ABSTRACT
Representations, as will now be increasingly clear, may have multiple meanings, but not all meanings are equal. If interpretation of existing environmental representations is a creative act, and even if words and concepts shift their meanings (see above), then all environmental representations are to some degree open to a multiplicity of meanings both actually (at any one given time and place) and potentially (as and when they are interpreted and reinterpreted in the future). Media theorists (e.g. Morley, 1992; Branston and Stafford, 1996) have suggested that meaning varies with how we read ‘representations’, with differences between:
a ‘dominant’ reading, where the producers’ intended or ‘preferred’ meaning is entirely accepted;
a ‘negotiated’ reading, where aspects of the message are accepted and others rejected;
an ‘oppositional’ reading, where the fundamental premise of the message is rejected outright.
