Hall's Reception Theory

Stuart Hall is a cultural theorist born in Jamaica, who worked in the UK from 1951 whilst theorising the encoding and decoding model. Hall often focused on perception and also theorised the Audience Reception theory, which identified 3 different models of reading media texts.
The three types of reading were named

• Dominant (or hegemonic) reading: the reader fully shares the text's code and accepts and reproduces the preferred reading (a reading which may not have been a result of any conscious intention on the part of the author) - in such a stance the code seems 'natural and transparent'.

• Negotiated reading: the reader partly shares the text's codes and broadly accepts the preferred reading, but sometimes resits and their own position, experiences and interests (local and personal conditions may be seen as exceptions to the general rule) - this position involves contradictions.

• Oppositional (counter-hegemonic) reading: the reader, whose social situation places them in a directly oppositional relation to the dominant code, understands the preferred reading but does not share the text's code and rejects this reading, bringing to bear an alternative frame of reference (e.g. when watching a television broadcast produced on behalf of a political party they normally vote against)