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 ACTIVE/STRONG Audience are seen as PASSIVE/WEAK

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 Race Gender Religion Class

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 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. A text is open to a number of readings but normally ‘prefers’ one. Negotiated Reading

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. 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. Aberrant Reading

HOMEWORK For Monday 27 th 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!