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→References: dead link to Stuart Hall's article from University of Birmingham. It's still accessible via the wayback machine, but unsure on if it would be approppriate to link to the wayback machine |
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{{Short description|Cultural studies model}}
The '''encoding/decoding model of communication''' emerged in rough and general form in 1948 in [[Claude E. Shannon]]'s "A Mathematical Theory of Communication," where it was part of a technical schema for designating the technological encoding of signals. Gradually, it was adapted by communications scholars, most notably [[Wilbur Schramm]], in the 1950s, primarily to explain how mass communications could be effectively transmitted to a public, its meanings intact by the audience (i.e., decoders).<ref name="How communication works">{{cite book|first=Schramm|last=Wilbur|title=The
Thus,
{{quote|1="The level of connotation of the visual [[Sign (semiotics)|sign]], of its [[Contextualization (sociolinguistics)|contextual]] reference and positioning in different discursive fields of meaning and association, is the point where already coded signs intersect with the deep [[semantic]] codes of a culture and take on additional more active [[ideological]] dimensions."|2=Stuart Hall |3=1980, "Encoding/decoding."<ref name="Encoding and Decoding"/>}}
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The ''[[Decoding (semiotics)|decoding]]'' of a message is how an audience member is able to understand, and interpret the message. It is a process of interpretation and translation of coded information into a comprehensible form. The audience is trying to reconstruct the idea by giving meanings to symbols and by interpreting messages as a whole. Effective communication is accomplished only when the message is received and understood in the intended way. However, it is still possible for the message recipient to understand a message in a completely different way from what the encoder was trying to convey. This is when "distortions" or "misunderstandings" rise from "lack of equivalence" between the two sides in communicative exchange.<ref name=":3" />
In his essay,<ref name="Encoding and Decoding" /> Hall compares two models of communication. The first, the traditional model, is criticized for its linearity – sender/message/receiver – and for its lack of structured conception of various moments as a complex structure of relations. The author proposes the idea that there is more to the process of communication and, thus, advances a four-stage model of communication that takes into account the production, circulation, use and reproduction of media messages. In contrast to the traditional linear approach of the sender and receiver, he perceives each of these steps as both autonomous and interdependent. Hall further explains that the meanings and messages in the discursive "production" are organized through the operation of codes within the rules of "language." "Each stage will affect the message (or "product") being conveyed as a result of its 'discursive form' (e.g. practices, instruments, relations)."<ref name="Encoding and Decoding" /> Therefore, once the discourse is accomplished, it must be translated into social practices in order to be completed and effective – "If no 'meaning' is taken, there can be no 'consumption'." Each of these steps helps
These four stages are:<ref name="Encoding and Decoding" />
#'''''Production''''' – This is where the encoding, the construction of a message begins. Production process has its own "discursive" aspect, as it is also framed by meanings and ideas; by drawing upon society's dominant ideologies, the creator of the message is feeding off of society's beliefs, and values. Numerous factors are involved in the production process. On one hand "knowledge-in-use concerning the routines of production, technical skills, professional ideologies, institutional knowledge, definitions and assumptions, assumptions about the audience"<ref name="Encoding and Decoding" /> form the "production structures of the television."<ref name="Encoding and Decoding" /> On the other hand, "topics, treatments, agendas, events, personnel, images of the audience,
#'''''Circulation''''' – How individuals perceive things: visual vs. written. How things are circulated influences how audience members will receive the message and put it to use. According to Philip Elliott the audience is both the "source" and the "receiver" of the television message. For example, circulation and reception of a media message are incorporated in the production process through numerous "feedbacks." So circulation and perception, although not identical, are certainly related to and involved into the production process.
#'''''Use''''' (distribution or consumption) – For a message to be successfully "realized", "the broadcasting structures must yield encoded messages in the form of a meaningful discourse."<ref name="Encoding and Decoding" /> This means that the message has to be adopted as a meaningful discourse and it has to be meaningfully decoded. However, the decoding/interpreting of a message requires active recipients.
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Hebdige was a British cultural and critic scholar who studied under Hall at the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies. His model builds from Hall's idea of [[subculture]]. He is most known for his influential book ''[[Subculture: The Meaning of Style]]'', where he argues that younger generations are challenging dominant ideologies by developing distinct styles and practices that manifest their separate identity, and subversions. His exploration of the punk subculture outlines the potential causes and influences of the punk movement, especially for the youth. His extensive study on subcultures and its resistance against mainstream society showed that the punk subculture used commodification to differentiate themselves from, or become accepted by, the mainstream. Hebdige believed that punk was incorporated into the media in an attempt to categorize it within society, and he critically examines this issue by applying Hall's theory of encoding and decoding.{{Cn|date=October 2021}}
David Morley is a sociologist who studies the sociology of the television audience. Known for being a key researcher in conducting [[The Nationwide Project]] in the late 1970s, Morley took this popular news program that aired daily on BBC. It reported on national news from London and the major events of the day, and was broadcast throughout the UK. He applied Hall's [[reception theory]] to study the encoding/decoding model of this news program. This study focused on the ways this program addressed the audience member and the ideological themes it presented. Morley then took it a step further and conducted
[[Janice Radway]], an American literary and cultural studies scholar, conducted a study on women in terms of romance reading. In her book ''[[Reading the Romance|Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature]]'', Radway studied a group of midwestern women that were fans of romance novels. She argued that this cultural activity functioned as personal time for women that
== Three positions upon decoding messages ==
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Hall explains this when he states "decoding within the negotiated version contains a mixture of adaptive and oppositional elements: it acknowledges the legitimacy of the [[Cultural hegemony|hegemonic]] definitions to make the grand significations (abstract), while, at a more restricted, situational (situated) level, it makes its own ground rules- it operates with exceptions to the rule".<ref name="Encoding and Decoding" /> Basically, this means that people understand the dominant position, they generally believe the position, but they are in a situation where they must make up their own separate rules to coexist with the dominant position. Hall provides an example involving an Industrial Relations Bill. In his example, he shows how a factory worker may recognize and agree with the dominant position that a wage freeze is beneficial. However, while the worker may recognize that the wage freeze is needed, they may not be willing to partake in a wage freeze since it will directly affect them rather than others <ref name="Hall"/> His example demonstrates that people may negotiate a code to work around their own beliefs and self-interests. This code is very much based on context.
Once more, Castleberry demonstrates the negotiated code at play in a modern-day television show. In ''Breaking Bad'', protagonist [[Walter White (Breaking Bad)|Walter White]]'s wife [[
===Oppositional position===
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==The encoding/decoding model critique==
Hall's encoding/decoding model has left its proponents with three main problems to solve.<ref>{{cite journal|first1=Shangwei|last1=Wu|first2=Tabe|last2=Bergman|url=http://www.participations.org/Volume%2016/Issue%201/7.pdf|title=An active, resistant audience – but in whose interest? Online discussions on Chinese TV dramas as maintaining dominant ideology|journal=Participations: International Journal of Audience Research|volume=16|issue=1|date=May 2019|page=23}}</ref> The first problem concerns [[polysemy]]. The three positions of decoding proposed by Hall are based on the audience's conscious awareness of the intended meanings encoded into the text. In other words, these positions – agreement, negotiation, opposition – are in relation to the intended meaning. However,
</ref> The third problem addresses the positions of encoding. Hall's model does not differentiate the various positions media producers may take in relation to the dominant ideology. Instead, it assumes that encoding always takes place within a dominant-hegemonic position.<ref name=":0">Ross, S. (2011, May 25th). The encoding/decoding model revisited: ''Annual Meeting of the International Communication Association''. Boston, MA.</ref>
Ross<ref name=":0"/> suggests two ways to modify Hall's typology of the Encoding/Decoding Model by expanding the original version.<ref name="Encoding and Decoding" /> While presenting the modified typology, Ross stresses that his suggested version
In line with previous scholarship criticizing Hall's model, Ross<ref name=":0" /> and Morley<ref name=":1">Morley, D. (2006). Unanswered questions in audience research. ''Communication Review 9''(2), 101-121.</ref> argue that the model has some unsolved problems. First, Morley mentions that in the decoding stage there is a need to distinguish comprehension of the text and its evaluation. Comprehension here refers to the reader's understanding of the text in the basic sense and the sender's intention, and to possible readers interpretations of the text (borrowed from Schroder<ref name=":2">Schrøder, K. (2000). Making sense of audience discourses: Towards a multidimensional model of mass media reception. ''European Journal of Cultural Studies 3''(2), 233-258.</ref>). Evaluation is how readers relate the text to the ideological position (also borrowed from Schroder<ref name=":2" />).
Second, Morley<ref name=":1" /> discusses the problem of understanding the concept of
In order to address these problems, Ross<ref name=":0" /> suggests two steps in modifying the original model. The first step is to distinguish between the graphical model and the typology, which is different decoding positions (dominant-hegemonic, negotiated, and oppositional). The second step is to divide the model into two versions, an ideology version (Figure 1) and a text-related version (Figure 2).
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{{=}} ''Agreement with oppositional text''
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The main addition in both new typologies of Hall's model are two types of encoding meanings, which are a Negotiated position and an Oppositional position. As the original model makes all media institutions encode messages in the dominant-hegemonic manner,<ref name="Encoding and Decoding" /> Ross<ref name=":0" /> takes a step further and
Another addition to the original model is the appearance of a Neutralization category meaning that media texts encoded within an oppositional or negotiated framework are decoded according to the dominant ideology. Let's look at the upper right corner of the Ross ideology version (Figure 1) at the cell when a radical text intersects with a dominant-hegemonic decoding position. For example, neutralization will happen if a TV news report conveying a message about an oppositional political party in Russia may be interpreted by a conservative viewer as an evidence of the US sponsorship of anti-government organizations underlying Russian independency. Let's now look at the lower right corner of the same version at the cell when a radical text is decoded by viewers within an oppositional position. In this case
'''Figure 2. The modified encoding/decoding typology (text-relative version)'''<ref name=":0" />
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{{=}} ''Neutralization''
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In order to avoid misinterpretations and to make an alternative typology more reader-friendly, Ross suggests a text-relative version that stresses not the ideological tendency of the text, but rather if receivers are in agreement or opposition with any kind of text.<ref name=":0" /> In this version Ross changed the term 'dominant-hegemonic' to
In the text-relative version a Neutralization category moved to the lower right cell while saving its meaning. Neutralization means applying dominant ideology to the radical text or rejecting oppositional texts.
Wu and Bergman<ref>Wu, S., & Bergman, T. (2019). An active, resistant audience – but in whose interest? Online discussions on Chinese TV dramas as maintaining dominant ideology. ''Participations 16''(1), 23.</ref> propose a revision to Hall's encoding/decoding model in a different way. They conceptualize the adoption of certain codes by producers and viewers respectively as ''encoding strategies'' and ''decoding strategies''. For producers, encoding strategies are partly influenced by their imagination of how the audience will decode their products, which they conceptualize as the ''imagined decoding strategies''. For viewers, their awareness of the
To conclude, while Hall's Encoding/Decoding model of communication is highly evaluated and widely used in research, it has been criticised as it contains some unsolved problems. This section discussed some flaws in the original model and introduced proposed revisions to Hall's typology.
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