Audience Theory

Hegemony
This is the process of making, maintaining, and reproducing sets of meanings from given cultures.

Gamsci's Theory
Gamsci believed that the media influences the audience to follow the status quo. The media is used to enforce the support of a government.
For example Batman is someone who beats people up who don't agree with the current government.

Reception Theory
Readers/Viewers/Audiences reception of texts.
Stuart Hall developed the theory that readers have opinions in what they take in from the media, meanings can be opinionated and negotiated.
The meaning of a text is created by the relationship between the text and the reader, or the viewer and the film.
Hypothermic Needle Effect
Audiences passively soak up information from the media - this is incorrect. Stuart Hall's theory goes against this theoretical effect.

Encoding/Decoding
Encoding is when you create something with a meaning, like using colour connotations in an image.
Decoding is when the audience takes in those codes and breaks them down, like when you see red and you think things like; passion, violence, rage or blood.
A creator can never know how his/her codes will be received by the audience.
For example when you make a website intended for teenage gamers, the audience could interpret it as a gaming site for competitive adults.
When someone makes the right connections and understands the codes as intended by the creator, that is called being in a Dominant Hegemonic Position.
Not all audiences understand what is meant to be understood in a media text, this struggle to understand those meanings is called Negotiated Reading.
Some media consumers may understand the meanings in a film but they oppose it due to their own original understandings, this is called Oppositional Readings.

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In my work for the gaming website CGC reception theory would suggest that even though I am making a gaming website for young audiences to enjoy fun and casual gameplay, it could be interpreted as a gaming site for intense competitive gaming due to the inclusion of some titles that have competitive tournaments on a world class scale. Some could eve see it as a childish website to showcase gameplay to entertain passive children.