Audience Theory

Hegemony: 

The cultural term 'hegemony' refers to process of making, maintaining and reproducing the governing sets of meanings of a given culture. it is the idea the the static form of life where everything is how it is meant to be is instituted by the people in charge wanting to keep it as it is, those in power want to stay in power by keeping everything how it is.

Gramsci's theory of hegemony: 

The media have always had a key role in teaching people to do things in ways that support power structures. Thus the media can be seen to support structures such as government, capitalism / corporations and patriarchy. For example, Captain America, he is the man who was built to protect America - from the outside from people who don't believe or understand the American values would view him as someone who attacks those who don't submit to the American way of living. 

Reception theory Stuart Hall: 

Emphasises how the reader, viewer or audiences respond to a text. Introduced by the theorist Stuart Hall, he developed reception theory by applying it to media and communications studies. His development of reception theory focuses on the scope for "negotiation" and "opposition" on the part of the audience in the context of media hegemony. 

- The meaning of the text is not inherent within the text itself, but is created within the relationship between the text and the reader. 

- A 'text' is not simply passively accepted by the audience. The reader / viewer interprets the meaning of the text based on their individual cultural background and life experiences. 

Encoding and Decoding. 

Encoding: 

Refers to the organisation of signs into codes.

Decoding: 

Refers to the process by which readers generate meaning from them. 

Halls encoding - decoding model of communication suggests that whatever analysis of textual meaning a critic may undertake, it is far from certain which of the identified meanings, if any, will be activated by actual readers / audiences / consumers. 

Hall addressed the issue of how people make sense of media texts, presenting three hypothetical methods of decoding: 

-The 'preferred' reading.

-The 'negotiated' reading.

-The 'oppositional' reading. 

However, the social situations of readers / viewers / listeners may lead them to adopt different stances. 

Dominant hegemonic position: 

When an audience interprets the message as it was meant to be understood, they are operating in the dominate code. This results in a 'preferred reading' - You understand what they want you to understand. 

'Preferred reading' - the dominant ideology is typically inscribed as the 'preferred reading'. 'Dominant' readings are produced by those whose social situations favours the preferred reading. 

'Negotiated reading' - Not all audiences many understand what media producers take for granted.There may be some acknowledgement of differences in understanding. Negotiated positions are the result of the audience struggling to understand the dominant position or experiencing dissonance with those views. 

'Oppositional reading' - the social position of some audiences puts them in direct conflict with the dominant position. these media consumers understand a text's contextual (the setting of something) inflections but decode its messages by oppositional means.

Stuart Halls Reception Theory will be helpful to me in the making of my film because the audience will relate to the interviewees. So because of this theory i do not have to put any input into the forming of this relationship because it will form naturally.