investigating the construction of
meaning.
To understand the meanings that
people take from a text it is necessary
to get closer to individual audience
members and engage with them at a
personal level - qualitative research
becomes a necessity.
Once this research technique is
employed simple answers become
impossible, complexity takes over.
• What do you think are
the strengths of this
model?
• What do you think are
the weaknesses of this
model?
Preferred Reading
A text is open to a number of readings but
normally ‘prefers’ one.
Negotiated Reading
Negotiated reading: the reader partly shares
the text's code and broadly accepts the
preferred reading, but sometimes resists and
modifies it in a way which reflects their own
position, experiences and interests - this
position involves contradictions.
Oppositional Reading
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.
Aberrant Reading
Readers can miss or ignore the ideology of the text
and import their own, thus producing "aberrant"
readings - where "aberrant" means only different
from the ones envisaged by the sender.
HOMEWORK
For Monday 27th March
 Read ‘In the hood’. Think about the different
theories that could be applied to audience
reception of hooded clothing.
 Fill in the sheet with inoculation theory,
cultivation theory and copycat theories. We will
go through them next week.
 Revise for a test on all the audience theories!