Several factors that may change the way an audience responds to a text are:
- Personal experience
- If they like the genre advertised
- Gender
- Social class
- Race
- Religion
- Age
- Personal Choices
- Content of the text
- Ethnicity
- Level of education
- Disability
- Regional identity
- Sexuality
The producer encodes the message/meaning and this then is created into three possible readings made by the audience. These readings are: the Dominant/Preferred, Negotiated and Oppositional.
The dominant reading of the text is where the audience view the media text in the way that the producer intended, meaning that the audience agree with the ideologies and messages behind the text. This results in the ideal consumption being met and therefore the institution is happy.
The negotiated reading is a compromise between dominant and opposed readings. This is where the audience accepts the views of the producer but they also have their own input and understandings in relation to the texts. They neither specifically agree or disagree, however they can see the point being made in relation to the reading, yet they still have their own opinions of the text. For example, they understand what the institution want the message to be and how they're supposed to consume the text however they don't fully conform with the message,
The oppositional reading is where the audience rejects the preferred reading and create their own opinions of the texts. The audience fully reject this meaning as they don't agree with the message that's being created. They also may interoperate the message wrongly and they may be offended, upset or fail to see the intended message, For example, the music video 'Smack My Bitch Up' by The Prodigy created uproar within the public due to it's adult themes and very explicit content. Although this was done to shock people, the intended message was to show that women can behave in the exact same was as a man. This is because throughout the whole video, we see everything through somebody's point of view and everybody assumes that it's a man because of their actions such as, being around naked women in clubs and taking drugs etc, however at the end, we see that the person carrying out these actions is in fact a woman. For someone such as a media student who may be more open minded to fully watch the video to see the intended message would understand the reasoning's behind it as they see the resolution at the end. However, somebody with an opposed view who maybe would switch off half way through before fully seeing the meaning behind it, would then interoperate the text wrongly and fail to see the intended message as they may have been upset or offended by the explicit content.
In the music video that I'm analysing - She's So Lovely (Scouting for Girls), the dominant reading is about getting the girl he wants as he finds her attractive which suggests that his target audience are teenagers - especially males with this particular song. However females could identify with it if they reverse the gender roles. This is because this situation is identifiable as this is an experience that the majority of teenagers go through at some point in their life which may evoke feelings of sadness, upset, regret etc. which the producers specifically created this song for.
The negotiated view of this music video could be happiness etc. as the person watching this may have a personal experience where they felt like that however they got the girl so although they would understand the intended message and that it's not a song for making people feel happy and upbeat, this is how they personally identify with the song,
The oppositional view of the video could be that somebody has had a very negative experience with a girl which has made them turn bitter and sour, this could then leave them feeling very negatively about the whole situation so they may then fail to see the intended message and refuse to watch altogether,
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