Encoding/ Decoding

 

 

Stuart Hall

 

 

 

 

Stuart Hall is a cultural theorist and a professor of sociology. He looked at the role of audience positioning in the interpretation of mass media texts by different social groups.



 

 

 

 

 

 

Encoding and Decoding.

 

 

Dominant Reading-  Audience fully accepts the preferred reading the way the author intended them to, so that the code seems natural and transparent.

 

 

Negotiated Reading-  This is when the reader partly believes the code and broadly accepts the preferred reading  but sometimes modifies it in a way which reflects their own position, experiences and interests.

 

The Oppositional Reading-  The readers social position places them in an oppositional relation to the dominant code, they reject the reading.

 

 

Media Power.

 

Hall was concerned with media power, including how it propagates particular social values , to create a dominant ideology. In other words framing public debate surrounding certain issues. E.g. the role of women, asylum and immigration and the welfare system.

 

Hall believes that the mass media create and defines issues of public concerns and interest through audience positioning

 

Polysemy is the capacity for a text to have multiple meanings. It is to do with how individuals interpret and decode readings in different contexts and cultures.

 

 

 

Halls Theory-

 

Halls theory has influenced me as it has given me the opportunity to decide what way I would like my audience to be thinking when I make my OTS, and how I would like them to analyse it. It would be ideal if I was able to create a dominant reading as then the message would be clear.