Encoder/Decoder Model

Stuart Hall           Encoding Decoding Model

1 Media Studies tends to focus on one of three key areas.

Institution

Who produces the text and why. Questions we might ask are what social background are the producers or what budget do they have.

Content

This is where we study the Media Text itself. We might explore genre or narrative or representation.

Audience

Here we are interested upon who the audience are and what impact the text might have upon them.

2 All those who make media texts can be referred to as encoders. Encoders create meaning. When they produce a media text they do so with an assumption of how the text will be understood.

3 The audience all take meaning out of a text. When we watch a film or listen to music we decode the meaning. We try and understand what the encoder is trying to communicate. We can therefore refer to the audience as decoders.

4 As we know all signs are polysemic, therefore all media texts are polysemic. As we are all individuals we must therefore decode media texts in different ways. Stuart hall suggests there are 4 ways in which Media Texts are decoded. We can say that the audience can read/decode a text in one of the following ways.

4 Decoding possibilities

• Dominant reading: the reader fully shares the text’s code and accepts and reproduces the preferred reading.
• Negotiated reading: the reader partly shares the text’s code and broadly accepts the dominant reading, but sometimes resists and modifies it in a way that reflects their own position, experiences, and interests.
• Oppositional reading: the reader is in a social situation that places him or her in direct opposition to the dominant code. The reader understands the dominant reading but does not share the text’s code and rejects the reading, bringing to bear an alternative frame of reference.
• Aberrant reading: the reader is unable to take the meaning that the encoder put into the text. There is a gap (dissonance) between the cultural assumptions of the encoder and the cultural context of the decoder. They just don’t get it.

5 Media Producers (encoders) will often want their audience to take the dominant reading. To ensure a text is less polysemic and less open to multiple meanings they may try and anchor meaning.

6 Encoders need to talk to their audience in the appropriate way. We call this the Mode of Address. Generally encoders will make assumptions about the decoders’ (audience) knowledge, interests and understanding of the world and encode their texts accordingly. Those assumptions are cultural and can have an impact upon the audience.

Consider girls’ magazines.

7  The assumed language and points of reference an encoder uses to connect with an assumed target audience is known as the ‘Public Idiom.’