Media theorists

Stuart Hall
Stuart Hall suggests that there are three different positions that the reader of a text can occupy when trying to interpret a text they are:

Preferred reading which means when the reader fully shares the text's codes and accepts and reproduces the preferred reading i.e. the most dominant reading.

negotiated reading which is when the reader partly shares the text's codes and broadly accepts the preferred reading, but sometimes resists and modifies it in a way which reflects their own position, experiences and interests- this position involves contradictions.

Oppositional reading which is when the reader, whose social situation places them in a directly oppositional relation to the dominant code, understands the preferred reading but does not share the text's codes and rejects the reading, bringing to bear alternative frame of reference (radical, feminist etc.)