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 and patriarchy.
Reception Theory
- It emphasises the reader's/ viewer's reception of a text
- Stuart Hall developed this theory by applying it to media and communications studies.
- Focuses on the scope for 'negotiation' and 'opposition' on the part of the audience in the context of media hegemony.
- The meaning of a text is not inherit within the text itself, but is created within the relationship between the text and the reader. (Not everyone will understand or take it in)
- A 'text' itself is not simply passively accepted by the audience. The reader/ viewer interprets the meanings of the text based on their individual cultural background and life experiences.
Encoding - Refers to the organisation of signs into codes.
Decoding - refers to the process by which readers generate meaning from them.
Hall's 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:
- Preferred reading
- Negotiated reading
- Oppositional reading
Dominant Hegemonic Position - When an audience interprets the message as it was meant to be understood, they are operating in the dominant code. This results in a 'preferred reading'.
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 may understand what media producers take for granted. There may be some acknowledgment of differences in understanding. Negotiation positions are the result of the audience struggling to understand the dominant position or experiencing dissonance (difference) 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 inflections but decode its messages by oppositional means.
In relation to our short film, these theories can help support an idea when involving the audience. For example, the reception theory explains a viewer's view/ perception; with the help of encoded meanings it could make people think and question why or how something happened. This could then relate to a negotiated reading because some may understand but others may not.
