Stuart Hall's Theory

Audience Positioning - Stuart Hall

Stuart Hall developed the concept of audience positioning as a result of examining news reports on industrial strikes. 

He claimed that media representations established a framework for possible responses – this is like setting an agenda for issues to be raised with audiences.

The responses to an audience watching a media text would be likely to fall into

three main categories:

 Dominant readings:

Audiences respond to the way narrative is constructed and adopt the points of view implied

Oppositional readings:

Audiences reject the way the narrative is constructed, question and challenge the points of view implied

Negotiated readings:

Audiences partially accept the way the narrative is constructed but can see both points of view:

the dominant and oppositional readings

Aberrant readings:

is an additional interpretation: where the text is read in a deviant and largely unanticipated

manner, the preferred reading not being recognised at all