Reception Theory

The Reception Theory is often called the Audience theory and was first coined by Hans-Robert Jauss in late 1960's but was furthered by Stuart Hall who added more to the theory in terms of key items but Hans set the foundation for this. Basically includes the audiences interpretation of a piece of media as the focus point as without the audience a piece of media texts existence is pointless. A brief intro example of this is the 9/11 disaster, we all will of interpreted this in our own specific way this is based on the media that we have seen, people will have their own theories behind it but we all understand media differently compared to others who will almost usually see it in a slightly different way.

Audience's have their own relationship with media a weird one at that, we watch something that was designed with a specific meaning by the producers but that's not always the way we will receive the media text, we will all perceive it in our own way as we are all different. The reception theory is the analysis of an audience's response to media, the theory goes into detail about reasons behind why people interpret things the way they do, it makes assumptions that people who possibly grew up in the same areas and suffered the same problems will have similar views a everyday example of this is that people who were working in the coal mines during Margaret Thatcher's term as prime-minister will not like her. The theory also says that the more closely somebodies values are to the producer's of the text the more likely they are to read the meaning of that text in that certain way. An example we can relate this to is finding a person in your school who lives near you and having more in common with them and realising you like them as a friend. The clip below shows the way people perceive things in their own way such as not being able to cry.