Reception theory

1) What are the preferred, negotiated and oppositional readings for the RBK 50 Cent advert?

The preferred reading is that 50 cent is an icon and has had a rough past but has decided to embrace it as part of his identity. The oppositional reading could be that the advertisement is using racial stereotypes to promote their product by using 50 cent ,a black man, and relating their product to criminality. The negotiated reading is that 50 cent's story is enticing, however it plays into racial stereotypes.   

2) What are the preferred, negotiated and oppositional readings for the advert of your own choice that you analysed for last week's work?

The preferred reading is that the rhetorical question 'have you had yours?' makes the audience what to try the product and have a 'yes' as an answer to the question. The oppositional reading is 

1) Complete Activity 1 on page 2 of the factsheet. Choose a media text you have enjoyed and apply the sender-message-channel-receiver model to the text. There is an example of how to do this in the factsheet (the freediving YouTube video).

Last of Us (video game)

Sender: The Developers are a production called Naughty Dog. 

Message: A Story game about a zombie apocalypse.

Channel: It is made to be played on play station 4 and 5.

Receiver: The person who ends up playing the game.

2) What are the definitions of 'encoding' and 'decoding'?

Encoding simply means constructing a message using a shared code and language and decoding is when someone reads the encoding and is able to find meaning and understand the encoding.

3) Why did Stuart Hall criticise the sender-message-channel-receiver model?

He didn’t believe that the ‘message’ had a fixed meaning, encoded by the sender to be passively accepted by the receiver, although he was certain that the senders of the message probably hoped it did. He felt that meaning was actually being produced in the spaces between this relationship, in a dynamic way that varied depending on who received the message. He thought there was more nuance to their relationship with the text as a cultural product and its producers.

4) What was Hall's circuit of communication model?

Production, Circulation, Distribution/Consumption, Reproduction

5) What does the factsheet say about Hall's Reception theory?

It's a way of exploring connections and relationships in the decoding process, the 'non-linear' processes between the construction of representations and audience interpretations of them.

6) Look at the final page. How does it suggest Reception theory could be criticised?

Hall's model assumes that everyone is able to recognise the dominant or hegemonic reading which may not always be the case.