Stuart Hall was a leading 20th century sociological thinker known for his work in cultural studies and media theory. He rejected the idea that a text has a single, inherent meaning, arguing instead that meaning is constructed differently by different audiences based on their social and cultural backgrounds. Hall developed the encoding/decoding model to explain how meaning is encoded into a text by its producer but then decoded and interpreted differently by audiences. The film Kidulthood is used to illustrate how Hall's theories can analyze how different audiences may construct different meanings from the same media text.