A lot can happen in between a content creator having an idea and the target audience consuming the media product and making connotations based on the content. Content creators have information that they want to pass on to their audience. They encode that information into a media product. The audience must then decode that information at the other end of the process. Remember our post on semiotics and the skull and crossbones?
Let's revisit it, this time imagining that I have a container of dangerous waste to mark up. I have some information that I need to share with an audience. I need to tell them 'the contents of this box are harmful to your health and could kill you, so please leave this box alone' but I want to do that without using any words. So I encode that information into an image - the skull and crossbones - and stick it to the box. Later on, you encounter the box. It's now down to you as the target audience to decode the message that the skull and crossbones is supposed to give you and (hopefully) connote that the contents of the box are dangerous. Stuart Hall's theory says that this can broadly go one of three ways. Click the drop downs to learn more about each:
1: The Dominant or Preferred reading
This is the reading of the media text that the content creator expects most of their audience to make. The connotations of the media text made by the audience are those that the creator intended. The more a media creator researches and the more precisely they target their audience, the more likely the audience is to make the preferred reading. Steve Neale's genre theory plays a part here too. The better the balance between repetition and difference, the more likely the audience is to make a preferred reading. In this case, the dominant or preferred reading would be that you look at the box, connote that the contents are dangerous to your health and leave it alone.
2: The Oppositional reading
3: The Negotiated reading
One thing that can particularly affect which reading we take is our situated culture. Our age, beliefs, culture, gender, life experience... in fact, any element of our psychographic and demographic data can affect the reading.
Even our mood at the time of seeing the message, where we are or who we are with can all affect our response to it.
In the above example, a scientist is more likely to take the negotiated reading, recognising the risks but also curious to know what's inside, equipping themselves appropriately. A child playing who discovers the box would be more likely to take the oppositional reading - worse still, they might misunderstand that the box contains treasure or pirate toys. That same child's parent would be more likely to take the dominant reading: leaving the box alone to someone who knows what they're doing!
In terms of your set texts, consider:
- How different audiences respond to masculinity and femininity presented on the magazine covers.
- How the political beliefs of different audiences will cause them to respond to the politicised headlines of the newspaper front covers.
- How the responses of a big fan of the James Bond franchise to the film posters will differ to those of someone who doesn't enjoy espionage films.
- How different age groups will respond differently to playing Fortnite - if indeed, they want to play it at all.
As a last point, consider this post's cover image of the two people arguing over the number. Their placement and perspective (that is, their situated culture) mean they're decoding the message differently. The creator encoded just one intended message, six or nine, but because they didn't think carefully, they've ended up with one audience member making a preferred reading and one making an oppositional reading. What negotiated reading do you think they could both come to in this instance? How could the content creator have avoided this misunderstanding?
To summarise:
Media texts encode a lot of complex information and try to deliver it in a clear, simple way. A content creator hopes that their audience will take the preferred or dominant reading and understand the message as intended.
Some audiences can take an oppositional reading, disagreeing with a text and rejecting its message or misunderstanding it.
Many audiences make a negotiated reading, accepting some of the message while rejecting other parts of it.
All of this is affected by our situated culture - who we are and how we experience life will affect which reading we are likely to take when confronted with a media product.