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Essay about encoding decoding

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CM382 Critical theories of communication (encoding/decoding)

Critical theory is interested in power, dominance

Ideology

“Received wisdom” about the world (beliefs, values etc.) typically benefits people at top more than people at bottom

Ideology legitimizes, justifies and naturalizes social system

To analyse ideology we must uncover how the status quo provides large advantages to those who already have more power and privilege

John Thompson (1990) defines ideology as “meaning in the service of power”

“Hegemony” = dominance by consent (but it is never complete)

“The challenge facing us as students of the mass media is to examine the workings of, and sometimes the tensions between, dominant and …show more content…

The moment of the text:
-symbolic construction and arrangement
-form and content of what is published or broadcast

3. The moment of decoding:
-moment of reception/consumption...by the reader/hearer/viewer [which is] ‘closer to a form of “construction” than to ‘the passivity....suggested by the term “reception”

The “dominant code” = preferred reading
[e.g. police are our guardians and young rioters are ‘deviants’]

The “negotiated code” = largely accepts dominant code but takes account of a particular group’s place within social structure
[e.g. police are in general good for society but treat some groups, such as immigrants, unfairly]

The ‘oppositional code’ = rejects dominant code [e.g. Police are instrument of oppression]

Advertising encoding/decoding

Mathew Soar draws on hall, but also on Pierre Bourdieu [“Cultural capital”]

Suggest that studies of advertising have overwhelming focused on ends rather than means

Soar suggests that advertising encoders (and creatives in particular) are primarily a self-addressing group
Myra Georgiou (2012) ‘Watching Soap Opera in the Diaspora’

[Soap operas challenge hegemonic discourses of gender in regions of origin]

Sarita Malik (2012) ‘The Indian family on UK Reality Television’

[Examines documentary/reality series The Family ]

‘The Grewal family - standing in here for the hegemonic authentic Indian family ... have just the ‘right amount’ of cultural difference’ (Malik

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