But Wait: Do We Really CONSUME Media?

Summary

This video explores how we interact with media, proposing that we don't just consume it but decode it, influenced by Stuart Hall’s theory of encoding and decoding. Media, unlike food, isn't simply used up, but contains encoded messages shaped by culture and context. The process of decoding is complex, involving personal interpretation that can align, negotiate, or oppose the intended meaning. The video critiques the metaphor of media as consumable goods and discusses how decoding offers a more active role for the audience in shaping media's impact on their lives.

Takeaways

• 🧠 Media is not just consumed but decoded, suggesting a deeper interaction with content beyond passive consumption.
• 📺 The metaphor of media as consumable goods shapes how we perceive and engage with it, even though media isn’t 'used up' like physical products.
• 🍽️ Terms like 'media diet,' 'binge-watching,' and 'devouring a book' reinforce the metaphor that media consumption is similar to eating, influencing us in a manner akin to how food affects the body.
• 🧐 Stuart Hall’s encoding and decoding theory emphasizes that media is encoded with meanings during production, and audiences must actively decode these meanings to understand the content.
• 🔄 Decoding media can take different forms: dominant (agreeing with intended meaning), negotiated (partially accepting meaning), or oppositional (rejecting or reinterpreting meaning).
• 🎭 Media's effects on the audience depend on how well the audience's 'codes' align with the producer’s intent, creating potential for miscommunication or reinterpretation.
• ⚙️ The process of decoding is more active than consumption, offering space for critical analysis and even adversarial interpretations of media content.
• 📚 The media metaphor of 'you are what you consume' parallels dietary concerns with the notion that media affects minds, influencing values, morals, and perceptions.
• 🔄 Media encoding reflects the social, cultural, and political context of its creation, which is then decoded differently by diverse audiences based on their background.
• 🎨 Hall’s theory empowers audiences, showing that media interaction is complex and participatory, influencing not just understanding but also the reproduction of ideas in society.

Q & A

What is the main idea of the media consumption metaphor in the script?

The script argues that the metaphor of media as a consumable good simplifies how we talk about and understand media. This metaphor frames media as something we take in, like food, but overlooks the complexity of how we process and make meaning from media.

How does the media consumption metaphor differ from actual consumption of goods like food?

Unlike physical goods, which are used up when consumed, media doesn’t get depleted through use. Media consumption is more about taking in information or entertainment, which stays available and may influence us in more complex ways.

What is Stuart Hall's theory of encoding and decoding, and how does it relate to media consumption?

Stuart Hall’s theory suggests that media is 'encoded' with meaning by its creators and 'decoded' by the audience. This process involves interpreting media, and decoding doesn’t always align perfectly with the original intentions of the creators. Hall’s idea contrasts with the media consumption metaphor by emphasizing active interpretation over passive intake.

Why does the script suggest that the metaphor of media as food could be misleading?

The metaphor suggests a passive process, similar to eating food, where the audience absorbs whatever is present in the media. However, media interpretation is more active, with audiences decoding and assigning meaning in various ways, which may not align with the content's original encoding.

What is the significance of the 'media diet' metaphor mentioned in the script?

The 'media diet' metaphor emphasizes how the media we consume influences us, similar to how the food we eat affects our physical health. Just as certain foods are deemed 'healthy' or 'unhealthy,' the script suggests that culture determines what media content is considered good or bad for our minds.

How does Hall’s concept of 'reproduction' fit into the media decoding process?

Reproduction, according to Hall, refers to how audiences, after decoding media, bring its messages and meanings into their own lives. These meanings influence their actions, opinions, beliefs, and possibly even the media they create in the future.

What role does cultural and ideological background play in decoding media according to Hall?

Cultural and ideological backgrounds significantly influence how people decode media. If the audience shares the same codes as the producer, they are more likely to decode the media as intended. Otherwise, misunderstandings or different interpretations may arise.

What does the script mean by 'dominant,' 'negotiated,' and 'oppositional' codes in media decoding?

These terms refer to different ways of decoding media. A 'dominant' code means fully accepting the intended message, a 'negotiated' code means partially accepting the message while also questioning it, and an 'oppositional' code means rejecting the intended message and creating a counter-interpretation.

How does Hall’s theory challenge the idea of passive media consumption?

Hall’s theory challenges passive consumption by showing that audiences actively decode media messages. People can interpret, question, or even reject the encoded messages based on their individual perspectives, making media engagement a more active process.

What does the script suggest about the relationship between media creators and audiences in terms of meaning-making?

The script suggests that meaning-making in media is a dynamic process. Creators encode media with their intended messages, but audiences actively decode and interpret those messages. The relationship is not one-way, as audiences can derive meanings that differ from or even oppose the creators' intentions.

Outlines

00:00

🎥 Decoding Media Consumption

The opening paragraph introduces the idea that media is not just consumed but decoded. It highlights how we commonly describe media interactions (listening, watching, reading), yet these actions are abstracted into 'consumption.' The metaphor of media as a consumable good is explored, drawing from linguistic and media theorists like Stuart Hall and the concept of framing our understanding of media through language. Unlike food, media isn’t 'used up' upon consumption, and the paragraph begins to unpack this metaphor, exploring how media content impacts us.

05:02

📺 Stuart Hall and Media Encoding

The second paragraph shifts focus to Stuart Hall's theory of encoding and decoding in media. It critiques the idea of media messages as deterministic packets of meaning, proposing instead a more nuanced process involving production, circulation, and reproduction. Hall emphasizes that before consumption, audiences must extract meaning through decoding. The metaphor of consumption is challenged here, arguing that audiences do not passively ingest media, as they would with food, but instead actively decode it based on their own experiences and cultural backgrounds.

10:04

🔍 The Complexities of Decoding Media

In the third paragraph, the script delves deeper into Hall’s encoding/decoding theory. It explains that the codes used to create media may not align with the codes used by audiences to decode them, leading to misunderstandings or different interpretations. The text introduces different types of decoding—dominant, negotiated, and oppositional—showing that audiences have agency in how they interpret media. Unlike food consumption, where digestion is passive, decoding is an active process that allows for varied and even contradictory interpretations of the same media.

Keywords

💡Media Consumption

Media consumption refers to the act of engaging with various forms of media, such as TV shows, books, movies, and music. In the video, it's described as an analogy to food consumption, where just as food affects the body, media consumption affects the mind and behavior. This concept is central to the discussion, as it frames the debate about how media influences individuals.

💡Encoding and Decoding

Encoding and decoding is a theory by Stuart Hall that explains how media messages are created and interpreted. Encoding refers to the process by which creators embed meanings into media based on cultural and social contexts, while decoding is the process by which audiences interpret these meanings. The video explores this theory to highlight how understanding media is an active process rather than passive consumption.

💡Dominant Code

The dominant code represents the preferred or intended interpretation of a media message as encoded by its creator. When the audience decodes a message using the dominant code, they fully understand and agree with the intended meaning. The video mentions this code as one of the ways people interpret media, emphasizing how media can reinforce certain worldviews or ideologies.

💡Negotiated Code

A negotiated code is when an audience member partially accepts the dominant meaning of a media message but also incorporates their own interpretations. The video uses this term to describe how people may recognize the authority of a media message but still critique or reject parts of it based on personal or cultural perspectives.

💡Oppositional Code

An oppositional code refers to an audience's active rejection of the dominant meaning intended by a media message. Instead, the audience interprets the message in a completely different or even contradictory way. The video uses this concept to show how viewers can engage critically with media, extracting meanings that challenge or subvert the original message.

💡Media as Consumable Good

This metaphor frames media as something that can be consumed like a product. The video explores how this metaphor simplifies our understanding of media, treating it like food or goods that have direct effects on us. The analogy is used to explain how people think media can 'rot' minds the same way bad food can harm the body, thus influencing public perceptions and debates about media influence.

💡Media Diet

The term 'media diet' extends the food consumption metaphor to suggest that just as a balanced diet is important for physical health, a balanced media diet is crucial for mental and emotional well-being. In the video, the concept is used to discuss the impact of different types of media on an individual's thoughts and behaviors, suggesting that consuming only 'junk' media can have negative effects.

💡Miscommunication

Miscommunication in media occurs when the audience fails to understand the intended meaning of a message. The video uses this term to describe situations where the encoded meaning is not decoded as intended due to differences in cultural codes or personal interpretations. This idea is central to the discussion of how media messages can be misunderstood or manipulated.

💡Hypodermic Needle Theory

The hypodermic needle theory suggests that media messages are directly 'injected' into the minds of passive audiences, influencing them without resistance. The video references this outdated theory to contrast it with more nuanced perspectives like encoding and decoding, showing how audiences are not merely passive consumers but active interpreters of media.

💡Reproduction

Reproduction refers to how audiences take the meanings they have decoded from media and re-integrate them into their own lives, affecting their actions, beliefs, and potentially the creation of new media. The video discusses this concept to illustrate how media messages can have a lasting impact beyond the initial act of consumption, as audiences reproduce these meanings in broader societal contexts.

Highlights

The idea that we don’t merely consume media, but we decode it, moving beyond the simple metaphor of consumption.

Consumption as a metaphor frames media as a product, but unlike food, media doesn’t disappear when used—it lingers and influences us.

Media, like food, is something we ingest and process, leading to phrases like 'media diet,' 'binge on TV shows,' or 'devour a book.'

The metaphor of media as consumable affects how we view the content and its effects on our minds, drawing parallels with the phrase 'you are what you eat.'

The concern that media, particularly violent or immoral content, could have negative effects on the mind, similar to how junk food harms the body.

The encoding/decoding model proposed by Stuart Hall, which argues that media creators encode meaning into content, and audiences decode that meaning, adding complexity to the idea of media consumption.

Hall’s model suggests that media messages are not deterministic but are decoded by audiences who bring their own codes, experiences, and contexts.

Miscommunication arises when audiences and producers have different codes or worldviews, leading to distortions in meaning.

Decoding is an active process, where audiences can accept, negotiate, or oppose the intended meaning of the media they consume.

The concept of oppositional decoding, where audiences extract meanings contrary to those intended by media creators, showing agency in interpretation.

Media isn’t passively consumed; it’s actively decoded and contributes to discourse, with people reproducing its meanings in their own lives.

Hall’s theory challenges the idea that consuming media is a passive act and emphasizes the active role of audiences in making sense of content.

Decoding allows for nuanced interpretations of media, such as viewing violence as critique rather than celebration.

The idea that audiences may not always decode media in the way it was intended, leading to interpretations that go beyond the surface meaning.

The relationship between consuming media and decoding media changes how we think about the power and influence of content on individuals and culture.

Transcripts

Here's an idea.

You don't necessarily consume media so much as you decode it.

[THEME MUSIC]

When talking about what we do with the music, TV

shows, movies, books, and comics in our lives,

we may say that we listen to, watch, or read them.

But in the same way we may abstract media itself

into the homogeneous monad of content,

what we do with that content may also

get abstracted into the totalizing

process of consumption.

We consume content.

We are content and media consumers.

The metaphor of media as consumable good

isn't so much a media theory as it

is a convenience of language.

We need to be able to talk about what we do with information

and entertainment, how it gets into our brains

through our various sense organs and has an effect on us.

But really, it's not just talking.

The way we talk about things frames how we think about

and understand them, cf.

Lackoff and Jonson's The "Metaphors We Live By."

Or as media theorist Stuart Hall wrote, "reality

exists outside language, but is constantly mediated

by and through language.

And what we can know and to say has

to be produced in and through discourse."

The media is consumable good metaphor can actually

frame and influence what we think media is, what's in it,

and how it works.

True, this metaphor does get weird

when you think about how most consumable goods get consumed.

When they're used, they're used up,

which is not the case with media.

Media we consume doesn't go away like food, water, cleaning

products, or office supplies.

You could argue that physical media specifically

degrades with use, but that similarity seems

convenient and not fundamental.

That it goes away isn't the functional access

of consumptions use for media.

What is functional, I think, is the idea

that media, like food, is something

we ingest, we take it in.

I mean, just look at extensions of the media

as consumable good metaphor.

Talking about one's media diet, how we binge on TV

shows or devour a good book.

In each case, there's a process whereby something outside of us

is absorbed.

And the subtext of this process is

very food related, that what we consume affects us.

In dietary terms, this has been rendered

into a rhetorical diamante.

You are what you eat.

The food goods that we consume have an impact on our bodies.

Good food, good body, bad food, bad body.

There's a similar idea about media,

except what's bad or good is arrived at culturally

not nutritionally, which is not to say

that nutrition is divorced from culture or economics,

for that matter.

And this does actually make me wonder what the media

equivalent of calories may be.

Anyway, what hangs in the balance

with media is not our physical health, but our minds.

The pearl clutching worry is that media full of sex, drugs,

violence, cussing, and like Satan worship, I guess,

will rot your brain.

Or your morals and sense of propriety, really,

in the same way that candy will rot

your teeth or nonstop steaks will give you heart disease.

The sub-subtext then of the media

as consumable good metaphor is that what we get out of media

is what was put into it by whomever

made it, be it nature or a man in the factory downtown.

If there's sugar in the candy we consume,

we are necessarily consuming sugar.

So if there is violence in "A Clockwork Orange,"

we are necessarily consuming violence.

Right?

And still sub-subtextually, in the same way

our digestion of food is complex and ongoing but ultimately

passive, this metaphor suggests so too is our digestion

of media messages.

If you eat candy and therefore sugar,

it's not like you have an active role in your response

to that sugar.

You were active in the mastication and ingestion,

but not the digestion and nutrient

extraction, all of which are part of consumption.

So if you watch "A Clockwork Orange,"

then aren't you necessarily absorbing a wee

bit of the old ultraviolence?

Certainly seems that way.

Of course, not everything is what those [INAUDIBLE] is it?

There are more than a few ways to think

through how media works.

We've talked about some of them in past "But Wait" videos.

The hypodermic needle compares media messages to medicine.

Uses and gratifications casts media as information

that we use.

In his "Hot versus Cold" media theory,

Marshall McLuhan describes media as messages built fundamentally

on interaction, even if you feel like a passive, well, consumer.

Right now we're going to talk about Stuart Hall, who

you may remember from a few minutes we go.

We're going to talk about his concept of encoding

and decoding.

Hall wasn't responding to the consumption metaphor

specifically.

He even uses it here and there.

But the framework that he builds involves a process

which takes place prior to, and in some senses supersedes

consumption.

Writing about television in the '70s and '80s,

Hall became frustrated that media messages

were treated as these distinct packets

of deterministic meaning.

It was thought that audiences received meaning from media

because it was put there by creators

or it occurred naturally.

If audiences didn't get the right meaning,

it was a miscommunication.

The results of this process, then,

were fed back into production to fine tune

the whole thing in the hopes of reducing miscommunication.

In his essay "Encoding and Decoding,"

Hall's suggestion is that it is a lot more complicated

than that.

He says it goes far beyond sender, message, receiver

or production, distribution, production

to a complex set of interlocking and distinctive moments.

He names production, circulation,

distribution/consumption, and reproduction.

And he says that before consumption even takes place,

there's a step where the audience extracts meaning.

This moment sets up the success of the next steps.

Hall says that if no meaning is taken,

there can be no consumption.

This may seem backwards.

If you don't consume something, you

won't get anything from it, duh.

But if you've taken nothing from it, even if you've ingested it,

has nothing been consumed?

How would you even go about consuming something but taking

nothing from it?

This disconnect is probably due to the limits

of the consumption metaphor.

You can't consume candy but not consume its sugar.

So Hall's thought sort of seems bizarre.

Media though, is different from candy, sort of.

When media is made, Hall says it is

encoded by a complex meaning-making system that

exists prior to the media itself.

And that system is informed by all kinds of things.

The capabilities and mandates of the producing entity,

their goals, their ideologies, their thoughts

about the audience, the relative success

of previous media messages, the conventions

of media messages in general, and so on and so forth.

In the production of media, all of that stuff, all

those thoughts and ideas and politics,

they're crammed into both language, because remember

reality is mediated by discourse,

and also the language of that media specifically,

the conventions of photography, print, video, audio,

illustration, whatever.

In short, media always reflects the conditions of its creation.

It's an artifact that has encoded

all that complicated meaning, purposefully and carefully

in some respects, but also passively and nearly

invisibly in other respects simply

as a result of having been made by people in a culture.

After media is encoded and produced,

it's released as a product for people to use.

To use it, Hall says audiences must decode it.

And it's in the decoding that we get the things we

identify as coming from media.

Hall writes "It is this set of decoded meanings

which have an effect, influence, entertain, instruct,

or persuade, with very complex perceptual, cognitive,

emotional, ideological, or behavioral consequences."

In other words, to be affected by media is to have decoded it.

And having decoded it, one then brings

what they've learned in the process

back into the world as action, opinion, belief, perception.

Hall calls this reproduction.

Hall also points out that "the codes of encoding and decoding

may not be perfectly symmetrical."

This is super important.

The closer an audience is to the codes of media producers,

the easier they'll be able to decode its meanings.

If audience and producer have vastly different codes,

there's going to be trouble.

Hall writes "what are called distortions

or misunderstandings arise precisely

from the lack of equivalence between the two sides

in a communicative exchange."

Lots of signs may be obvious.

Like a video of a cow obviously represents cow.

But at more abstract levels, encoders and decoders

have to share higher and higher levels of understanding

if an audience is to get out of a piece of media

exactly what producers meant to put into it.

Except, hold the phone, what if audiences don't want to?

Or they want to get more out of it than what was meant?

Hall stipulates the decoders can choose their code.

Unlike consumption and digestion,

decoding isn't passive, or rather, it doesn't have to be.

Hall talks about different types of decodings

and how the type that you use, which you are by no means bound

to, even during the course of one particular piece of media,

determines what you get from that media.

For instance, if one accepts the meanings intended,

then they are quote "operating inside the dominant code."

A negotiated code is a take it and leave it approach.

One understands that media has authority, but also has

a necessarily non-nuanced view of the world.

Acknowledges both the legitimacy and the shortcomings

of the dominant code.

And an oppositional code reads perpendicular

or even counter to the dominant, finding meanings which

are implied or even contrary to its encoding.

Someone may choose their code reflexively or purposefully.

They may do it academically or for laughs, for all media

or in response to certain messages

only, or for different reasons at different times.

You may see now some similarities between decoding

and consumption.

Similar to how our bodies treat food, one's history and past,

their experiences changes how they

digest something, what they can take in,

and how it will sit with them.

But digestion, though it is an always evolving process,

remains ultimately an unconscious one.

Decoding, as a theory and a metaphor,

places agency where it should be,

with audience members purposefully interacting

with media messages.

Unlike consumption, it sets up the ability

for nuanced or adversarial interactions,

finding meanings which aren't on the face of the media.

Ultraviolence as critique, not celebration.

Or meanings which weren't intended, but exist,

nonetheless.

Sort of like consuming candy, but digesting kale.

Except it's consuming a kid's show,

but digesting one for adults.

Consuming news, but digesting propaganda.

Consuming horror, but digesting comedy.

And finally, when decoding is complete,

that is when the audience has received the media

and it enters that discourse, the one involved

with the conventions of its media

and the experiences of its audience.

Who will then reproduce its meanings and conventions

in their own lives, and possibly other pieces of media

that they make for other people to decode.

Which I know it doesn't sound as good to say they

that you are going to go like decode

your new favorite TV show.

We may never widely call ourselves content decoders.

Though it may be more accurate.

What do you all think?

What is the relationship between consuming media and decoding

media, and how does each change how we think media works,

what's in it, and what we do with it?

Let us know in the comments, and I will respond to some of them

in next week's comment response video.

In this week's comment response video,

we talk about your thoughts regarding the changing

nature of the label "troll."

If you want to watch that one, you

can click here or find a link in the doobly-doo.

Hey also, it's really nice to be back.

It's nice to see everybody again.

And thanks again to everybody who came to the Nerd Night

a couple weeks ago, the PBSDS series of talks

we did of the YouTube space here.

It was great to see everybody, to hang out, get to say hey.

In next week's episode, we're going

to be talking about the first thing we read for the Idea

Channel Book Club, which is a short story by Jorge Luis

Borges called "Pierre Menard, the Author of Don Quixote."

We've already shot that episode, so if you write a comment,

it won't make its way into the video.

But that's not an excuse for not reading it and getting

involved in the conversation that's on the Subreddit that's

really good, super interesting.

We'll put a link to the book club thread in the description

as well.

We have a Facebook, an IRC, and Subreddit links

in the doobly-doo.

And the tweet of the week comes from one C7,

who points us towards a passage written

by Jean-Paul Sartre about anti-Semites

that smacks remarkably of the rhetorical tricks of trolls.

It's a really interesting read.

This passage is from Sartre's book "Anti-Semite and Jew,"

an exploration of the etiology of hate.

It's good food for thought.

And last but certainly not least,

this week's episode would not have been possible or good

without the very hard work of these media encoders

and decoders.

[THEME MUSIC]