Encoding Decoding

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Stuart Hall – Encoding/Decoding
 Stuart Hall is a cultural theorist and Professor of
Sociology at the Open University.
 Stuart Hall looked at the role of audience positioning
in the interpretation of mass media texts by different
social groups. Hall came up with a model suggesting
three ways in which we may read a media text:

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Encoding and decoding
 Dominant reading- reader fully accepts the
preferred reading (audience will read the text the
way the author intended them to) so that the code
seems natural and transparent.
 The negotiated reading – 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.

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Media Power
 Hall was concerned with media power, including how it
propagates particular social values, to create dominant
ideologies (in other words framing public debate surrounding
certain issues; e.g. the role of women in society, asylum and
immigration, the welfare system, the monarchy etc...)
 He believes that the mass media create and define issues of
public concern 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.