culture and communication
How is Stuart Hall’s “encoding/decoding” model an advance on the traditional “transmission” model of communication? How does it change conventional views of how media products are consumed?
As a transmission theory scholar studying in mass-communication research, Hall put forward “encoding and decoding “model which brings big effects and shocks the traditional transmission model. The traditional model divides the message sending into three parts, sender- message- receiver. It is called linearity feature. The message is transmitted in a certain way. However, Hall has a different idea about this. He divided it into five parts. The basic view of Hall’s encoding and decoding communication model is that the media device pays more attention to production, circulation, distribution or consumption, and reproduction rather than transmitting a message in a direct way (Gurevitch, Scannell, 2003: 139). It is more complex than the traditional model. To initiate, Stuart Hall was profoundly and lasting impacted by Marxist theory, Barthes’s semiology and structuralism. His cultural and communication theory is deeply derived from Marxist theory with which he has modified the basic of media from of send-message-receive towards an alternative system (ibid, 2003). In this essay, I will talk about how Stuart Hall’s encoding and decoding model an advance on the traditional transmission model of communication. I mainly use comparison way to explain the advance of Hall’s model. There are mainly four parts. In the first part, I will talk about the first step, sending and production and deeply explain how the production step contains message sender’s ideology. In the second part, I will focus on circulation and distribution by analyzing Barthes’s semiology and culture discourse in it and how does the ideology of the code transform to the audiences. In the third part, I will talk about decoding part and analyze three forms of decoding which presents how audiences receive the messages.
As a transmission theory scholar studying in mass-communication research, Hall put forward “encoding and decoding “model which brings big effects and shocks the traditional transmission model. The traditional model divides the message sending into three parts, sender- message- receiver. It is called linearity feature. The message is transmitted in a certain way. However, Hall has a different idea about this. He divided it into five parts. The basic view of Hall’s encoding and decoding communication model is that the media device pays more attention to production, circulation, distribution or consumption, and reproduction rather than transmitting a message in a direct way (Gurevitch, Scannell, 2003: 139). It is more complex than the traditional model. To initiate, Stuart Hall was profoundly and lasting impacted by Marxist theory, Barthes’s semiology and structuralism. His cultural and communication theory is deeply derived from Marxist theory with which he has modified the basic of media from of send-message-receive towards an alternative system (ibid, 2003). In this essay, I will talk about how Stuart Hall’s encoding and decoding model an advance on the traditional transmission model of communication. I mainly use comparison way to explain the advance of Hall’s model. There are mainly four parts. In the first part, I will talk about the first step, sending and production and deeply explain how the production step contains message sender’s ideology. In the second part, I will focus on circulation and distribution by analyzing Barthes’s semiology and culture discourse in it and how does the ideology of the code transform to the audiences. In the third part, I will talk about decoding part and analyze three forms of decoding which presents how audiences receive the messages.
References: Eco, U. (1979) ‘The narrative structure in Fleming’, in The role of the Reader, Bloomington, Indiana, University of Indiana Press. McQuail, D. (1994) Mass Communication Theory: An Introduction. London: Sage Publications Stuart H (1999) “Encoding, Decoding”, in Simon During, The Culture Studies Reader, Routledge, pp. 508. Available at: http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/sh-coding.pdf [12 April 2013] Stuart H (2002) Representation: Culture Representation and Signifying Practices, Sage Publication, pp. 62 The Glaring Facts (2011) Stuart Hall Encoding- Decoding Model, Available at: http://www.theglaringfacts.com/staff-essays/encodingdecodingmodel/ [12 April 2013] Strinati, D. (2004) An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture, 2nd Edition. London: Routledge, pp. 97 Gurevitch, M, Scannell & Paddy (2003) Canonization Achieved? Stuart Hall’s “Encoding/Decoding” In E. Katz, Canonic texts in media research: Are there any? Should there be? How about these? pp. 231-248 Cambridge: Polity Pres