Stuart Hall's Reception Theory

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Hall's Reception Theory

In the chapter on Reception theory, Dixon explained the impact Stuart Hall had on the media industry and the study of it in the 1970s. Beforehand, media producers had viewed their audiences as passive consumers who accept intended readings without question (the Hypodermic Needle Theory). Hall challenged this view in his 1973 essay 'Encoding/Decoding', which revealed the different categories that audience members fit into when it comes to reception of encoded messages: the dominant/hegemonic reading, the negotiated reading, and the oppositional/counter-hegemonic reading. Hall also highlighted that there is a chance that some audience members may not even fit into any of these categories due to a misreading of the product; they cannot accept or reject the intended meanings of the product because they decoded them wrong to begin with. In addition to this, Hall argues that the dominant readings encoded into products made by a media institution are usually consistent, and align with the political standpoint and brand of the institution. To ensure this consistency, the institutions tend to primarily hire media producers that agree with their standpoint and values.

Hall argued that audiences create their meanings using situated logics - this is when audiences 'filter the world to their individual knowledge and experience'. He uses the example of a Labour party voter viewing the famously right-wing newspaper, The Daily Mail with scepticism. Situated logics can also be applied to the physical environment in which the decoding occurs.