Audience Theories- Reception Theory.

Extending on the concept of an active audience , work was done on the way audiences recieve and interpret a text, and how their individual lives affect their reading or reception. This  work was based  on Stuart Halls encoding/encoding model of the relationship between text and audience.
The text is encoded by the producer
The text is then decoded by the reader
There may be major differences between the readings of the same code. This may happen dependant on the readers SAGEL (socio economic group, age, gender, ethnicity and lifestyle).
Therefore, texts can be polysemic, which  means many meanings.
By using recognised codes and conventions, audiences expectations, the producers can create a certain amount of agreement on what the code means. This is known as preferred reading.