Stuart Halls Reception Theory

Stuart Halls Reception theory suggests three main ways audience receive texts:

The dominant/preferred reading, The negotiated reading and The oppositional reading.

• The dominant reading- the audience will decode the text in the way that the (encoder) intended them to. The audience receives the preferred reading in such a way that the code seems natural and transparent.
• The negotiated reading- the decoder(audience) partly receives the code in its intended way. However, they sometimes change it in a way that reflects their own position in terms of interests, experiences and position in society.
• The oppositional reading- the audiences position in society, interests and experiences are in no way relation to the preferred reading. Therefore the preferred reading is completely rejected. Thus, the decoder offering an alternative to the preferred reading due to not being able to understand.

In our music video, we want our audience to have a dominant reading and fully accept the message that we are trying to get across to them. We want the viewers of our music video to take something meaningful away that could educate them about same sex relationships.