Audience Reception Theory

Audience reception is the way we react. The theory describes the way we receive and respond to texts differently and is a way to characterise and group together different consumer interpretations.

Encoding is the meaning and ideology that produces put into texts for audiences to decode. Audiences are can choose whether to accept or reject the message that the producer has encoded when they see the text. Different audiences interpret the meanings differently and can sometimes get the wrong message from some texts. Stuart Hall created the encoding model and it shows how audiences can interpret different texts. 

A preferred meaning of a text is what the author intended. A negotiated meaning is a mix between preferred and oppositional meaning. An oppositional meaning is when the viewer or reader has their own interpretation of the text.

An example of where three different interpretations can be used is in the "Deadpool" trailer. The trailer has a preferred meaning and the message that the author is trying to put across in the trailer is that Deadpool is a good character because he is helping to stop criminals and that he is a joker in the way that he does it. Other viewers may not get this interpretation from the trailer and they may think that he is a funny character, but he is a bad role model because he shots people to do good things. An oppositional meaning would be that he sets a bad example for people who are watching by using guns and that he looks silly in his red suit.