The encoding/decoding model revisited

• Stuart Hall´s encoding/decoding model has been enormously influential in the field of reception. At the same time the model has been much discussed and some critics have noted the conflation of the encoded meaning and ideological tendency. However, few attempts have been made to modify or replace the model. In this paper I shall present one attempt to modify Hall’s model. First I distinguish between the model proper and ‘the typology’, i e Hall’s partition of different decoding positions: dominant, negotiated, and oppositional. Hall assumed that news texts mostly are encoded within the dominant ideology. By dividing also the encoded meaning into the dominant, negotiated and oppositional we get a richer combination of encoding and decoding positions. Hall’s typology can be interpreted as both as ideological positions or as ‘text-relative’, i e decoding positions can understood as relative the encoded meaning, regardless what meaning that is. 

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications (hsv//eng)

Keyword

encoding/decoding

reception

ideology

Stuart Hall

Media and communication studies

Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap

medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap

Media and Communication Studies

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)