 When I was a kid, I loved to choose your own adventure books I just loved being in control and having some influence over how the story went and where it took me and how it ended and I just loved being a part of that process and in truth modern media is not all that different from those days When we did choose your own adventure right now We have many many creators and we all have the opportunity to be creators and we all are much more involved in and can influence Media even as an audience Even as we are in the audience and that's really the foundation of what we're going to look at today in terms of reception analysis Which has to do with the audience's role in in critiquing and understanding the media so this is one of the lenses Critical lenses that we want to put in our in our tool belt to use in our exploration of critical media studies So reception analysis very simply examines the role of the audience in the process of Meaning-making in the media. So in other words Even if we're not creating the actual artifact We as an audience influence how that media is received because we are the ones who give it meaning There are a couple of kind of related theories to reception analysis that they're Over the process of time or you know course time it's kind of evolved from a collection of different things One of those would be hypodermic needle Theory or the hypodermic needle approach which says media just kind of injects us with all these ideas and this information and stuff So I mean this is kind of the start almost of media studies way back in the day So never kind of evolved into some different things So things like the two-step flow approach. So basically the two-step flow Says that media doesn't just You know inject kind of straight into the individual the media sends information Though to an individual to an opinion leader specifically or to opinion leaders who then will influence Individuals which you almost kind of have a new appreciation for or understanding for now And we have them literally the role of influencer, right via social media people that Companies will send products to and say will you promote this with your followers? And so we have I mean it's really a job of influencer now It's now formalized, but it's always kind of been a part of some media strategy to Identify opinion leaders and really gain their approval so that then they will Discuss that with the individual so you don't necessarily as a media person need to reach every individual if you can reach those opinion leaders That's two-step flow approach. So that's another part of How we have looked at media over the years and is related to reception analysis Another is cultivation analysis and has media called, you know, the media kind of influences It's young children. How does that, you know, then? Unfold over time and just you know variety so you can examine cultivation analysis and and And how it influences reception analysis Agenda setting theory is certainly one that we've got that the idea that media doesn't tell us what to think But they tell us what to think about in other words They are the one selecting what information is is coming to us so they don't necessarily tell us what to think But they do have a large degree of influence over what we think about and then uses in gratification theory is another one that you can examine just the idea that we select and and Process media in a way that best suits our needs and our goals really in trying to achieve those goals So, you know, we throw all this stuff in a blender over time Media theory evolves and all this kind of informs how we get to reception analysis So you can examine those more in-depth as you wish, but but this is just these are all can just kind of leading into an influencing reception analysis Reception analysis really starts with Steward Hall in 1973 Created created what called the encoding and decoding model as it relates to media So and very simply the encoding and decoding model says that first of all there are frameworks of knowledge and relations of Production and technical infrastructure and all of these things go into creating So the people who are creating the media have all these things and then that all gets bundled up and goes into creating or creating the media or encoding this message right to they encode the message through this media and they so they're they're Encoding some sort of meaning Presumably through what they're creating and that's coming from the creators of the media At the same time you have Individuals on the other side right who also have frameworks of knowledge and relations of production and technical infrastructure All of those things that relate to the people who are receiving this media the audience right and then they go through the process using all That as a filter of decoding this information and then combined together We end up with this this program is meaningful discourse, right? So it's not just the creator and it's not just the audience but it's this combination and and specific interpretation of Those things based on how the audience receives it but also how the People create it and that is what gives us this creation of meaningful discourse this combination of these things So and that that's all well and good. That was an again this evolution of understanding Media this was an important step forward in understanding the impact of and the Kind of the receivership of this and the role of the audience in that And and we can see this in music in a lot ways for me I see a lot music when I was a kid. I listened to a lot of rock music I love death leopard and and especially the song pour some sugar on me That was I was in middle school and that song came out I just loved it loved the guitars loved all the flash and and I remember distinctly one of my older brother is saying to me Do you know what that song means? Why are you singing that song? Do you know what it means? Well, of course, I know what it means Of course, I didn't have any idea what it meant what it meant to me was it was fun And it was a lot of rock music and stuff so it's fun So I didn't know what to pour some sugar on me meant what they were really talking about something The creator's message was lost on me But I had my own message from that and I remember also If you recall the song more than words by extreme I remember speaking to an adult friend of mine who was shocked to learn that more than words wasn't referring to You know, I'll do the dishes. I'll do more than just saying. I love y'all do the dishes for you I'll rub your feet. I'll do these things But that more than words actually meant I want you to have sex with me. I don't just want, you know, you to say you love me I want you to show me you love me by having sex with me And he was just shocked as an adult even here. Oh my gosh, I never really thought about that before You know, and it's not just the old rock music for people like me. It's the younger stuff I had the same similar conversation with our I thought you'd then young Youngish daughter who was singing Blake blank space by Taylor Swift for all you Swifties I'm sure you're very familiar with it But and so I asked her, you know You're seeing the song, you know every word so what does it mean though? And what do you think that message is to say that you've had a long list of lovers and That's all gone bad, but you've got a blank. So you'll give it a try with somebody else in some Oh, what does that mean? Is that something you think when you're in a relationship that somebody wants to hear? Well, yeah, I've had a long list of lovers That's that's not necessarily what every person wants to hear so I mean just think about what you're saying What the song means what are them? You know what it's getting at and then you could do the same kind of thing with you know, how many kids did you see running around? Singing watermelon sugar with no idea what it meant or what you know the meaning behind that song What it was getting at the double entendre or blurred lines without understanding that it is about drug use and things But they're fun songs to sing their funds and so how much thought do we put into it? I don't know and they these people had meaning when they created them But we also interpret them in different ways as an audience so So expanding on really what the work that steward hall was doing there with encoding and decoding then John Fisk came along Researcher named John Fisk came along and said really there's more than even just that going on and developed this idea of what we call Polysomy which literally just means many meanings, right? So steward hall said yes, there are malt there are two meanings what the creator was putting into this and what the Person listen listening to it or or we're viewing this artifact interpreted as But Fisk said there's really even more than that going on this polysomy or many meanings what he meant by that is just a relative openness of media texts or artifacts to multiple Interpretation so that it could be interpreted in multiple different ways It's not just what the creator intended and what one person said there's more to it than that through polysomy He said so so again many meanings here is what we're getting at So Fisk said yes, there are frameworks of knowledge and then the this is encoded by the the creator goes into that programs meaningful discourse It's also decoded by an audience clearly. It's decoded by that audience, but there are multiple Audiences that are going to take different meanings from that So you're going to have multiple meanings or polysomy right multiple many meanings from that And they're all going to be working from different frames of knowledge and relations to product all these things Right so every audience and every audience member really is going to be interpreting it differently. So there are multiple meanings And many meanings here in that Fisk pointed out through polysomy. It's not just On one side and then the other side there the audience side has tons of different opportunities then another researcher named Celeste Condit came along and I'm just summarizing on this brief of course and and So there's much more to understand to the side, but just to give you a basic idea Celeste Condit came along and said yes, that is true. All of that is true But all of this research really is is not really addressing the marginalized audiences, right so Media is largely created by and intended for and interpreted by and all the research that was going into this was focused on Media created by and intended for essentially white people Probably middle-class white people And really that's that's what we're looking at here But there are tons of marginalized audiences that expand with this even further in what she called polyvalence So this multiples of multiples and distinctly different understandings of that media and the impact that it has On these communities, so we have not just polysomy, but polyvalence again this continuing evolution of how we look at media and the audience's engagement and interpretation of these different artifacts The next kind of evolution and the game from a researcher named Leah Chettarelli who popularizes these different types of polysomy and said really there are different There are different categories of polysomy different types of polysomy that we see She started with one or there were three categories and starting with one that she called resistive reading Which had to do with polysomy is the quality of the audience so thinking about Kings women talking about the audience's role in this and the multiple meanings that they come from the different audience members and people interacting with this artifact There was also which called strategic ambiguity which had to do with Polysomy as a quality of the artifact creator So first of all a lot of media is created by more than one person So you have more than one frame of reference more than more than all of these, you know multiples in the creation process So there's some strategic ambiguity, but then and that is though Polysomy are the different meanings that are result of the choices made by that artifact creator or creators Plural then we also have what you called hermeneutic death Hermeneu Sorry, I'll get it out hermeneutic depth Which is polysomy is a quality of the critic or analysts so the people take on you know We put on again our different lenses and that gives us different meanings So not only are we individuals coming at this with their own frame of reference and things But when we can we act as a critic or an analyst then we put on a totally different Kind of lenses and we see a different kind of examination different kind of meaning you see this, you know while I love the Muppets and They're you know kindly gentlemen in the audience offering their helpful advice We can also see this in movie critics for example We see different movie critics that will look at an artifact at the same movie and come to different conclusions But they're looking at it in a slightly different light even then then like a resistive reading or that certainly is a strategic ambiguity So hermeneutic depth has to do with the critic or the analyst and their understanding So we have all these different types of meaning all these then you know every individual sees something different here Something different and comes to understand these artifacts in a different way There's also this idea of interpretive communities interpretive communities. So this has to do with a Couple of different things that are foundational aspects of communication So first of all understanding that words have no meaning until they're read or until they're they're seen so words themselves Don't have any meaning that meaning comes only through interpretation So the words themselves are not magical They don't have any meaning that meaning comes from our understanding and our shared understanding in our connection our Interpretation of those words and of those images, right? It's kind of like Schrodinger's cat, right? If you're familiar Schrodinger's cat experiment or thought experiment, right? Is the cat alive or dead? Well, the cat is both alive and dead meaning is both there and not there until we look at it and understand it right or if there's a Tree that falls in the forest and nobody's there to hear it doesn't make any sound I don't know words have any meaning if we're not interpreting them or if we're not having a shared understanding of what they mean So yeah, this the words have no meaning in and of themselves it comes through This the shared understanding right to through interpretation and shared understanding Now even beyond that beyond individuals the groups then with shared cultures will interpret artifacts similarly So we see an example of this for example if you look at the different major news outlets right now major television news outlets You can almost all from talking to somebody which one they subscribe to if any of them right if they You can tell if they're getting their news from Fox News or MSNBC or CNN almost based on How they talk about things and how they experience or speak about different current events and things so Because groups with these shared cultures will interpret artifacts Similarly if you are a Fox News person you're likely to see an event in one particular way If you are an MSNBC person you are likely to see it in a different way, right? Or maybe have a different interpretation of that but that interpretation will likely be similar to those who also watch whatever Media outlet you're watching so Then as an extension of that especially now as we've been talking as we as I mentioned before Creators texts and audience are born of these groups. They come from within that right people watch Fox News and then they go out and make their own things right and and so as the paradigm collapses then this distinction Between creators and audiences. There's far less of a specific divide when I was growing up There was a very specific divide there were the creators right at the news creators for example the the news anchors and news teams that did that and So they were there were all of these people and then there was me at the audience I was not a creator at that time. I didn't really have the opportunity to that was not something we did or had access to right so but now That has really collapsed Okay, this this that distinction between these things is has collapsed And so people are now creators. We have You know in the citizen journalist and and people that are creating this media now whether or not they are in that professional field and so Now you have people that are part of those groups right people from them Fox News audience from the MSNBC audience for whatever that are becoming creators on social media on YouTube and on different things like that so They are these interpretive communities and that are kind of bonded together and share meaning And share an understanding because of the way they get their media and then the way that they create their media as a result of that One other aspect of reception analysis that bears Examination is ethnography, which is just a qualitative research method focused on understanding a cultural phenomenon from the perspective of members of that culture so essentially ethnographers will sort of embed themselves in a culture in a community for a fairly long period of time so that they really come to understand and have a full understanding of The way that they communicate and specifically start with coding in terms of the language that was used how they use language and now It's expanded a little beyond that but the principle is that you you really embed yourself and become a member almost of that community So that you can examine and you can fully understand it that So ethnography Exams things then from the perspectives of the members of that culture So one of the more famous Examples of ethnography came from David Morley Who and his what was called as nationwide study nationwide was a news program in the UK? And so David Morley embedded himself in a community and examined the impact of this Nationwide program program called nationwide and so it was a news program So he looked at it, but basically the idea is that there are three kinds of Responses that people are going to have to a program. That's what this is conclusion There are three kinds of responses that people are essentially going to have And they're gonna fall somewhere on the spectrum and the dominant perspective is that is one that matches the intended or preferred meaning of the creator So it kind of follows along so I know some people who just for I know I know people in Fox News who watch Hawks News and people who watch MSNBC who do the same thing and just whatever It said there is what they they take it as gospel. They fully agree with that it their their understanding then matches the the intended Meaning or what that that outlet hopes that they will understand from that or take from that Excuse me There's also then the opposite of that which is not surprisingly called Oppositional so this counters or rejects the intended or preferred meaning of the creator So if you are an MSNBC person and you're watching Fox News, you are likely to be oppositional to their To their message, right? You're likely to reject that or counter that and vice versa, right? If you're Fox News person you're watching MSNBC, you're likely to do the same thing Most of the time though Audience members fall in this in the middle of that somewhere which what we call negotiated Negotiate is the most common perspective and it's a mixture of the dominant and oppositional views Where the receiver kind of meshes the details of an artifact with their own frame of reference and then they create meaning they Decode it and they create meaning based on their own frame of reference. So, you know, it'd be I'm not really a Fox News person Or an MSNBC person. I don't know that I'm any kind of per I like I like the news But and they're both pretty extreme for me. So if I were watching either one of those Then I might have a negotiated viewpoint where I accept some of what they're saying and I reject other parts of it And as it fits in with my View of the world and understanding of how things work and how they should work So I'm probably gonna take some of it in and reject others and that's how we respond to most Mediates pretty rare for us to actually just let it wash over us and say yes, everything is absolutely true that this person is saying but To some degree, we're probably having some sort of negotiated Reaction or experience then So some common questions that come up in reception analysis include how do the responses of individual audience members to this artifact vary What differences or which differences are representative of polysamine and which are representative of polyvalence? How do the responses of the individual audience? Audience members to this artifact converge. How do they come together? and intersect Is this convergence indicative of an interpretive community? Which and how so so in other words, it's just a random coincidence or a collection of these intersections Or is this something that really something that goes a little deeper that there's some Real connection and and connective tissue amongst this that creates that interpretive community What ethnographic codes seem to accompany the interpretation of this artifact? So a lot of times we would look at specific language that may be associated with this or you know phrases that may have Significant or or specific meaning I'm to people who are a part of that group and part of that culture and how do audience members use the various ethnographic codes to Interpret the artifact and how do you know? So I'd like to take a look at an example of how we can apply these questions And I'd like to use the show the X files as an example It's not all the show but you know from the 90s But but I think it provides us with a really good example if you're familiar with the X files It's these two FBI agents who examine cases that are sometimes a little out there and and and and so But they tracked down these things and and so there's some longer term storyline threads that go through it and there's also individual episodic type cases, but so but it was really incredibly popular in certain circles in the 90s But it was on for quite a while and said a couple movies made a comeback and different things So I will admit that I was originally Fanatical about the X-Files. I love the X-Files and and had a group of friends that did as well So I'm gonna examine it kind of from that perspective. So Some common questions. So let's take a look at these again How do the responses of individual audience members to this artifact vary? I'll tell you there's a wide Array of responses. First of all, just I mean Just on the surface that some people really love the show like me I was really really into the show loved it watched it all the time and very important It was it was appointment, you know reservation viewing for me And there are other people who just hated it might you know I had lots of friends and people who just didn't like it didn't understand it didn't care for it at all So you've just on the base level you had people who really enjoyed it and people who did not And so but then even within that the the community of people who enjoyed the X-Files There were a lot of there was a lot of variance to how people Viewed it and how people have viewed the episodes and which characters you liked and which you didn't and how you saw How things were gonna unfold all those types of things. So there was a lot of variance To to this artifact from different audience members in different communities Which differences are representative of polysomy and which are representative of polyvalence? So I would say in from my perspective again, there was a lot of polysomy. There were a lot of a lot of different meanings And that was intentional there were a lot of like hidden things and subtexts and and Little, you know breadcrumbs that were left all over the X-Files You know you could try and pick up on and and so there was a lot of polysomy and there was a lot of Talk about how to interpret those things and it was a big part of why people enjoy the show The people that did enjoy the show And now which are representative of polyvalence? That's a really interesting question and one I don't know that I'm prepared to answer to be honest This is not again. There's not a really end-up study on my part So and as somebody who is part of kind of the dominant culture to be honest I'm a middle-class white heterosexual male And so I don't know that I'm prepared to speak on polyvalence for this and how it was interpreted in Especially in marginalized communities Because I'm not a part of that so that would be an interesting question to study I guess or to look at how it was Viewed in in terms of polyvalence and what impact that might have How do the responses of individual audience members to this artifact converge? there were a lot of There was a lot of intersection. I'll tell you my group we again This was group viewing we we all met at my house or probably eight of us that watched the show together I didn't remember this before DVR. So you really had to watch it We could we could tape it on a vcr, but we had to watch it live so we had these live viewing parties every week at our house while I was in college and Adored eight or nine of us would get together and there would be a lot of Convergence in terms of the response. I think we all love the show. That's why we all watched it but I was so while there was a lot of divergence with the specifics of you know The different theories about what was going to happen within the show our responses constantly converged in terms of our appreciation for the writing and So I think I think our responses did converge in that group I'm not again. There was a lot of divergence and this was a very polarizing show But within that that group there was some convergence about in terms just in terms of how we enjoyed it and That we wanted more Is it indicative of an interpretive community in my case? It certainly was absolutely was we were an interpretive community and And we didn't necessarily create stuff as a result of that again. That was still early on the internet was pretty new even so But we were definitely interpretive community in terms of having a mutual appreciation mutual understanding mutual enjoyment of the show so What ethnographic code seemed to accompany the interpretation as artifact there were phrases. I mean there was you know Things like there was a character on the show who was constantly smoking and he was kind of in the shadows all the time He's very mysterious and so he became known as a cancer man Right, just just colloquial among the audience and that picked up steam and one time I think actually referred to him as a cancer man in the show then as a result But there were things like that that you use these codes You know the truth is out there and cancer man and different things like that and people would understand if they were Fans of the show they would understand it. So there were there were some ethnographic codes I think that that were a part of that even just looking at the language around it And how do the audience members use the various ethnographic codes to interpret the artifact? So we would look for you know, there were lots of breadcrumbs lots of things yet It'd be very specific attention to how things were phrased and what people said and what they didn't say it and Even things like the time on clocks tended to be important and you know So there were all kinds of things you just had to really pay attention to these things and only but if you remember that culture You would do that. You would know those things but But we If you weren't a part of that culture then none of that would make any sense Do you really had to be a part of that culture? So? Okay, I hope this give you some understanding of reception analysis some some clear understanding of what we're looking at here with reception analysis So you can understand that It's really a fascinating aspect of media that's that's still evolving and still coming to be understood the impact in the role of the audience In understanding and making meaning of those artifacts If you have questions about reception analysis or any other type of critical lens for critical media studies Please feel free to email me if I'm here for me there in the meantime I hope that this gives you get another critical lens another tool for your critical media studies and analysis tool belt