The Application of Stuart Hall’s Audience Reception Theory to Help Us Understand #WhichLivesMatter?
Part I: Stuart Hall’s Encoding and Decoding Theory
Stuart Hall was a proponent of the Reception theory (Davis, 2004) and his ideas were an improvement of the original theory. As a result, he developed the communication model of Encoding and Decoding.
Hall was born in 1932 into a middle class family in Kingston, Jamaica. Jamaica did not gain independence from Great Britain until 1962, so Stuart spent the first 30 years of his life under British colonial rule. After graduating from college, he started writing influential articles and published a number of books about how people interact with each other and media. He became one of Britain’s leading cultural theorists. Growing up as a minority in white colonial Jamaica, it is likely that his ethnicity and upbringing played a large role in the development of his theories.
In his numerous publications, his writing focused primarily on the ideas of racial prejudice, media, and social and cultural theories. He also spent an extensive amount of time writing about hegemony. Hegemony is the political, military or economical ruling of one group over another group of people, and the main purpose is to provide structure in social settings in which people could not survive without (Haugaard, 2006). An example of this would be the Great Powers of World War I, or the United States’ role as a superpower and “the world’s policeman”. Another example is the British Empire, which at one point, was the largest empire in history and, for over a century, was the biggest global power.
For Hall, hegemony manipulated beliefs and values to suit the ideas of the ones in power, and language was the place where the dominant ideologies took over (Gray, et al., 2007). As a result, culture was not simply to be appreciated, but it was the place where the power relation was established (Wood, 1998).
Becoming a key proponent of Hans-Robert Juass’s Reception theory, Hall wrote a new, edited approach that is referred to as Hall’s Theory of Encoding and Decoding. Contrary to previous belief, Hall did not think language and communication were as easily understandable as a tap on the shoulder. With Juass’s idea of audience reception, the process was quite simple. A message would be created and sent, and an audience would accept and understand the media or text when a group of readers had a shared cultural background or interpretation with the text and media in similar ways as the author (Nightingale, 2011). The problem with Juass’s model was that an audience was less likely to have similar or shared reactions if they did not have anything in common with the author so their personal experience would vary person to person and be completely different then the author’s intended encoding.
Since there is a possibility for the reader’s interpretation to differ from the author’s original interpretation, Umberto Eco, another media studies theorist, coined the term “aberrant decoding”. Aberrant decoding was applied to every possible text, and stated that both the sender and the reader must share the coding system of the text. Understanding could be affected by the possibilities of not understanding because of language barriers, cultures, or beliefs (Hartley, 2012).
Because of his ethnicity and growing up in a British colony, it is likely that Hall had first hand experience with decoders taking different meanings from the same message due to factors such as one’s personal background. Hall, coming up with his own theory around the same time as Eco, took these ideas, edited them, and added on to them what he thought was important and true. In his article, Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse, he tried to establish the relationship between the sender and receiver and stated that there are a number of steps that play a role in the sending and receiving of a message. During the process, Hall thought that the audience played a large part in the successfulness of delivery. With Hall’s new model he focused on television discourse and compared it to the communication process making it like a circuit. He stated that “Language and media do not reflect the real, but simply constructs something similar on our behalf. ” So, even with basic language, words are simply objects created in order to send a 3 dimensional world into a 2 dimensional plane (Procter, 2004). This is different than previous theories because many past ideas discredited the audience in having a major part of the process. However, with Hall’s theory, it was possible for the audience to change the meaning of a message in order to fit their social context. As a result, Hall included two processes: encoding and decoding and stated that the message encoded by the author is not necessarily the message that will be decoded by the audience.
Encoding is the sending of a message so that another person can understand it. There must be shared rules or symbols, and it is important for the sender to think of his or her audience and how they will interpret the message. During the production of the message, the sender uses verbal cues, signs, and body language that he or she believes the person or group receiving the message will understand (Hall, 1973). Though the person sending the message may believe that they are being clear, Hall believed that the meaning is not fixed, and is created along with the message (Davis, 2004). Because the encoding process is usually a result of one sender, only the ideologies and beliefs of the sender are contained so they are encoded (Davis, 2004). As a result, there can be some distortion when the message is received. Here, the receiver’s ideologies will either be dominant, negotiated, or oppositional.
The decoding of a message is defined as how effectively someone can receive and understand a message. It can be a result of verbal messages yet does not always have to be. It is possible to be pictures or media, emotions, or even body language. For example, if someone is talking louder, is red in the face, shouting, and using more hand gestures, it can be inferred that perhaps they are angry. Decoding, Hall believed, was the most important part of the process. This was new because many other theories did not focus on it all (Procter, 2004).
Once these signals are sent, the audiences, or the recipients of the communication, are presented with messages, signs and cues that have been pre-coded (Hall, 1973). However, there is never solely one received message. As a result, the audience must add meaning and rebuild or recreate the message (Hall, 1973). Regardless of whether or not the message is one on one or to a crowd, decoding is all about receiving, absorbing and understanding the information that is being passed on.
For the process to be successful, the received, or decoded message must be the exact message that was encoded and then result in the appropriate process or act. An example would be a mother asking her child to do their homework or the dishes and the child complying or responding that they are done. When a message like this is received and understood, Hall refers to this as a preferred reading because it is what the encoder believes should be understood or conveyed (Hall, 1973). It is possible for the decoding process to result in a completely different message than what was sent, and this is when distortion or miscommunication happens (Procter, 2004). Here, Hall states that the circulation is never transparent and the meaning changes as a result of many different factors such as age, mood, gender, experiences, backgrounds and economic standings, which make audiences understand the messages in different ways (Hall, 1973).
Having focused on applying this model to television, Hall stated that “The ‘object’ of production practices and structures in television is the production of a message: that is, a sign-vehicle, like any other form of communication or language, through the operation of codes, within the syntagmatic chains of a discourse. The apparatus and structures of the production issue, at a certain moment, in the form of a symbolic vehicle require its material substratum — video tape, film, the transmitting and receiving apparatus, etc.” (Hall, 1973). In simpler words, the production must follow rules and more specifically language rules in order to convey their point (Procter, 2004). If not, the message and system will suffer and become unsuccessful.
Applying his theory to the process of advertising, Hall wrote that “The level of connotation of the visual sign, of its contextual reference and positioning in different discursive fields of meaning and association, is the point where already coded signs intersect with the deep semantic codes of a culture and take on additional more active ideological dimensions” (Hall, 1973). When it comes to our media, if it is not structured in a relatable way, Hall believed that it would not be effective. As a result, our history, advertisements, current events, or even scandals must be transformed into an interactive story, not simply spoken.
There are four stages to Hall’s communication process and production is the first stage (Rereading, 1992). As previously stated, when it comes to applying the model to television, the production stage is similar to the encoding of a message and it is important to reflect society and the assumptions of the intended audience.
The second stage is the circulation stage. The circulation stage is comparable to the sending of a message. How people perceive or use the message is important here and determines the next stages success. Because the sending and delivery has an influence on the audience’s action or response, the circulation is partially responsible for the audience’s reaction. If a message successfully reaches its target, then the circulation is successful.
The third stage of the communication process is the use stage. For a message to be successful here, the sender must have included content or signals that evoke the audience to realize that he or she should do something with the message that is given to them. It is important to send an understandable yet meaningful message that causes viewers to think. As Hall says it “The consumption or reception of the television message is thus itself a ‘moment’ of the production process, through the latter ‘predominant’ because it is the ‘point of departure for the realization’ of the message” (Hall, 1973).
The last stage is the reproduction stage. It happens directly after the audience has interpreted a message and is the response or reaction they have to the message. For Hall, in terms of television, this is the stage when people go out and do something or take action. Depending on how it affects them, in terms of things like advertisements, it will convince a person to do something like buy a product, or to watch a certain show.
We are constantly surrounded by images and texts that are supposed to trigger reactions. Hall stated that “We must recognize that the discursive form of the message has a privileged position in the communicative exchange… and that the moments of ‘encoding’ and ‘decoding,’ though only ‘relatively autonomous’ in relation to the communicative process as a whole, are determinate moments” (Hall, 1973). Hall argues that though media is encoding with one meaning, each one of us interacts with our media in different ways. As a result, Hall’s theory also states that there are three different positions one can take when decoding a television message: dominant, negotiated and oppositional (Hall Et al., 1980).
In a dominant position, the producer or author’s message is successfully conveyed, and the reader has the “dominant thinking,” interacting, accepting, and understanding the intended message of the media. There are usually no misunderstandings, and quite often the receiver has the same ideologies and beliefs. In order for this to be successful, the message must be clear, and when this happens it is considered to be positive because the producer’s message is successful sent and received.
Another possible position is a negotiated position. This is an audience that is reacting with a mixture of acceptance and rejection. Here, the audience understands the text and does not agree or disagree wholly, but instead it is possible that their opinions differ, at certain parts. Usually they do this because they see what the sender is trying to get across, yet they hold their own interpretation and views on other parts or create their own rules and scenarios.
The last type of decoding position is an oppositional view. Here, an audience understands the text as intended by the encoder, yet completely rejects the messages conveyed. Instead, they change and add their own meaning to it, which is usually opposite of what the sender meant and opposite to the dominant thinking or view. Many times, it is because it is not relatable to them, the structure does not reflect their society, it is controversial, or they simply disagree so they do not understand it in the same sense.
In summary, the encoding and decoding process is far more complex than the simple sending and receiving of a message. Each step has its own significance and heavy importance to the process, and without it, the communication of content cannot be successful.
Stuart Hall’s theory has been widely applied and seen as useful throughout media studies as well as widely criticized. In either case, it has been very influential in the field and is still important today. In the next section, this paper will give an example of how Hall’s theory can still be useful. Hall’s theory will be applied to help us understand the widely differing views and reactions to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Part II: #WhichLivesMatter?
The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter was created with the simple and seemingly uncontroversial goal of promoting that a black life matters just as much as every other life. Surprisingly, many people reacted to Black Lives Matter negatively (Sanchez, 2016). No matter how often the group repeated the original intended meaning of the slogan, criticism continued. How did a group with a specific purpose have so many different meanings attributed to it? How did it become so controversial? How do we make sense of this phenomenon? Stuart Hall’s Audience Reception Theory can help us make sense of this confusing phenomenon. Hall proposed that the meaning of a message is not fixed. The meaning is created along with the message and there can be distortion when the message is received (Davis, 2004).
Origins of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement
On February 26th 2012, Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old male living in Miami Gardens, was fatally shot (CNN, 2017). Martin, who had been on out-of-school suspension, was visiting his father’s fiancé and had walked to a local convenience store in the early evening. After leaving the store, he started his walk back traveling through a neighborhood that had previously had issues with burglaries. George Zimmerman, a local resident and a member of the voluntary neighborhood watch, called the police to report “suspicious behavior.” Shortly after making the call, he got into an altercation with Martin ending in Martin being fatally shot in the chest.
The police, upon their arrival, did not arrest Zimmerman, who was injured during the altercation, because there was no evidence to contradict his claim of self-defense against Martin (CNN, 2017). After further investigation, Zimmerman eventually was charged and tried for Martin’s death. The story quickly gained national media coverage, and media outlets portrayed the event from widely varied perspectives. As Hall pointed out, “…the production process is not without its ‘discursive’ aspect: it, too, is framed throughout by meanings and ideas: knowledge-in-use concerning the routines of production, historically defined technical skills, professional ideologies, institutional knowledge, definitions and assumptions about the audience” (Hall, 1980, p. 129). With different groups watching different outlets, opinions about what really happened differed greatly.
A month after Martin’s death, Barack Obama addressed the issue saying, “When I think about this boy, I think about my own kids…. I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this. And that everybody pull together.” He then further stated that “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.” (Condon, 2012) Though Obama did not weigh heavily in because of the ongoing federal investigation, many opinions varied on if he had said enough or too much. Hall explains the possibility of varied opinions by stating that “…audience reception and ‘use’ cannot be understood in simple behavioral terms. The typical processes identified in positivistic research — effects, uses, ‘gratifications’ — are themselves framed by structures of understanding, as well as being produced by social and economic relations, which shape their ‘realizations” (Hall, 1973).
Though Zimmerman had previous run-ins with the police, many people believed Zimmerman’s story because of the growing focus on the image portrayed in Martin’s Social Media presence, which showed his use of profanity, questionable photos, and tweets on social media networks (Mackey, 2012). Playing a huge part in Zimmerman’s trial, Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law states that if you have reason to believe that you are in immediate danger by an “attacker,” be that rape, murder, kidnapping, robbery, you are allowed to use deadly force against the assailant as self defense, even before the need to run. (Findlaw, 2013). Since there was not substantial evidence against the claim of self-defense, Zimmerman’s trial resulted in an acquittal. This can be seen in people’s responses to the trial verdict. The nation quickly went into an uproar and many people were infuriated. The divide of opinion around the country was further highlighted and many people responded differently. Hall’s theory states that the decoding process is the most important step and that there is never one designated meaning (Hall, 1973). Many people raised within white culture felt that the act was justified because it was self-defense. In contrast, most of those raised in African American culture responded differently because many people felt that there was a big loophole in what classifies as murder and what classified as self-defense under the “Stand Your Ground” law (Findlaw, 2017). Instead, they believed the act was further proof of their concerns about racial profiling, vigilantism, and murder.
As a result of the Zimmerman acquittal, Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi and Alicia Garza united and created the Black Lives Matter movement (BlackLivesMatter, 2013). Starting with a letter written to black people expressing the love for them and their culture, Garza wrote why Black Lives were so important (Garza, 2013). It was very clear to the women that something needed to be done.
Encoding a Protest’s Message
Garza felt that Martin could have been her younger brother, and Cullors actually had a younger brother that had been brutalized in the United States prison system (BlackLivesMatter, 2013). They each realized things were happening that were unjust, and each one identified with the problems. As Hall predicted, these experiences affected their encoding of the movements message, for them, the issues seemed to be very clear and their own family experiences and issues had helped to shape their responses and thinking around the issue. In turn, each one hoped to voice their frustration with the event, and other events happening in the African American community.
As Hall states in the encoding process, though someone may feel that the intended message is clearly stated, the meaning is not fixed to the message, and as a result, what is understood is created along with the message itself (Hall, 1973). Furthermore, he states that “Before the message can have an ‘effect’ (however defined), satisfy a ‘need’ or be put to a ‘use’, it must first be appropriated as a meaningful discourse and be meaningfully decoded.” (Hall, 1980, 130). What happened with the Black Lives Matter movement was that the message was sent with such hopes of promoting the races as equal, yet it was not successfully received because other meanings were decoded from it.
The Black Lives Matter movement never meant that black lives were more important than other lives. Instead, the movement was trying to show that black lives were being treated as less important than the lives of other racial groups (BlackLivesMatter, 2013). In addition, Black Lives Matter was never against the police in general, but instead was simply against police misconduct, and how the police protected their own when misconduct occurred. Specifically focusing on Black lives, #BlackLivesMatter is an intervention with hopes to cause people to act to create change (BlackLivesMatter, 2013). With actions such as community dialogues and public protesting the movement hopes to bring attention to the many things going on in the black community that do not affect other racial groups in the same way. After Black Lives Matter’s creation in 2012, the movement adapted the slogan “This is not a moment, but a movement”, meaning that it was important then, is important now, and will always be so (Kolhatkar, 2015). Black Lives Matter is a youth-led movement that hopes to promote the social, economic, and political empowerment of the black community (BlackLivesMatter, 2013). With the want to improve the quality of life for African Americans in the country, the Black Lives Matter movement focuses on shedding light on issues that African Americans face daily, such as systematic racism, and police brutality.
Circulating the Message to Engage Meaningful Discourse
Hall also points out that how the meaning of a message is received is influenced by how the message is circulated. “…the broadcasting structures must yield encoded messages in the form of a meaningful discourse. The institution-societal relations of production must pass under the discursive rules of language for its product to be ‘realized’” (Hall, 1973). The slogan of Black Lives Matter was originally circulated from a Facebook post by Alicia Garza (Collurs, 2017). Eventually, the idea of Black Lives Matter shifted from the letter and instead produced a hash tag that expanded across multiple social media platforms. The movement was created around the Trayvon Martin Trial yet eventually grew to protest other similar situations. After the creation of #BlackLivesMatter it grew to produce protests and events outside of its original social media realm. In 2014, after the killing of Michael Brown, a Missouri resident shot by the police, there was much uproar in Fergusson where his shooting had taken place (BlackLivesMatter, 2017). Marching through West Florissant Drive, the street in which Brown was killed, hundreds of people traveled to the city of Fergusson under the title Black Lives Matter in order to protest. Creating GoFundMe pages and receiving other donations, the group grew and began to gain media coverage because of its large crowds and protests. Eric Garner, a New York City resident had also been killed by asphyxiation while in police custody. They carried signs, and the protests were widely covered on national news. As a result, The Black Lives Matter movement, gained more momentum and was recognized nationwide for its street demonstrations.
The Message Decoded
When the hashtag gained a heavy following and popularity after the Zimmerman trial, people began to think more deeply about the meaning of Black Lives Matter. Needing to decode the movement’s message for themselves, many people were confused about the how to feel and did not know how to respond to it. As a result, reactions clearly differed. Hall’s theory states that there are three responses that an audience can have when taking in and responding to a message (Hall, 1973). Supporters of the movement, and people who understood the message in the way the creators intended, are considered to have practiced a dominant preferred reading. Other people who understood the general ideas of the message yet questioned other parts, would be considered to have practiced a negotiated reading. Lastly those who thought that the message was racist or biased are considered to have had an oppositional reading.
Additional deaths further polarized how people read the Black Lives Movement message. If Trayvon Martin’s death was not cause enough for people to understand the movement’s ideas, the other similar cases that followed seemed to strengthen their ideology. In 2014, Ezell Ford and Eric Garner were killed while in the hands of the police, and in 2015, a similar situation happened to Sandra Bland, who died sometime while in custody (BlackLivesMatter, 2013). For many people in the African American community, because so many black people were getting killed while in police custody, it clearly confirmed many people’s beliefs that African Americans were racially targeted.
With some events being captured on social media or video, there was even more evidence about what was going on. Still, many of the police officers were pardoned, getting off with a slap on the wrist, further infuriating many people because of the lack of repercussions. The case of Walter Scott is a prime example. There is video footage of the police officer shooting him in the back while Scott was running away. Still, the jury was unable to convict the officer.
As a result, some people began to rethink the movement because of what was going on. Many people who responded in a negotiated read changed their minds and saw that yes, there was an issue at hand. Oppositional people however, further argued the idea that innocent white people were dying as well and that no one was paying attention to that.
Use of the Decoded Message;
Backlash and Counter Backlash
Hall states that the audience is part of the decoding process, and how they respond is determined on how they decoded the message. In terms of the Black Lives Matter movement, it is clear that the message was not successfully transmitted to many people because the assigned meaning was not what was understood. It is clear that somewhere in-between the encoding and decoding of the message, the original intent got miscommunicated and misinterpreted. Hall states that “What are called ‘distortions’ or ‘misunderstandings’ arise precisely from the lack of equivalence between the two sides in the communicative exchange.” (Hall, 1973). Only the white side had a privileged position in our society. As a result of different interpretations, many other spin off movements were formed responding to each groups understanding of what the movement represented.
When trying to understand the movement and its meaning, people reproduced their own meanings and response of the movement. Some people who responded oppositionally thought that Black Lives Matter was Anti Police and as a result, they created the slogan Blue Lives Matter. As a result of a negotiated reading, the All Lives Matter slogan was also created in response to the claim that Black Lives Matter was racially exclusive. Others simply rejected the movement all together and thought it was racist, avoiding being a part of any part of it.
Members of the Black Lives Matter movement in turn decoded the backlash responses with an oppositional reading. The organization All Lives Matter supposedly had the hopes to show that everyone is equal and matters, incorporating people of every race. The organization criticized Black Lives Matter, claiming that it overlooks other races and the different types of people and officers who are killed due to violence. Members of the Black Lives Matter movement encoded their own message that stemmed from the All Lives Matter movement to show that the All Lives Matter movement’s ideas were actually a misunderstanding of the original intent. The All Lives Matter movement quickly received criticism as well because many people felt that the movement was both ignoring and denying the issues addressed by Black Lives Matter in the black community. Sparking further debate around the issues, many memes were created explaining why All Lives Matter was actually insensitive and how it was not admitting that All Lives were not being affected by the same issues.
President Obama weighed his own thoughts on the controversy between the two movements stating that “The reason that the organizers used the phrase Black Lives Matter was not because they were suggesting that no one else’s lives matter … rather what they were suggesting was there is a specific problem that is happening in the African American community that’s not happening in other communities” (PBS, 2017).
Where we are now
After the continued controversy with the movement, Black Lives Matter seems to be in a stalemate. The movement is still very active and sheds lights on topics and controversy but both supporters and non-supporters cannot seem to get on the same page. Because of the controversy, during the 2016 election, the topic of the Black Lives Matter movement was important, and candidates took precaution when voicing their stances. During several press conferences, people in the movement interrupted candidates yet their responses differed.
Hillary Clinton was interrupted at a fundraiser, by a woman standing next to her holding a poster that said “We have to bring them to heel”, a quote taken from a speech given by Clinton 20 years prior addressing at-risk youth. The event was published on YouTube gaining many views and afterwards, Clinton addressed the issue stating that “My life’s work has been about lifting up children and young people who’ve been let down by the system or by society.” (Clinton, 2016). Throughout the campaign, she further addressed the issues highlighted by BLM and met with them to discuss their concerns.
Similar interruptions happened at a Donald Trump Rally. His response however differed when after being interrupted, he responded by saying that “All Lives Matter.” After receiving applause from the crowd, he asked that the group who caused the interruption be removed. He also had previously stated that he would like to “knock the crap out of protesters” and even “punch them in the face.” As a result, a BLM protester was even attacked at one of his events, which he justified.
Our society has reached a point where both the oppositional and preferred readings cannot see each other’s perspectives. Hall states that “One of the most significant political moments (they also coincide with crisis points within the broadcasting organizations themselves, for obvious reasons) is the point when events which are normally signified and decoded in a negotiated way begin to be given an oppositional reading. Here the ‘politics of signification’ — the struggle in discourse — is joined.” (Hall, n.p). Hall does not give a solution on how to escape from this issue, but he does give us a better understanding of how it happens.
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