I have obsessed by audience interpretations of “texts” after attending this week unlecture.

Authors cannot have any control over the interpretation of their work. The meaning intended by the person producing it but that meaning can be undermined when decoded by the audience. It reminds me about active audience theory i studied last semester.

Active Audience Model is based on Encoding and Decoding model. British sociologist Stuart Hall proposed a model of mass communication which highlighted the importance of active interpretation within relevant codes with a simple idea that no text has one meaning (Corner, 1983 & Hall, 1980) .The meaning has to be extracted (decoded) by the receiver. In other words the transmission model of communication is rejected and is replaced with the idea that reality is socially constructed. As receivers we are constantly trying to make sense of information we receive-the media message does not have a monopoly on meaning. A text may have a preferred reading – the meaning intended by the person producing it but that meaning can be undermined when decoded by the audience.

Authors have to put into the code of the story certain meanings and hope the audience will be able to decode it as the way they want by mixing up the plot, narrative and story to add mystery and interest into the texts to engage the audience  as Adrian’s gunshot example about Elliot.

I wonder if anyone has the same problem with me but I don’t know what’s the difference between narrative, plot, and story. So I did a research 🙂

Narrative is the structure of events — the architecture of the story, comparable to the design of a building. Story is the sequence of events, the order in which the narrative occurs — the tour through the building. Plot is the sum of the events, told not necessarily in sequential order, but generally consistent with the story and often considered synonymous with the narrative — the building itself.