Encoding/decoding model of communication

The encoding of a message is the production of the message. It is a system of coded meanings, and in order to create that, the sender needs to understand how verbal (e.g. words, signs, images, video) and non-verbal (e.g. body language, hand gestures, face expressions) symbols for which he or she believes the receiver (that is, the decoder) will understand. The symbols can be words and numbers, images, face expressions, signals and/or actions. It is very important how a message will be encoded; it partially depends on the purpose of the message. The 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. In his essay, 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)." 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 define the one that follows, while remaining clearly distinct. Thus, even though each of these moments (stages) are equally important to the process as a whole, they do not completely ensure that the following moment will necessarily happen. "Each can constitute its own break or interruption of the 'passage of forms' on whose continuity the flow of effective production (i.e. reproduction) depends." These four stages are: • 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" form the "production structures of the television." On the other hand, "topics, treatments, agendas, events, personnel, images of the audience, 'definitions of the situation' from other sources and other discursive formations" form the other part of wider socio-cultural and political structure. • 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." 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. • Reproduction – This stage is directly after audience members have interpreted a message in their own way based on their experiences and beliefs. The decoded meanings are the ones with "an effect" (e.g. influence, instruct, entertain) with "very complex perceptual, cognitive, emotional, ideological or behavioral consequences." What is done with the message after it has been interpreted is where this stage comes in. At this point, you will see whether individuals take action after they have been exposed to a specific message. Since discursive form plays such an important role in a communicative process, Hall suggests that "encoding" and "decoding" are "determinate moments." What he means by that is that an event, for example, cannot be transmitted in its "raw format." A person would have to be physically at the place of the event to see it in such format. Rather, he states that events can only be transported to the audience in the audio-visual forms of televisual discourse (that is, the message goes to processes of production and distribution). This is when the other determinant moment begins – decoding, or interpretation of the images and messages through a wider social, cultural, and political cognitive spectrum (that is, the processes of consumption and reproduction). "The event must become a 'story' before it can become a communicative event." - Stuart Hall, 1980, "Encoding/decoding" ==Application of model==

This model has been adopted and applied by many media theorists since Hall developed it. Hall's work has been central to the development of cultural studies, a field that had started challenging the mainstream media effects models in 1960. The main focus was how audience members make meanings and understand reality through their use of cultural symbols in both print and visual media. Theorists such as Dick Hebdige, David Morley, and Janice Radway have been heavily influenced by Hall, and applied his theory to help develop their own: 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. 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 qualitative research that included individuals with varying social backgrounds. This was where Hall's research came into play. He wanted to see how they would react to certain clips of the program based on Hall's three decoding methods: dominant/hegemonic, negotiated, or oppositional. 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: 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 did not typically have any personal time to themselves. 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. 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. 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 ==

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". Thus, just because a message is encoded on television in a particular way, it does not mean it will be decoded in its intended format. This lays the foundation for Hall's hypothetical positions—he needs multiple positions because there are multiple interpretations that could occur. These positions are known as the dominant-hegemonic position, the negotiated position, and the oppositional position. 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 Northern Ireland and the Chilean Coup. These elites created the "hegemonic interpretations" 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. Likewise, a viewer believing such perceptions will also be operating within the dominant-hegemonic code since they are decoding 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. 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 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". 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 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's wife Skyler 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 Skyler". This negative discourse, according to actress Anna Gunn, who portrayed Skyler, 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 Skyler's role as a non-traditional wife. 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" 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." ==The encoding/decoding model critique==

Hall's encoding/decoding model has left its proponents with three main problems to solve. 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, polysemy means that the audience may create new meanings out of the text. The audience's perceived meanings may not be intended by the producers. Therefore, 'polysemy' and 'opposition' should be seen as two analytically distinct processes, although they do interconnect in the overall reading process. The second problem relates to aesthetics. TV viewers may take an aesthetically critical stance towards the text, commenting on the paradigmatic and syntagmatic aspects of textual production. Underlying this is the viewers' awareness of the 'constructedness' of the text, which is a different dimension from meaning making in the decoding process. 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. Ross 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). Evaluation is how readers relate the text to the ideological position (also borrowed from Schroder 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 'constructedness' of the text means that from the text they also perceive, apart from its meaning, the encoding strategies, which are not necessarily the same strategies adopted by producers. These perceived encoding strategies constitute an important dimension of the decoding process. Based on their intended meanings and imagined decoding strategies, media producers execute certain encoding strategies and give a certain shape to the text. In the decoding process, viewers derive both perceived meanings and perceived encoding strategies from the text. From these two dimensions, viewers arrive at their evaluation of the text. This revised model admits the diversity of producers' ideological positions in the encoding process. Clearly separating perceived meanings from intended meanings, it anticipates the situation of polysemy. By distinguishing between perceived meanings and perceived encoding strategies, it also gives space to audience's awareness of the 'constructedness' of the text. 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. ==See also==