Stuart Hall: Encoding/Decoding vs. Sender/Receiver Models for Communication

There are three basic systems of representation, reflective, intentional, and constructionist. The reflective approach (mimesis) seeks to find meaning in the objects, events, or people themselves. Truth and meaning are said to already exist within the world and language is used as a means of depiction of that truth rather than an interpretation. This approach is flawed because each individual relates differently to each experience they encounter.

The intentional approach to representation is the idea that the author of the expression creates truth or meaning. This is the idea that we use language to get across our intended meaning. This ‘sender-receiver’ theory supposes that proper use of language will communicate only what you intend to say and that you will be completely understood. While we do create messages with intent, the receiver is still limited to interpreting the message based upon their own particular experiential references, which makes it impossible for exact meaning to be shared.

The third approach to representation is the contructionist approach that recognizes the social interaction that takes place during the communication process. Meaning does not exist in objects themselves (reflection), nor in the individual (intentionality), but rather is formed through a system of communication that involves the translation of an idea into a system of codes that is expressed, received, interpreted and given feedback. Hall reshapes the send-receive theory into a model of encoding and decoding. Hall’s communication model rejects the textual determinism of the earlier sender-receiver model and gives both the encoder and decoder significant roles in forming contextual meaning.

Hall described the model of encoding/decoding in structural terms based upon the articulation of differentiated moments, production, circulation, distribution/consumption, and reproduction. The occurrence of one moment doesn’t necessarily guarantee the next and the communication isn’t complete until the encoded message is decoded and reproduced into social practice. We do not consume messages unless we alter or incorporate them into our social practices and there are many points at which interruptions or breaks can occur in the communication cycle.

Halls model stresses the socio-political relationship between encoder and decoder. The relative socio-political position of the encoder and decoder impact the identification of codes within a discourse. “The lack of fit between the codes has a great deal to do with the structural differences of relation and position between broadcasters and audiences, but it also has something to do with the asymmetry between the codes of “source” and “receiver” at the moment of transformation into and out of the discursive form.”

Raw historical events cannot be transmitted without first being converted into a story. Broadcasters of news must utilize linguistic codes (that are created by the culture in which they operate), thus the audience is also the source for these codes. The stigmatic encoding of the event for transmission via audio and visual discourse on television gives the message a privileged position and asserts a form of domination, or at the minimum a privileged position, in relation to the audience. When a television station broadcast a news story they encode the information from a particular viewpoint or ideology. The broadcaster is creating a preferred meaning. With television in particular, the Visual signifiers bear strong resemblance to the signified and are somewhat less subjective and therefore are more dangerous because they are more readily accepted as “natural” or “truthful”.

However the audience watching the newscast can decode the story using one of three strategies. The audience can decode the message “straight” and accept the “dominant” meaning by accepting the codes as they are presented (dominant-hegemonic position), or they can negotiate and accept part of the preferred meaning and modify some of the codes to add their own meaning, or they can oppose the message while understanding it’s intended connotative meaning.

The significance of Hall’s theory lies in the development of the framework of understanding that precedes the encoding and decoding of discourse based upon relative socio political positions within hegemonic structures. Hall points out that mass media broadcasters, while incorporating a relatively autonomous professional code, are operating within the umbrella of the hegemonic codes. What is refreshing about Hall’s work as compared to Adorno and Horkheimer, is the empowerment of the decoder through their negotiated or oppositional positions.

Magritte's Ceci n'est pas une pipe [This is not a pipe.]

The differences of "global culture industry" to previous form of "popular culture" and "culture industry" according to Lash and Lury

The primary difference between Lash and Lury’s description of the “global culture industry” compared to Adorno and Hockheimer’s culture industry is one of determinism versus indeterminism. Products produced as commodities in A & H’s criticisms were valued based upon their identifiable uses. The value of a phone is only based upon its functionality. Emphasis was placed on production and circulation.

In the global economy cultural products are so ubiquitous that they no longer merely represent ideology and a battleground of resistance, they are mediating the “things” of everyday life that make up our lifestyle.

In Adorno and Horkheimer’s culture industry, production was limited to distinct products that were purchased and accumulated to support capitalism. Lash and Lury describe the transformation of global culture from commodities to brands. Culture is no longer contained within a single product but is cross licensed and transformed into every imaginable object of our everyday existence. Disney is perhaps the best example of this. A animated film becomes a sweatshirt, a video, a icon on a plate or cup, and part of packaging at McDonalds. Consumers are so inundated with cultural symbols that they have to find the means of normalizing it and have done so by absorbing these products with less ideological debate, and more as self identity. In a continuation of the Birmingham school of thought, these brands are consumed and transformed by the consumer to suit their personal identity. “When media become things, we enter a world of operationality, a world not of interpretation but of navigation. We do not read them so much as ‘do’ them (‘Just Do It’), or do with them”

As manufacturing has moved overseas through outsourcing, the American economy is based more on product design and brand identity. While all cell phones perform roughly the same function, products are marketed based upon a brand identity that is clearly differentiated from one brand to the next. The iPhone is defined by its corporate brand that is distinct from that of the blackberry. In extreme cases you will see the same exact product marketed under two different brands such as the Isuzu Rodeo SUV and the Honda Pilot.

The global culture industry is one of convergence as cultural objects descend from the superstructure and others ascend from the base. As mechanical reproduction and the expansion of media led to popular culture clashing with classical culture, the growth of vertical integration in global culture has smudged the lines further. Lash and Lury expand on Foucalt’s theories of bio-power and further expand the arguments against determinism as expressed by Althusser and Horkheimer. Brands are organic and carry with them memory. Consumers of cultural products int the global sense are no longer subjected to the mechano-power that determines form and function, the consumer “self-organizes” and modifies the objects to suit their own uses and identities. A cultural object now comes with “windows” and “doors” that permit further networking and connections. Lash and Lury use the example of the movie ‘The Matrix’ to illustrate that reality is in the mind, not the object, hence the global cultural industry is in the brand and not the commodity.

A brief comparison of Birmingham School's analysis of "popular culture" to Adorno and Horkheimer's notion of "culture industry"

Thomas Hart Benton “Hollywood” 1937

In simplistic terms the Frankfurt School as represented by Adorno and Horkheimer theorized that culture is a result of the mass production of culture objects that directly influence society and subordinate them to a capitalist system. The means of production (economic base) determine the cultural superstructures and all cultural production is subservient to economic function. Adorno and Horkheimer paint a stark picture of consumerism that has blighted out the light of emancipation through enlightenment from the ‘high’ arts.


Perhaps the most significant notion to come out of their theory of the culture industry is that they managed to identify a structure of control in capitalism that is inescapable. "Differentiation is not opposition, but rather assists in classification, organization, and identification of consumers. Something is provided for everyone so that no one can escape; differences are hammered home and propogated."


The Birmingham School of Culture studies (led predominantly by Stuart Hall) on the other hand offered a more positive outlook by looking at the consumer as a vital partner in the decoding of ideological messages which created a new battleground for control over representation. Essentially the Birminham School contradicted A&H’s notion of determinism by offering a more complex relationship between producers and consumers of culture that is drawn into linguistic structures, and as such offer a mechanism for change through the polysemy of codes that empower the decoder to operate from a position of negotiated resistance or opposition. From a linguistic structure we can see where cultural ideology, while operating from a position of dominance and hegemony, are forced into the realm of socially constructed discourse.

Language is directly linked to the creation of cultural values because it is the medium required for the expression of ideas and feelings. Language is considered a representational system because it is used to reference either real objects and events, or our imagination (complex ideas) and emotions. In order for people to be members of the same culture they must share the same representation system (language).

Emphasis is placed on constructionist theories of representation and Hall builds his case by first presenting Ferndinand Saussures’ theories of language and shared codes, Roland Barthes explorations of Semiotics and shared meaning, and finally Foucault’s discursive theories and investigations of shared power.
We see a progression of thought that moves from a system of representation that is based upon fixed denotative and connotative meanings, to one that recognizes the evolving relationship between meaning and cultural practices within a historical context.
In summary, the difference between the notion of ‘popular culture’ and the Birmingham School is one of changing definitions of culture from that of a being byproduct of commodities (Adorno & Horkheimer) to one of a complex and dynamic socially constructed system of codes and signifiers (Birmingham School, Hall et al.).
The “things” we consume do not define culture. Culture is the set of practices that express the significance or value we place on ideas and objects. The television show ‘Survivor’ does not, in and of itself, create culture. It is the group of people who have identified themselves with the show and placed significance on it by choosing to take time to spend an hour per week watching it that creates culture. The object (television show) itself is not the creator of culture. It is our choice to adopt objects as part of our lifestyle that makes an item such as a Starbucks Latte culturally significant. Groups of individuals who place similar significance on ideas, emotions, and objects are in fact sharing meaning. It is this shared meaning that is expressed through like actions that defines culture. It is our shared meanings that establish social norms, which in turn govern our actions and establish order within society.

When we understand what culture is and how we can identify it through the recognition of significance and practices, we are better able to make commentary on it and possibly introduce new cultural elements to it that will shift behaviors towards a new direction.