Research: David Morley

David Morley undertook a study in 1980 to learn how different target audiences received the same text. He looked at how different audiences received an edition of Nationwide, which was a local news programme shown after the main evening news on BBC one. He found that there tended to be three groups of readings of the text.

• A Preferred reading is the reading that is most likely to be received by the target audience of the media text. This preferred reading is the reading  which the media producers want the audience to receive. 

• An oppositional  reading is a reading by the the audience members who are not apart of the target audience . They reject the preferred reading, receiving  an alternative meaning from the text .

• A negotiated reading is one where the audience accepts the meaning the media producers wanted their text to be received but modifies the way it reads the text to suit its own position.