Hall and Morley's work aimed to move past notions of passive media audiences. They argued that audiences make sense of media texts based on their own interpretive frameworks, drawing from their cultural experiences with factors like gender, class, ethnicity, and politics. Audiences can have dominant, negotiated, or oppositional readings of media that respectively align with, partially align with, or oppose the preferred meaning embedded in a text. Their approach acknowledges that different audience members can have varied responses to the same media messages based on their cultural backgrounds.

1. 1
MAC201 Hall & Morley simplified
MAC201 seminar

2. 2
• Reaction against ‘media effects’ and notions of
passivity
• Attempt to consider what the media means to
audiences
• Combines semiotics with ideological analysis
• Audiences makes sense of texts by drawing on
‘interpretive frameworks’
– Their understanding of how the media functions; their
cultural repertoire (cultural formations: ethnicity,
religion, sexuality, gender, age, class, etc, positions)

3. 3
Media producers:
White
Middle class
Male
Aged 35+
No religious denomination
Politically conservative
Media audiences:
White/black/etc?
Middle/working/under class?
Male/female
Aged 0-100+?
Religious?
Politically motivated?

4. 4
DominantDominant
NegotiatedNegotiated
OppositionalOppositional

5. 5
DominantDominant
NegotiatedNegotiated
OppositionalOppositional

6. 6
DominantDominant
NegotiatedNegotiated
OppositionalOppositional
Shop
stewards
Trade
union
officials
HE Arts
Students
Trainee
Teachers
Schoolboys
Bank
managers
Apprentices

7. 7
DominantDominant
NegotiatedNegotiated
OppositionalOppositional
Resistant?Resistant?
Shop
stewards
Black FE
students
Trade
union
officials
HE Arts
Students
Trainee
Teachers
Schoolboys
Bank
managers
Apprentices

8. 8
Problems?Problems?
• Difficult to test
• Suitable methodology for analysis?
• What is the ‘preferred meaning’ of a text?
• Who gets to claim the authority to know what
this is?
– Hall thought it was ideological and semiotic
– Morley showed it was also culturally located (i.e.
taste)

9. 9
Benefits?Benefits?
• Acknowledges that there are different
responses to the same media messages
• Responses may fall into clusters based on the
cultural formation of audience members
– (class, race, age, gender, political stance, sexuality,
ethnicity, religious beliefs, etc)

10. 10
TaskTask
• Look at the following example
• Pinpoint the defining characteristics of the advert at
the level of:
– Style
– Ideological aims
• Can you identify 3 reading positions (circa Hall’s
model) for this text?
• Does the style of the ad support the ideological
underpinnings or contradict them? Does it have no
baring on our understanding of it?

11. 11

12. 12

13. 13
2008
2009

14. 14
TaskTask
• Watch an extract from <insert example>:
• Pinpoint the defining characteristics of the
programme at the level of:
– Style
– Ideological aims
• Can you identify 3 reading positions (circa Hall’s
model) for this text?
• Does the style of the film support the ideological
underpinnings or contradict them?

15. • Greenpeace palm-oil campaign
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV1t-MvnCrA
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