Explore Why Audiences May Respond Differently to the Same Media Text

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Explore Why Audiences May Respond Differently to the Same Media Text According to Stuart Hall's Reception Theory, there are three ways in which an audience can respond to a media text. The preferred reading is when the audience responds to a text in the way which the producer intended, for example when the producers of The X Factor choose to air an act that are obviously unable to sing they expect the audience to find the humour in this as well as gaining second hand embarrassment, but are still able to enjoy the text. An oppositional reading is when the audience rejects the preferred reading of a media text and receives a different response than that which was intended by the producer. For example, the oppositional reading of a Coca-Cola advert that depicts the company as promoting healthy living and throws out facts and figures to reinforce what they are saying, would be to then criticise Coca-Cola and question their integrity as a lot of their products still contain a lot of unhealthy ingredients and it is their brand which played a big part in the problem of obesity to begin with. The negotiated reading is when the audience does understand the intended meaning of a media text, but still chooses to reject it. For example, Once Upon A Time is a television show which tries to reinvent and intertwine the widely known fairytales within our culture. A negotiated reading would say that the text can be understood in terms of what the intended reading is, but the text isn't entirely believable because of things such as narrative and the technical and visual codes which leaves it lacking suture. There are many factors which impact an audiences reading of a media text. The demographic of an audience is one of them. Things such as age, gender, race, social class and religion would all have consequence on an audiences reading. For example, a middle aged male in the ABC1
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