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[[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 didn't typically have any personal time to themselves.<ref name="Media & Culture" /> Although her work was not seen as scientific, and her study applied only to a small group of women, she was interested in interpreting how women could relate their everyday life to a fiction book.<ref name="Media & Culture" /> As a result, her study demonstrated that these studies define culture in very broad terms, because in the end culture is made up of the symbols of expression that society uses to make sense of everyday life.<ref name="Media & Culture" /> Radway's audience research worked off of Hall's theory of encoding/decoding. Studying how specific individuals receive and interpret messages based on their backgrounds was something that played a huge role in Radway's study on women. Some women related to the book and some identified as though they were characters in the book; but the meaning, dependent upon their backgrounds, identities and beliefs, circulates within society and is reinforced by Hall's theory of encoding/decoding.
== Three positions upon decoding messages ==
==Dominant/hegemonic position==▼
Communication theorist [[Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)|Stuart Hall]] argues that there are three positions that people may take upon decoding a television message. He argues three different positions because "decodings do not follow inevitably from encodings".<ref name="Hall">{{cite book
▲===Dominant/hegemonic position===
The first position that he discusses is the dominant-hegemonic code. This code or position is one where the consumer takes the actual meaning directly, and decodes it exactly the way it was encoded. For instance, political and military elites primarily generated the politics of [[The Troubles|Northern Ireland]] and the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|Chilean Coup]]. These elites created the "hegemonic interpretations"<ref name="Hall"/> Because these ideas were hegemonic interpretations, they became dominant. Hall demonstrates that if a viewer of a newscast on such topics decoded the message "in terms of the reference code in which it has been encoded" that the viewer would be "operating inside the dominant code"<ref name="Hall"/> Thus, the dominant code involves taking the [[Connotation|connotative]] meaning of a message in the exact way a sender intended a message to be interpreted (decoded). Under this framework, the consumer is located within the dominant point of view, and is fully sharing the texts codes and accepts and reproduces the intended meaning. Here, there is barely any misunderstanding because both the sender and receiver have the same [[cultural bias]]es.<ref>[http://juliemartin.org/juliemartin-audiencesreception.pdf "Audiences and Reception Theory."] Julie Martin: Community Manager / Animatrice De Communaute. 2007.</ref> This means that the intended message was created by the dominant class and that the recipient was also a part of the dominant point of view. And there is no misunderstanding between sender and receiver for they have similar cultural biases.<ref name="Encoding and Decoding" />
A modern-day example of the dominant-hegemonic code is described by communication scholar Garrett Castleberry in his article "Understanding Stuart Hall's 'Encoding/Decoding' Through AMC's [[Breaking Bad]]". Castleberry argues that there is a dominant-hegemonic "position held by the entertainment industry that illegal drug side-effects cause less damage than perceived". If this is the dominant code and television shows like ''Breaking Bad'' support such perceptions, then they are operating within the dominant code.<ref name="academia.edu">{{cite book|first=Garret|last=Castleberry|chapter=Understanding Stuart Hall's 'Encoding/Decoding' Through AMC's Breaking Bad|title=Communication Theory and Millennial Popular Culture: Essays and Applications|editor-first=Kathleen|editor-last=Glenister Roberts|publisher=[[Peter Lang (publisher)|Peter Lang Inc.]]|___location=New York City|date=2015|ISBN=978-1433126420|page=90}}</ref> Likewise, a viewer believing such perceptions will also be operating within the dominant-hegemonic code since they are encoding the message in the way it is intended.
===Negotiated position===
Another hypothetical position is the negotiated position. This position is a mixture of accepting and rejecting elements. Readers are acknowledging the dominant message, but are not willing to completely accept the message the way the encoder intended. The reader to a certain extent, shares the text's code and generally accepts the preferred meaning, but is simultaneously resisting and modifying it in a way which reflects their own experiences and interests.
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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 [[Skylar White|Skylar]] leaves him after she discovers that he is a [[methamphetamine]] cook, and many viewers had negotiated "an acceptance of Walter's sins, while communicating negative discourse concerning Skylar". This negative discourse, according to actress [[Anna Gunn]], who portrayed Skylar, was because her character did not fit what was expected of a wife. This expectation could be seen as a dominant code. In addition, Walter's actions were against the dominant code. Because of these conflicting dominant codes, Castleberry implies that many viewers negotiated their own code where Walter's actions were acceptable due to Skylar's role as a non-traditional wife.<ref name="academia.edu"/>
===Oppositional position===
Lastly, there is the oppositional position or code. Hall summarizes that a viewer can understand the literal (denotative) and connotative meanings of a message while decoding a message in a globally contrary way. This means that a person recognizes that their meaning is not the dominant meaning, or what was intended, but alters the message in their mind to fit an "alternative framework of reference"<ref name="Hall"/> It is more like that receiver decode a different message. Thus, readers' or viewers social situation has placed them in a directly oppositional relationship to the dominant code, and although they understand the intended meaning they do not share the text's code and end up rejecting it. Again, this code is based very much on experiences. One's personal experiences will likely influence them to take on the oppositional position when they encode hegemonic positions. Highly political discourse emerges from these oppositional codes as "events which are normally signified and decoded in a negotiated way begin to be given an oppositional reading."<ref name="Hall"/>
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