This theory extends the concept of an audience remaining active through the way an individual recieves and interperets a text, and how their gender, class, age and ethnicity may affect their reading.
This work was based on Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding model of the relationship between text and audience (the text being given a message/messages by the creator, and the audience understanding) and the difference between the reception of the message between members of the audience with different backgrounds. However, by drawing on common beliefs and experiences of the public the producers can relate the text to the audience. This is known as "preferred meaning"
