David Morely and Stuart Hall Audiences Research

David Morley is a sociologist who studies the sociology of the television audience. Known for being a key researcher in conducting The Nationwide Project in the late 1970s, Morley took this popular news program that aired daily on BBC. It reported on national news from London and the major events of the day, and was broadcast throughout the UK. He applied Hall's reception theory to study the encoding/decoding model of this news program. This study focused on the ways this program addressed the audience member and the ideological themes it presented. Morley then took it a step further and conducted a qualitative research that included individuals with varying social backgrounds. This was where Hall's research came into play. He wanted to see how they would react to certain clips of the program based on Hall's three decoding methods: dominant/hegemonic, negotiated, or oppositional.



Reception Theory (Stuart Hall, 1980)
Reception Theory states that media texts are encoded by the producer - they are loaded with values and messages. However the text is then decoded by spectators. However, different spectators will decode the text in different ways, perhaps not in the way the producer intended. 

According to Stuart Hall, audience members adopt one of the following three positions when they decode text: 

• Dominant or Preferred Reading - how the producer wants the audience to view the media text  
• Oppositional Reading - when the audience rejects the preffered reading, and creates their own meaning for the text
• Negotiated Reading - a compromise between the dominant and oppositional readings, where the audience accepts parts of the producers views, but has their own views on parts.

This research on Stuart Hall's Reception Theory will help me understand how my audience's individual readings may vary, so I will have to ensure that I clearly express the beliefs and attitudes of my audience in my magazine through the forms and conventions of a pop genre.