Meaning is not fixed in a text. Producers encode it; audiences decode it in dominant, negotiated or oppositional ways.
- +Fits Constructivist Epistemology, Interpretivist Epistemology
- –Tension with Positivist Epistemology
The longer story
Stuart Hall transformed cultural studies by analysing how meaning is made and contested. His encoding/decoding model showed audiences aren't passive—they interpret media through their own frameworks, sometimes oppositionally. Identity isn't fixed but 'articulated'—connected in contingent ways that can be disconnected and reconnected. For research on audiences, media, and cultural production, Hall demonstrates how culture is a site of struggle. Meanings don't just exist; they're won and lost.