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Idoc - Pub - Stuart Hall Representation Theory and Encoding Decoding

Stuart Hall developed theories around representation, encoding/decoding, and the role of power and discourse in media. His encoding/decoding model examines how media messages are produced, distributed, interpreted, and reproduced. It recognizes that audiences can decode messages in dominant, negotiated, or oppositional ways depending on their own experiences and perspectives. This framework highlights the cultural power of media to shape meanings and identities.

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54 views

Idoc - Pub - Stuart Hall Representation Theory and Encoding Decoding

Stuart Hall developed theories around representation, encoding/decoding, and the role of power and discourse in media. His encoding/decoding model examines how media messages are produced, distributed, interpreted, and reproduced. It recognizes that audiences can decode messages in dominant, negotiated, or oppositional ways depending on their own experiences and perspectives. This framework highlights the cultural power of media to shape meanings and identities.

Uploaded by

Pippo
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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THEORIES OF

STUART HALL

By Khushboo Surana 2011C6PS573G


Maithili Joshi 2012B1A7502G
Nancy Nigam 2012B1A3646G
Priyanka M.P. 2012B5A7483G
Srinidhi P.V. 2012A7PS095G
Varsha Rao 2012C6PS317G
Yatisha Raul 2012A7PS108G
INTRODUCTION

• Stuart Hall was a cultural theorist born in


Jamaica in 1932.
• Birmingham School of Cultural Studies.
• Instrumental in removing racial prejudice in
media.
• Mixed racial ancestry
RACIAL PREJUDICE AND MEDIA

• Critical role in opposing racial discrimination


against non-whites in the media
• Black men-white media
• Theories-representation, encoding-decoding,
power relations.
REPRESENTATION

• Connects meaning and language to culture

• Systems of Representation- mental representation


and language

• Mental representation – shared concepts – culture

• Language – signs – words are arbitrary


MENTAL REPRESENTATION
• Concepts about material world

• Societal influence

• Abstract concepts –angels, mermaids, friendship, love


or even fictional characters

• Principles of similarity and differences to understand


the concepts

• Culture – ‘shared conceptual map’


LANGUAGE
• Concepts to language

• Words, sounds, visual images – signs

• ‘Language’ is used to communicate concepts

• Words are arbitrary

• Culture – shared language systems

• Meanings / words keep changing


THEORIES OF REPRESENTATION

How Representation of meanings through


language works?
THREE APPROACHES

• Reflective approach

• Intentional approach

• Constructionist approach
POWER, DISCOURSE
AND KNOWLEDGE
DISCOURSE
• Discourse as a linguistic concept : passages of
connected writing or speech

• Foucault’s meaning : group of statements that


provide a language for talking about a particular
topic at a particular historical moment

• Production of knowledge through language

• Never consists of one statement, one action, one


text or one source
DISCOURSE FORMATION

• Discursive events referring to the same object,


sharing the same style and supporting a strategy, a
common institutional administrative or political
drift pattern

• Nothing which is meaningful exists outside


discourse

• ‘Nothing has any meaning outside discourse ’


KNOWLEDGE AND POWER

• Knowledge , Power and Truth

• Regime of truth : general politics of truth

• New conception of power : Power circulates


FEMALE HYSTERIA : AN EXAMPLE

Andre Broillet
(painter), Jean-
Martin Charcot,
French
psychiatrist and
neurologist
How does this theory understand the cultural
power of media?

The constructionist approach of the representation theory


helps us understand the cultural power of media by helping us
understand the images we are seeing and how the meanings of
objects are social constructions and do not have fixed meaning.

For example, if women are always portrayed in the media as


subservient, objectified objects, than those characteristics will
always be assigned to what it means to be a woman; however,
through the shift in definition of females, those meanings can
alter and change.
In “Racist Ideologies and the Media,” Hall uses the example of
race and the representation of race within society. According to
Hall, “the media constructs for us a definition of what race is, what
meaning the imagery carries, and what the „problem race‟ is
understood to be.

The media constructs the identity of a race by its representation ,


therefore, incorporating an ideology and a set of meanings about a
race into society.

The media is bias in its representations of different groups of


people
As a society our maps of reality are dictated by what we see
through the media and what those images represent, if they are
distorted than we do not receive the true meaning (Hall).

As a society, we become immersed in a set of cultural beliefs


that are a reflection of what is instilled in us by a shared
culture.

The media is an outlet where those ideologies get distributed.


The media controls what content we are allowed to invite into
our reality, and into our shared cultural and social perception.
Hall‟s Theory of
Encoding and
Decoding
THE ENCODING/DECODING
MODEL OF COMMUNICATION
THE ENCODING/DECODING
MODEL OF COMMUNICATION

• Offers a theoretical approach of how media messages are


produced , propagated and interpreted.

• Speaking is encoding, as are writing, printing, and filming a


TV program. Once received, the message is ‘decoded’; that
is, the signs and symbols are interpreted. Decoding occurs
through listening, reading, or watching that TV show.

• Decoded depending on an individual's cultural background,


economic standing and personal experiences.

• Hall has had a major influence on media studies.


THE MODEL OF
COMMUNICATION
• Four-stage model of communication that takes into account the
production, circulation, use and reproduction of media messages . Each
stage will affect the message and the sender can never be sure that it
will be perceived by the target audience in the way that was intended,
because of the chain.

• The four stages are:


1. Production – This is where the encoding of a message takes place
2. Circulation – How individuals perceive things: visual vs. written.
3. Use (distribution/consumption) – This is the decoding/interpreting of a
message which requires active recipients.
4. Reproduction – This is the stage after audience members have
interpreted the message and individuals take action after they have
been exposed to a specific message
3 DECODING POSITIONS

• Dominant

• Negotiated

• Oppositional
Accepts the preferred Shares the same
message cultural biases as the
sender

DOMINANT POSITION
Involves modification
Mixture of accepting
based on personal
and rejecting
experiences

NEGOTIATED
POSITION

Crucial in implementing
changes in the product, books
(revised editions); help in
improvizing the product
Rejects the message due
Understands the literal
to cultural/ economic/
meaning of the message
social background

OPPOSITIONAL
POSITION
CONCLUSION
• Highly influenced by post-structuralists Barthes and Derrida

• No ultimate way to decode the message

• Post-modernism: Reader-response theory

• Significant role to the ‘decoder’ as well as t the ‘encoder’

• Criticism:
1. Based on the assumption that the latent meaning of the text is
encoded in the dominant code.
2. Downplays conflicting tendencies within texts
3. May be applied more easily to news and current affairs than to
other mass media genres. Difficult to pick a preferred meaning.

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