Encoding and Decoding

1. Encoding/Decoding
Stuart Hall

2. The meaning of the text is
located between its producer
and the reader. The producer
(encoder) framed (or encoded)
meaning in a certain way,
while the reader (decoder)
decodes it differently
according to his/her personal
background, the various
different social situations and
frames of interpretation
Phases in the model are
referred to as “moments”
Hall himself referred to several
'linked but distinctive moments
- production, circulation,
distribution/consumption,
reproduction' (Hall 1980, 128)
as part of the 'circuit of
communication'

3. It is how media messages are produced,
circulated and consumed, proposing a new theory
of communication
He argued that – the meaning is not
fixed/determined by the sender, the message is
never transparent and the audience is not a
passive recipient of meaning.
There is a “lack of fit” between the moment of the
production of the message ('encoding') and the
moment of its reception ('decoding').

4. Hall suggested 3 hypothetical
interpretative codes for the reader of the
text.
2.Dominant Reading (agrees with the text)
3.Negotiated Reading (partly agrees)
4.Oppositional Reading (disagrees)

5. Gramsci’s concept of Hegeomony.
Power and meaning are intertwined. We
are not just dumb readers but choose to
read the encoded messages.