Audience reception, interpretation and cultivation

Overview

Two stages in Stuart Hall's model of communication and negotiated reading of a magazine feature.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What are the two stages in Stuart Hall's model of communication?

   Model answer

   Hall describes encoding by producers and decoding by audiences. Meaning is made twice, once in production and again in reception.

2. 2

   How might two readers of the same magazine cover decode it differently?

   Model answer

   A target reader accepts the cover's preferred meaning and reads it as aspirational. A reader outside the target group may negotiate that meaning or reject it entirely.

3. 3

   How does a mainstream magazine invite a dominant-hegemonic reading?

   Model answer

   The cover promises that the products and the lifestyle shown are desirable. A target reader takes the title's values as their own.

4. 4

   Give an example of a negotiated reading of a magazine feature.

   Model answer

   A reader can accept a fashion feature's authority while rejecting the body type it presents. Agreement is partial rather than complete.

5. 5

   Which readers are most likely to take an oppositional reading of a mainstream magazine?

   Model answer

   Readers outside the target group, and readers who object to the title's politics or its advertising. The message is understood and then refused.

6. 6

   How might a 2016 student read a 1964 women's magazine oppositionally?

   Model answer

   A student may reject the assumption that housework is a woman's natural role. The pleasure of the text is refused and its ideology named instead.

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The same content, four other ways.

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Six ways to work the same material.