* Titled 'Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse,' Hall's essay offers a theoretical approach of how media messages are produced, disseminated, and interpreted * His model claims that TV and other media audiences are presented with messages that are decoded, or interpreted in different ways depending on an individual's cultural background, economic standing, and personal experiences. In contrast to other media theories that disempower audiences, Hall advanced the idea that audience members can play an active role in decoding messages as they rely on their own social contexts, and might be capable of changing messages themselves through collective action. * Encoding/decoding is the translation of a message that is easily understood. When you decode a message, you are extracting the meaning of that message into terms that you are able to easily understand. * Hall claims that the decoding subject can assume three different positions: Dominant/hegemonic position, negotiated position, and oppositional position. 1. dominant (or 'hegemonic') reading: the reader fully shares the text's code and accepts and reproduces the preferred reading - in such a stance the code seems 'natural' and 'transparent'; 2. negotiated reading: the reader partly shares the text's code and broadly accepts the preferred reading, but sometimes resists and modifies it in a way which reflects their own position, experiences and interests (local and personal conditions may be seen as exceptions to the general rule) - this position involves contradictions; 3. oppositional ('counter-hegemonic') reading: the reader, whose social situation places them in a directly oppositional relation to the dominant code, understands the preferred reading but does not share the text's code and rejects this reading, bringing to bear an alternative frame of reference (radical, feminist etc.) (e.g. when watching a television broadcast produced on behalf of a political party they normally vote against).

* Hall advances a four-stage model of communication that takes into account the production, circulation, consumption and reproduction of media * "Each stage will affect the message (or ”product”) being conveyed as a result of its ’discursive form’ (e.g. practices, instruments, relations). This implies that, for example, the sender of information can never be sure that it will be perceived by the target audience in the way that was intended, because of this chain of discourse. 1. Production – This is where the encoding of a message takes place. By drawing upon society's dominant ideologies, the creator of the message is feeding off of society's beliefs, and values. The preferred reading produced can be done on purpose or any unconscious biases that the author is unaware of. 2. Circulation – How individuals perceive things: visual vs. written. How things are circulated influences how audience members will receive the message and put it to use. 3. Use (distribution or consumption) – This is the decoding/interpreting of a message which requires active recipients. This is a complex process of understanding for the audience. 4. Reproduction – This is the stage after audience members have interpreted the message in their own way based on their experiences and beliefs. What is done with the message after it has been interpreted is where this stage comes in. At this point, you will see whether individuals take action after they have been exposed to a specific message.
'above all, a semiological conception'. Hall rejected textual determinism, noting that 'decodings do not follow inevitably from encodings' (Hall 1980, 136). In contrast to the earlier models, Hall thus gave a significant role to the 'decoder' as well as to the 'encoder'. * Audience is the encoder and the decoder in some sense- TV prod. look to audience socio-economic culture to develop TV prog. Once the prog. is created the audience provides feedback and if the feedback is good, it results in continuation of the same encoding or creating sth new.