I was looking at the other posts and I was seeing a lot of confusion about the article, so for my blog post I am going to do my best to break down a bit of it for you! I can't breakdown the whole article, but I'll do the part that was most interesting to me! Also, I'll add in some definitions that I had to look up myself while reading because I did not fully understand.
A) Media Discourse: symbolizes the systems of thoughts and beliefs that determine how people understand and interpret the world.
B) Encoder: The sender/the producer of the message
C) Decoder: The receiver of that message
A) We choose to read encoded messages from one of three standpoints.
1) The Dominant-Hegemonic Position: This is the "preferred reading" in any kind of media text. This is when the receiver decodes the message the way it was intended to be decoded.
*Note, this doesn't always happen because it depends on a persons previous associations, social situation, and personal experiences.
2) The Negotiated Code/Position: This is the position where the receiver will accept some angles of the dominant meaning, but will also change or decline some of the aspects to better suit their own understandings or goals. As Hall puts it, the receiver/decoder, "operates with exceptions to the rule."
3) The Oppositional Code/Position: This is where the decoder takes the opposite position of the encoder. The decoder will create their own version of the message with a completely different intention. Hall says, "decode in a globally contrary way."
To me, this was the part of the article that made me do a lot of thinking and I was able to think about it while watching TV! :-) And, I was watching the commercials way more closely than I have in the past! It led me to an interesting conclusion/thought....
I never want to work in advertising!!!! These people who make commercials and ads spend all of this time encoding messages but then all that work can't be "right" or "wrong." This hard work can be done but it is completely up to the receiver to decode the message the way they want. It is like persuasion in one snapshot or one 25 second commercial.
This also leads me to my discussion question, do you think that advertisers ever have a hard time encoding a message because they don't really agree with the message they're sending? Let's take smoking for example and the ads that make it look cool, do you think the people who make those ads are all smokers? To go into advertising, do you go into a field that fits with your beliefs and understandings of the world because otherwise it would be too difficult? Just some thoughts....!
This is a great breakdown Kelci! Thanks!
-Liora
Yay! I tried to leave a comment telling you to correct me on here with a comment if I was wrong with anything. The last thing I want is for me to confuse people further by providing the wrong information! I just saw that so many people were having issues like me and it took me a couple reads to fully understand it and I figured I would try and help with at least a little bit of it! Glad you approve! :-)
Also, I was thinking more. Would it be better to be an advertiser for things that you DON'T like? Because if you are advertising things you like, you might not do as good as a job because you're already sold. It could be better to do it for something you don't like because then you have to come up with a way of endcoding that would persuade you, so it would more likely be decoded correctly by the people with the same thoughts... if that makes sense? Oh well. It does in my head!