Define 2 media theories on audience

Find examples from your own work which could illustrate these theories

Explain how an audience might respond to your own productions, drawing on key media theories to back up your explanations

Years ago, media theorists believed that an audience could be heavily influenced by the media through ‘injecting’ points of view, opinions, beliefs, etc.

Stuart Hall theorizes that an audience can read any media text in a variety of different ways. They do not just blindly accept media messages , but instead base their interpretations on things like cultural experiences and the contexts in which they consume the text.Messages are encoded in a text and decoded by the audience

Dominant Where the audience decodes the message as the

producer wants them to do and broadly agrees with it. This is usually because what is portrayed is close to the audience’s cultural experiences

Negotiated Where the audience accepts, rejects or refines

elements of the text in light of previously held views

OppositionalWhere the dominant meaning is recognised but

rejected for cultural, political or ideological reasons

He theorized that mythologies are formed to perpetuate an idea of society that adheres to the current ideologies of the ruling class and its media. He argues that an audience looks for signs to help them interpret what they see.

The signifier- a word, image, symbol, etc that can be interpreted

The signified- the message behind the signifier

The sign- the meaning, how we interpret the combination of the signifier and what is signified (the sum of the signifier and the signified).

Identify The signifier: the red light The signified: that you cannot continue to drive your

car any further The sign: you must stop the car because it is

dangerous to continue and you will endanger yourself and others.

The young boy is the signifier.

What is signified is that France is a great multi-cultural nation.

He argues that ‘the picture does not explicitly demonstrate 'that France is a great empire’ but the combination of the signifier and signified perpetuates the myth of imperial devotion, success and thus; a property of 'significance' for the picture (the sign)

Signifier?Signified?Sign?

Find 2 examples from your own work where an audience could adopt a negotiated or oppositional reading of the text

Find 2 examples of your work in order to illustrate how the sign (the interpretation of the text) is the sum (result) of the signifier and the signified

Post to your blogs along with an analysis of your work in relation to audience theory