6. television (encoding & decoding)

8/2/2019 6. Television (Encoding & Decoding)

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TELEVISION, TEXTSAND AUDIENCES

ENCODING & DECODING


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Cultural Studies vs MassCultural Studies vs Mass

Communications theoryCommunications theory

Mass communicationsresearch

grew out of, and displaced,earlier work on the media bythe Frankfurt School. Itworked on the assumptionthat the media offered anunproblematic, benignreflection of societ


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Frankfurt School

a group of German Marxistintellectuals (including

Theodor Adorno, WalterBenjamin and MaxHorkheimer)

who had migrated to America

before the Second World Warand who saw the effects ofthe media in broadly negative

terms.


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Adorno and Horkheimer

Cultural products arecommodities produced by theCulture Industry

Cultural products areauthoritarian, conformist, andhighly standardized.

The aim of standardization :standardized reaction and theaffirmation of life as it is.


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Its concern was with theeffects of the media onsociety, which is measuredthrough empirical studies (thatis studies based on

observation rather thantheory) of individual behaviour.


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NEWS IDEOLOGY

TELEVISION AND TEXT

constructedreality

structures ofsignification

(theoperation of

power)


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not productsof a

structuredtext

active andknowledgeab

le producersof meaning


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active producers ofmeaning from within

their own culturalcontext


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ENCODING & DECODING

The process of television encoding isthe ARTICULATION(A temporary unityof discursive elements that do nothave to go together) of the linkedmoments of production, circulation,distribution and reproduction.

The production of meaning

(intended by the encoders) does notensure consumption of that meaning(by the audiences) becausetelevision messages are polysemic(multiple meanings).


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ENCODING & DECODING

as the audiences share culturalcodes with the producers/encoders,they will decode messages within the

same framework.

Where the audiences are situated indifferent social positions (class,

gender), they will decode theprogrammes in their alternative ways


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recever

- linear-

the conventional model

of communication


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Three decoding positions(Stuart Hall)

the dominant-hegemonicencoding/decoding which accepts thepreferred meanings

a negotiated code to acknowlegethe legitimacy of the hegemonic butalso to make its own rules andadaptations under circumstances

an oppositional code tounderstand the preferred encodingbut to reject and to decode in

contrary ways.


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Arguments against the masscommunications model

meaning is not simply fixed or

determined by the sender;

the message is nevertransparent;

the audience is not a passiverecipient

of meanin


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Text and Meanings

the text may structure

aspects of meaning byguiding the readers,

but it can not fix meanings

(which are the oscillations-repeated change from one tothe other- between the textand the imagination of the

readers)


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decodings varied bysocio-demographic factors

(class, age, sex, race)

and by their associatedcultural competencies and

frameworks


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The meaning of 9/11 tragedy

North America had become the tragicvictim of a terrorist attack.

The sense of tragedy was highlighted

in showing the traumatised reactionof audiences in Europe and inAmerica as they received the news.

However, people in Palestineapparently are celebrating the news

6. television (encoding & decoding)

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