Research Into Cultural Theorist Stuart Hall (By Zoe Woodstock)

Due to the audience being an important factor in all televisual media, we thought it would be wise to research the relationship between the text and the audience. Stuart Hall is a renowned theorist who established the 'Hall's Theory' of encoding and decoding. This is an approach to textual analysis which focuses on the scope for negotiation and opposition on part of the audience. In simpler terms, this means that the audience does not passively accept a text, of whether a book or a film, and that an element of activity becomes involved. The audience negotiate the meaning of the text. The meaning depends on the cultural background of the viewer. The background can explain how some readers accept a given reading of a text while others reject it. This theory is also one of the main proponents used to describe audience reception. Hall developed these ideas further in his model of encoding and decoding of media; "The meaning of a text lies somewhere between the producer and the reader. Even though the producer encodes the text in a particular way, the reader will decode it in a slightly different manner. Hall calls this the 'margin of understanding’.
Due to the audience being an important factor in all televisual media, I thought it would be wise to research the relationship between the text and the audience. Stuart Hall is a renowned theorist who established the 'Hall's Theory' of encoding and decoding. This is an approach to analysis which focuses on the scope for negotiation and opposition on part of the audience. In simpler terms, this means that the audience does not passively accept a text, of whether a book or a film, and that an element of activity becomes involved. The audience negotiate the meaning of the text. The meaning depends on the cultural background of the viewer. The background can explain how some readers accept a given reading of a text while others reject it. This theory is also one of the main proponents used to describe audience reception. Hall developed these ideas further in his model of encoding and decoding of media discourses. The meaning of a text lies somewhere between the producer and the reader. Even though the producer encodes the text in a particular way, the reader will decode it in a slightly different manner. Hall calls this the 'margin of understanding'.
Our documentary is a social topic and will undoubtedly create different receptions from audience members as they decode the content.

Adapted from: http: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Hall_(cultural_theorist)