Reception Theory -

This theory is an active audience theory, which means the audience is seen as being actively engaged in the media, and in the interpretation of media texts, rather than as passive consumers. Individuals receive and interpret texts in different ways, depending on their age, race, etc.
This theory demonstrates that even though one message is sent out, not just one understanding is made from the text, many meanings can be interpreted from one message. This sometimes making it offensive to some, and not to others. This theory also allows for a media text to be consumed individually and takes in to consideration the meaning of a text, and the relationship an individual may understand from this in relation to sociological factors.

The creator of this theory is Stewart Hall, the theory was created in 1980. The study of semiotics: Encoding - Decoding.
This theory says that the media texts are encoded by the producer (the people who make the media texts) and that these texts are full of ideological values.
The text is then interpreted and decoded by an audience, but not all audiences will decode and respond to the text in the same way. In some cases not how the producer intended on the message being portrayed.

Lady Gaga:

An example of this being Lady Gaga's outfits, which she has worn to several different award ceremonies. One of the most memorable being her meat dress. This dress was made entirely from raw meat, including the shoes being coated in raw meat. This caused an uproar amongst some audiences, yet others seemed to find it amusing and stylish. The encoder (producer) wanted to provoke an understanding with this dress, and an opinion on a subject matter. Whereas the messages decoded by the audience resulted in several different opinions. As an example of the opinions, a lot of Lady Gaga's fans thought she was a fashion genius, and also extremely brave to wear such an unusual outfit. People who are vegetarian or even vegan caused an uproar in several occasions and on twitter sites, as it degrades animals, as they also state the animals died for her fashion crisis'.

How encoding and decoding works:When a producer creates a text it is encoded with a meaning or message that they want to convey to a mass audience. This is called the preferred reading. This theory will sometimes be correctly decoded and the audience will understand what the producer wants them to, however sometimes the producer can encode a message that is not correctly understood by an audience. This meaning the message then becomes un-effective and useless, often meaning it is taking out of the public's view, and also the media scene.

Audience types:Steward Hall identified three different types of audience readings, or decodings of the text. Those three readings were:

• Dominant or preferred - how the producer wants the audience to view the media text and agree with the message it is conveying on a dominant scale.
• Negotiated - a compromise between the dominant and the oppositional readings, the audience who negotiate are on equal terms, this is where the audience understand and agree with parts of the producers encoded messages. But they also disagree with others, as they have areas that they have their own views and opinions on.
• Oppositional - this is when the audience rejects the preferred readings and create their own meanings for the text, they then reject any of the message as they fully disagree with the encoded message being submitted to the audience.