Stuart Hall’s „Encoding and Decoding Model” Applied in the Theories of Communication

Abstract

S. Hall’s theoretical proposal of how media messages are produced, disseminated, and interpreted is his original contribution to the thought of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies — CCCS. The CCCS became famous for its mixing theory with ideology or assuming that there is no gap between thought and action. The idea itself had been drawn from Marxian and Neo-Marxian theories. The objective behind a knowledge about to come to light was to struggle against the others no less biased and particular than it itself. A. Gramsci’s thesis was that the main battlefield was culture, where two contradictory ideologies — hegemonic and counterhegemonic — clashed incessantly. These ideas were interwoven by S. Hall into his own model of coding and decoding. He claimed that there was no simple identity of the contents between encoding media messages and their decoding, because the cultural background, economic and social position both of broadcasters and audiences were different. The decoding was not passive but able to extract and change the meaning of a message in a way which suited their life experience, social ideas, economic interest or even languages. The English scientist postulated that within the media communication process there were three main stances towards decoding: the dominant-hegemonic or preferred position, the negotiated position, and the oppositional position. In spite of more than thirty years after it emerged the model has still had some interesting features which might make it inspiring for modern studies of communication. It is largely because of its high theoretical level and is due to its practical possibilities to understand the process of creating meaning within coding and decoding with regard to the social-cultural background.