Compare methods

	Audience Reception Analysis	Narrative Analysis in Media
Field	Communication	Communication
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1980	2008
Originator	Stuart Hall (encoding/decoding); David Morley (empirical reception)	Narrative theory (Labov; Fisher); methods synthesized by Riessman
Type	Qualitative study of how audiences interpret and make meaning from media	Interpretive analysis of how media tell stories and construct meaning
Seminal source	Hall, S. (1980). Encoding/decoding. In S. Hall, D. Hobson, A. Lowe, & P. Willis (Eds.), Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972–79 (pp. 128–138). London: Hutchinson. ISBN: 9780415079068	Riessman, C. K. (2008). Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. ISBN: 9780761929987
Aliases	Reception study, Encoding/decoding analysis, Reception analysis of audiences, İzleyici Alımlama Analizi	Media narrative analysis, Narrative criticism of media, Storytelling analysis in media, Medyada Anlatı Analizi
Related	4	4
Summary	Audience reception analysis studies how real audiences interpret and make meaning from media texts, rejecting the idea that meaning is simply transmitted from message to receiver. Built on Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding model and David Morley's empirical work, it treats interpretation as an active, socially situated process and examines whether audiences accept, negotiate, or resist the meanings a text seems to prefer.	Narrative analysis examines how media tell stories — how events are selected, ordered, and given meaning through plot, character, and perspective. Drawing on narrative theory and the methodological syntheses of scholars like Catherine Riessman, it treats storytelling as a fundamental way humans organize experience and persuade, and it interprets the structure, content, and performance of media narratives.