Empowering cosumers into active decoders sounds awesome! The way we remix, and crtique and interpret media as you've mentioned before is our way of 'digestion' but a much more engaged process that can soemtimes leave us constipated. love the vid ideachannel!
To be honest, up until now I've always assumed that everybody has the view of decoding. This helps explain to me a lot of misunderstandings I've had in the past with others; them claiming that interacting with a piece of media is the same as agreeing with it, or, more precisely, looking at it in a linear, direct way where no meta-approach is taken to analyze its meaning and usefulness to yourself. There are two nice examples I can think of in which the two approaches, and especially the assumption of one of them being the correct one, leads to a "cultural" misunderstanding that is, indeed, just an interpersonal one. One: Professional Wrestling. Obviously, it is scripted. No debate about that. Yet what is its purpose? What do you watch it for? From the direct, linear approach, it is complete nonsense as it represents no genuine "drama" or sport. It is missing things that one would normally expect from Sport, but still some people like it as even a replacement for other sports to watch. The sportsmanship and excellence of sport certainly is there, but still non-wrestling fans dislike it. Why is that? I think it's because they assume a "non-ironic" approach to watching sport. You watch sport because you like it. Plain and simple. But ProfWrestling has a degree of abstraction to it that distances it from other things. It "acts" as if it were real sport, while also simultaneously breaking all rules of good acting to more or less explicitly show it it fake. The idea behind the "entertainment" in PW is that it is a very professional, long-going parody of sports with some extra spicy drama in it. A lot of people don't like it, that's clear. But probably lots have a different idea of how it works, or SHOULD WORK. Their decoding procedure is different. They look for other things than fans. Fans of PW readily accept the laws of the "wrestling-universe (WWE universe)" as given for the meaning of the shows. The drama in WWE makes no sense- but that's the point. You are supposed to watch it on a meta-level, yet still play along as if you were really into it. At least, that's my decoding of it. (BTW, you could argue similarly with MLP.) Second: OFF, the video game. by mortis ghost. A very athmospheric and intense experience, in my opinion. A lot of people agree about the fine work of its design and symbolism, yet when browsing the internet on fanart, I have a feeling that most people really see it as just a simple, primitive story, with characters you can like and those you don't like. When you play the game until its conclusion (sploilers BTW) You should know that the Batter is not necessarily a good person by any means. Yet most fanart depicts the batter more or less nicely. I was looking into this game on a more surrealistic analytic side, trying to accept the world of the game as having its own rules, not trying to force my ideals into the moral judgement of the characters. The symbolism is so heavy for the story, it is completely nuts. I delved so deep into the meanings, I eventually felt actual fear of the stuff happening there. Yet a lot of other people didn't get touched by the athmosphere at all, stating it to be "just another very weird game, but just weird and nothing else." I'm not saying my analysis approach is better. It's just interesting to see how the different expectations (and thus decodings) of a piece of media and completely change its overall cultural meaning.
Slangens I feel this all falls into the concept of willing suspension of disbelief and then accepting foreign, as to say not native to our world, concepts. To take WWE, something I enjoy from time to time, people who consume it realize its fantasy and it's narrative but willingly chose to treat them as if they were not. We do this, however, with all media. To become so engrossed in it in a single moments so that is no longer a narrative but simply is what is real even if it's only for an hour or two in Monday nights. As for OFF, which I personal conceive as a story which questions the concept of protagonist prospective being somehow more "correct" than other prospectives within a given media. It slowly shows how the batter is not good, but it takes time because you, the player, is pigeon holed into a forced Batter perspective so, instinctively by traditional video game code he must be, if not explicitly stated, the good guy. The ending begs you to chose a different code of description one that lets you see other perspectives of the story than the Batter's.
sounds like something George Carlin would have hated. something like "we used to have viewers, but now they want to be called "content decoders", while eating Cheetos in their parents basements."
Negotiated Code is a useful framework for fans that participate in fandom. We can watch a show or read a book using the dominant framework--that is, 'normally'--and also interpret subtext using our fannish perspective or our "slash goggles." Canon and fanon can exist side by side; we can discuss a show's plot points and character relationships as they are presented to us by the show's writers with non-fandom friends, and also make fanart or write fanfic in accordance with our headcanon.
I think it would be even more accurate to say we experience media. We can have various reactions to it, we can experience it multiple times, or we can experience it once but remember and process it multiple times. It also ties it nicely to the fact that media isn't nearly as separate from everyday experiences as most metaphors would make it out to be. Seeing the grand canyon or visiting london could easily have the same sort of effect as most media even if it wouldn't be considered media.
I like that idea, but it may be too broad and doesn't get to the points that "code/decode" get so nicely (that is, creator - receptor relation, media impact on oneself and society, etc.).
Maybe the way we should see it is the broad term is "experiencing" but "code/decode" is a part of the experiencing. But then what would be the other part? That, I don't know.
Super video. I teach Hall's theory in my large undergrad pop culture class and this will be a terrific addition. The one thing I stress that you don't is the degree to which encoding/decoding "miscommunications" are not random or idiosyncratic but tend to be systemic and patterned on the basis of things like age, race, class, gender, education, etc. This is why Hall refers to the various levels of decoding as "dominant," "negotiated," and oppositional." Admittedly reductive, this typology gets at the idea that decodings tend to correspond to one's position in a social hierarchy. While it's theoretically possible for 800 people to come up with 800 different readings of a film or tv show or whatever, decodings tend to cluster around patterns of meaning that relate to communities of people. E.g., straight folks saw nothing wrong with Silence of the Lambs when it came out (no pun intended), but queer and transgender folks were outraged that here was yet another example of an evil/deranged gender-nonconforming character. It's not a matter of political correctness, it's about different communities being differently positioned to see texts differently, often because they differently positioned along axes of power and privilege. Another theorist who's been super helpful in teaching these concept is Michele de Certeau. His theory of "poaching" is a nice complement to Hall's notion of "resistant" reading. Thanks again!
I'm so glad it took me like 2 months to get round to watching this video because I have a class at uni where we talked about exactly this type of stuff and actually read this text a few weeks ago, too. While reading it and in class I didn't really completely get the concept but now it's more clear!
It's weird hearing "encoding and decoding" in regards to media, mainly because I'm used to only hearing that about nonverbal behaviors. I find it interesting that it's easy to place encoding/decoding and media together, but kinda difficult to describe interpreting nonverbals by "consuming" them. I think that encoding/decoding is a great way to describe viewing media because the theory requires that audiences interpret what they view, even if they just passively "consume" it. I feel like there's many more parallels between media and nonverbals that I can draw, but it's been a long week so I'm gonna go watch Arin and Danny play Mario Maker.
I think that this theory fits very well for listening to music. Different people hear the same songs and take away different things from it, and one person can hear a song several times, and depending on which method of deciding they choose, they can take away different things each time. The more knowledge about music, music theory, music production, and the more stylistic awareness you have of what you're listening to, the more ways you can choose to decode it. A good example of this is with jazz music, where non-musicians can sometimes (but often not) like the overall sound, or the overall mood of the music, but there appreciation doesn't go much deeper. Whereas a trained jazz musician could hear it and enjoy it on a much more theory based level, as their knowledge of theory lets them effortlessly decide the nuances of the playing. A sound engineer could listen to the same piece of music, and entirely be thinking about how terrible sounding the kick drum is, or how over compressed the saxophone is, or how the mix as a whole fits together.
This paradigm makes so much more sense. I remembered creating and consuming media, and it's really clear with writers: You need to make reader to be "on the same page" as you, so he would relate to characters you've written and to understand meaning of choices that character faces. In game creating it's similar as well, let's just see puzzle game for example: if encoder and decoder are close, decoder will be able to solve every riddle as it was intended, but otherwise(which is common) decoder will get stuck on certain points and will require additional assistance, which could've been provided by encoder to appeal wider audience. I'm really loving this paradigm!
I stopped watching Idea Channel the last months because I was busy with the University, but when I come back I find out that you talked about a lot of the theories I was studying at least in one subject lol. Very good explanation of Hall's theory, btw.
This is great "content". Well done, and f'n brilliant. I'm going to digest/decode your lesson, and observe how it changes my perception of media. Thank you.
I feel like the connection between "consume" and products going away (cleaning products, fuel, etc) kind of still works. In the sense that a big part of how media is advertised is through the mystery. You haven't seen it Yet. You haven't heard it Yet. When you 'consume' media the media itself doesn't disappear, but the mystery and experience does. You can never not know what it was, and you can never unsee or unhear it. Not sure how relevant to the whole conversation this is, but it was a thought I had.
This shows me the parallels between encoding-decoding and aesthetic appreciation. There is no limit to how something can be interpreted, especially with a mass audience that might not know the creator's background. And it can be ludicrously easy to overinterpret either a communicative exchange and the background which frames it.
Wow. This, particularly the bit about decoding your media, is a very cogent baseline of understanding and is much on my mind as I wonder about the conflicting philosophies involved in authorial intent vs the death of the author. I've never seen it represented in diagram before.
I've always loved that dance artists are called "interpreters" because they embody the interpretation of a choreographer's work. It might be similar to our automatic internal process of decoding, yet with the simultaneous encoding of the form (the action that subconsciously comes from decoding) for another audience to again decode. Yet, we always recognize that translations are changed from the original language, the original speaker/creator. We can never quite decode what we experience, because our experiences are limited by our own biases.
Great! I've a presentation to give on this Encoding/Decoding model two days from now and this video helped a lot. Plus the animation references are too awesome. Made the content much easier to decode ;)
Love this format! I run into the problem of decoding all the time when I share media with friends. Sometimes it's an issue of them not thinking to try and actively decode it but sometimes it's simply an issue of different contexts within our brains. We have been exposed to a host of different things throughout our lives so when I am reminded of a particular idea or I feel a metaphor fully encapsulates an idea, the differences between us don't translate the exact idea to the person I am sharing with. To get this point across, I would have to explain explicitly a ton of more basic ideas that lead up to the revelation that is the simple (at first glance) metaphor. This is particularly troubling when the metaphors involve math since explaining those ideas are easier said than done.
I always felt that what we were consuming from "content" was novelty - it's the one aspect of media that is necessarily used up, and when comparing "good" media vs "junk food" media, it has always seemed to me that it was the quality of the novelty that was in question - the daily soap opera contains little new circumstance, character depth or other opportunities to expand your context, but the media that is considered good for you (but not necessarily good) tends to provide new information/plots/etc, be it experimental music vs pop, complex drama vs predictable disaster movie, or radio show on Russian composers vs celebrity gossip talk radio.
Decoding is also an ongoing process, like once you've eaten something and digested it, as you said it,s done, but even though I'v finished watching the play from the other day, I have barely set my foot on the ice berg of decoding it.
dude ! your show is great ! I loved it . To be fair , I am sold to all the work that you guys have done so far . I am totally bias : no doubt! loved it none less. thanx
I think it's "downloaded". I often find additional meaning in Film / TV / Books / Radio I "consumed" over 20 years ago, which I didn't manage to "digest" at the time, but because it's "downloaded" into my head, something happens in my life which reminds me of "that bit when" and it takes on new meaning.
I happen to love the Idea of "Decoding" your media. It allows for a much more nuanced breakdown of what it is that we actually do. Including a generalization of a "Simple Code" for some people, and a "Complicated" one for others. I Will definitely label myself a Media Decoder, and Refer to myself as such, Because I like to place myself within a Perceived group who also does this. (Regardless of if this group is literally or mostly imagined x3 )
I think the phrase "consumption" is not just a shorthand, but also useful for both people who would like to think of media as a disposable product to sell, with the intention that 'consumers' move on and are ready to dump it and consume the next iteration tomorrow, or next week, or whatever. It's also been useful for those who would accuse publishers of turning art into said disposable product and doing just that. I think there are people who are more inclined to experience a work of art (/music/literature/etc) once and forget it, and others who hold on dearly to the media that appeals to them. I think there are also = producers of media who wish to make a product to be parceled out regularly, just as there are those who wish to construct an edifice to last generations. Perhaps the value judgment a lot of us tend to place against 'consumption' isn't necessarily fair, but I think media as a consumable is certainly something that happens, even if it isn't universal.
As an amateur writer, I've spent a good deal of time figuring out how to communicate specific meaning to potential readers. My greatest desire has been to effectively communicate certain ideas and meanings to those interacting with what I've "produced" (using the food analogy, I've tried to blend spices together to create a certain taste). I've viewed media as an encoded message from at least my early college years. So as a "content creator", the one fear that is most strong for me is that people interpret my message incorrectly, or attribute meaning to it that was never there. I don't mind so much if people use the "take it or leave it" approach, as long as they understand the basis of what I'm trying to say. On a separate note, I've been thinking about how this view of media might be applied to religion. Often times there is the traditional way of interpreting a religious work such as the Bible, "operating inside the dominant code". For those who view themselves in this way, even the idea of a "negotiated code" is threatening to them, let alone the oppositional code. The sad fact is that for some traditionalists and especially extremists, they may think they are using the dominant code while in fact are using the oppositional code. I would argue that Christians who say that it's okay to hate "the gays" have fallen into this trap. They think they understand the message of the Bible but are in fact taking hate away from a message communicating love.
The distinctions between consuming and en/de-coding a fine. But there are people who are passive in that process. The passive viewer is still affected by media closer to the consuming metaphore (have to integrate sugar if you're eating candy) when one is close enough or familiar with the "dominant code".
you ignore the aspect of consumption that comes from "taste" the taste of the thing is actually the aspect of decoding. but a better metaphor, you can't decode more than was encoded really, when you run a code through a computer you get exactly what was encoded, when you taste something you get whatever you get from it, and have the option to get a "taste" for it.
Hell yes you can decode out of something more than you encode into something! This is where we get conspiracy theories and things like that. People believing they see patterns or overarching connections because "you're not looking deep enough into it, man" To take your computer example: say you encoded something into say Hexadecimal. If someone decodes it out using octal or binary, you get 2-8 more characters or bits of data. The message might still be the same at its core but some people might read into the extra bits that they got. Sometimes people using a different text editor or document processing program get a whole bunch of garbage data out it because of differences in decoding.
"you can't decode more than was encoded" I disagree. Someone can decode information/subtext from their media and then put that together with other experiences to create something entirely new. I think Hideaki Anno said once he wanted people to form their own meanings from NGE.
You totally can decode more than is encoded, both on a computer and in media. You just have to realize that when decoding media you bring to the table more information than the media itself contains. When you send an emoji over text message, you aren't sending a picture, you're sending a reference to a picture that you both have on your phones. Similarly, when your friend receives that emoji they will bring their own thoughts, experiences, and context when decoding what that symbol means. We've just turned two bytes of information into a small jpg, into potentially petabytes of neural information just by snowballing through larger and larger databases of meaning.
Yeah! While this applies to all language really, Idea Channel did talk before about "speaking in emoji" You know the saying goes that 'a picture is worth a thousand words' but which of those words are of value to the viewer are not necessarily in the mind of the photographer or the artist.
I was hoping an image relating to MLP would slip in to this episode. As usual Idea Channel never disappoints :) I find the terminology “decoding media” to be very useful because it differentiates between two very different interactions with a text. When we learn to “read” a book, we learn how to look at each word, sentence, paragraph with no additional purpose other than to figure out what the text says. This is very different from writing an essay about the novel, where one not only need to read the text, but one also must examine its metaphors, devices, and themes. I know in my high school we spent all our time “analyzing” and “close reading” every text, which really area both terms for the same process: decoding. To complete the analogy, I also think one can “decode” the food we eat, though most are more likely to call this “tasting.” Like decoding a text, one must first consume an edible before one can taste it, but one need not taste their food without consuming it. Similarly, one can spend as much or as little time tasting a food regardless of how much flavor the chef put into it.
This idea certainly fits better with media interactions like fan theory (and by extension slash and other fan fiction) than "consumption" does. In this way of looking at things, those are actually different decoding processes, as opposed to say, reactions after consumption.
The same media can also evolve for the individual, as our understanding changes the outcome of decoding media can change over time. Rewatching a movie or rereading a book after a few years can provide new insights depending what we have learnt/experienced in that time. In that same way our current state when watching/reading/lisening to meda for the first time can influence how we decode it. Adding to that the decoding of media will effect the decoding of future media if we allow it to effect us.
I've always had a hard time with the 'Comsume' phrase for media. It always felt too automatic, but I ended up using it in writings because despite it's inaccuracy it has a collectively shared meaning that transcends the food eating analogue.
The only problem I have with this "decoding" of media is that sometimes media can have an effect with someone without even that person decoding anything. The process of decoding relates to how someone views media, what they take out of it, in the simplest terms, the "moral of the story." But what if someone doesn't actually interpret the story? Or, rather, they interpret the story as real. I personally believe that every character in every story that has ever existed is "real," not in the sense that they exist in this reality, but that they exist in a world separate than ours, in a fictional world. But just because this world is fictional to us, doesn't make it any less real. The reason why we can empathize with certain characters is because of how their decisions affect their reality, and we view that as being "real." Anyway, I digress. The reason I bring this up is because a lot of people have discussions about the actual stuff in the story, not just the "meaning" of the story. I don't know if the process of decoding is just an interpretation of media, or if it also includes this, but what I'm talking about doesn't really yield anything that someone can practically apply to their own lives, but it does still affect their life patterns. Like, lets say your a huge Star Trek fan. Talking about the various relationships between species and the new technology that is introduced isn't very practical, but people still do it.
This is a clumsy methaphor but to be able to fit with the consumption metaphor couldn't we view media as ingredients and our decoding is how we choose to cook or prepare them for eating. Flour can be used to make bread, cake or gravy, the same way media can be decoded differently.
this reminds me of one of platos dialogues where he states that food and ideas are similar. the only difference is that one could go home and check to see whether the food is good or not, but as soon as one hears an idea one has already consumed it, and in some sense is harder to reject once already accepted. also couldn't the couldn't ingesting media but getting nothing from it be likened to alchohol( maybe it was just beerl, which i've heard described as empty calories.
"Nicely put! Analogy is always suspect but that one is close to the facts. Bring me mathematical proof tomorrow." Major Reid, Starship Troopers - Robert A. Heinlein. I guess using food analogies to describe media interactions was always going to be a little fraught.
I really like the idea of decoding being able to be passive or active. You can choose to go into something looking for a certain meaning or subtext but I think there is still always an underlying passive aspect that's born from your own beliefs, attitudes, and cultural norms. So on the active side you get all the fan theories, espescially the really abstract ones where you have to add your own meaning into a film, while on the passive side you can't help but see something differently to what was intended, such as finding what is meant to be a touching scene in a movie as uncomfortable or funny.
Plus it explains cultural differences well. A good example for me is Iron Chef. Even though it is presumably designed to be taken somewhat seriously a lot of western people, espescially here in Australia see it as very funny and love the dramatic and excited way everything is talked about, so we "consume" it the same way we would a parody of a cooking show more than an actual cooking show. Which is why when producers saw its popularity and made an Iron Chef Australia it flopped because it lost the interesting Japanese cultural aspects and the unintentional humour.
one of the important things that thinking of an audience as decoders rather than more passive consumers allows for is something you touched on briefly at the end. namely that media is put forth into the media and cultural landscape and then people can watch, listen, hear, feel, etc. as they choose and in whatever way they choose. people often say things like "This is a kids show" "This is for black people" and other things which claim ownership over certain types or pieces of media. these are certainly important things to realize or think about and can even be true in a certain sense, but they also seem to preclude engagement with such texts by those who belong to groups outside of the "designated" group. consumption seems to suggest that this kind of thought is correct. that if a piece of media was not intended for some group or type of person then they are doing something wrong or unhealthy by "consuming" it. the encoding decoding theory that hall establishes instead suggests that media may have an intended audience or message but that the ultimate result of any piece of media is only to become a part of the discourse in general. in that way adults watching kid's cartoons or white people listening to Beyonce are not transgressing but are decoding those media that they choose or are exposed to. this is not to say that everyone is right or that all interpretations are "good" but it does allow for conversation to occur and for general interpretative conventions to shift over time as a result of the generated discourse. hall's encoding/decoding model suggests that people may still find some enjoyment in things that are oppositional to their own identities or embodiments and that this can be beneficial. as Juana Maria Rodriguez talks about in her work "sexual futures, queer gestures, and other Latina longings" (a work dealing with pornographic movies depicting interactions between latinas and boarderguards and the authors own critical interpretation of such works) the existence of highly problematic representations of one's own identity or identity group does not necessarily mean that an individual will not find enjoyment in a piece of media, but the existence of that enjoyment similarly does not preclude critical thought. it is this possibility for critical thought and genuine pleasure that Hall identifies in his work which consumption theories tend to undervalue or even deny existing.
As always, thanks, Mike, for the thoughtful and incisive video, and also for indirectly costing me $30 to get the shirt you are wearing in this video. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to have it (I have the Cosmos-themed one already). Really, you should be more careful what you wear. It has consequences, you know.
I want to look a little more at the part you brought up in the beginning, about how we consume media but it itself is not consumed. I think that's an important point to consider. Decoding, I think, is difficult because even though it allows for the audience to have multiple code options, it still has a certain teleological flair to it that I'm not all that comfortable. I don't think media should be "I've cracked the code!" so much as ought to be a question of interpretation through one's own lens and comparison with other lenses. Since this episode sort of begs for suggested alternate metaphors, I think I would see viewing and interpreting media as an act of Translation. This implies a couple things. First, in the same way that there are many languages and one can translate between nearly any two of them, albeit with some imperfections, I think there are many perspectives for viewing media and one can translate to them together or separately. These can be things like different amounts of life experience, education, subject matter, humor of different cultures, etc. Second, I think that in the same way translation is open to multiple ways of phrasing the same sentence based on the training and fluency of the translator, I think that different students of media can take the same thing and render it differently even when looking through a similar lens (e.g., two same age same culture students can still get a subtly different translation after watching the same show).
Would the best word to describe it be to *experience* media? We grow and learn from the media we experience, and I believe the "junk food" programming would be somewhere along the line of sitcoms. The episodes are typically predictable with little to learn from, as the characters remain mostly unchanged from episode to episode. I think the main reason we find "consuming" to be the best word is that we typically don't feel the need to re-experience the media. If we repeat our experience with the same media over and over again, we "get full" (think of how we get annoyed hearing the same 10 songs on the radio). Repeat "consumption" is typically only warranted when we're still "hungry/thirsty" for that experience. Fun side note: I believe if the IDEA Channel were a consumable good, it'd be a smoothie. Healthy in the sense that it's jam-packed with nutrients (sources and context) while still being tasty (entertaining). You could even argue that smoothies are consumed quicker than most other meals, as IDEA Channel episodes are typically shorter than conventional TV programming. Apologies for the pandering, but it was a fun analogy! :D Edit: added to the side note.
I think it's important to highlight the difference between conscious/active decoding and unconscious/passive decoding(which is arguably what people often mean by "consuming"). When we use out conscious mind to decode media, it's basically using the media as a tool or springboard for thought. But when we allow our unconscious mind to do so unchallenged, it tends to encode the most basic surface meanings of a thing into our subconscious and contribute to bias and the like. It's what leaves culture so vulnerable to negative influence by media, despite media only being a product of culture. People failing to decode their media properly is not only a shame for the quality of discourse, it's also a real factor in making the world worse.
Joke's on you, consumption itself is a way of decoding something. A body unravels food in the ways it knows how to, and repurposes it into something else. If you're starving, you'll spend your molecules differently than if you're full. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go have a debate with a five year old over where we keep our crayons.
I can see where the consuming vs decoding is prominent specifically in that english class we all took in high school where your teacher decoded something like the colors and giving them meaning where we as the student hadn't really thought of them meaning anything other then there reference to colors. so at that point we were decoding differently then the teacher and maybe the author mean something different by them then the teachers decoded
I suppose I've always sort of mentally combined the concepts of "consumption" and "decoding" without realizing it (because I didn't know about the encode/decode theory before watching this video). Basically what I mean is, I compared media consumption to actual physical consumption this way: When you consume something, it goes through three basic steps. You ingest it, you process it, and then you expel the byproducts of processing. With food this is obviously eat, digest, and then expel through perspiration/urination/defecation. With media consumption, ingestion is reading/viewing/listening/etc., processing/digestion varies person to person and can be a complex process of thinking critically or it can be as simple as realizing you understand the punchlines of the jokes on your favorite tv show, and finally the expelled product is sharing your thoughts and opinions on that piece of media. Of course what you expel depends on how you processed the media. It can be "oh yeah, that's a funny show" or it can be an in depth analysis of a piece of media. As far as media not "going away" once we consume it, I suppose you could say that it goes away in the sense that once you consume it you can never have not consumed it? Like once you listen to a song, you know what it sounds like. Once you've watched a tv show you know how the episode is going to end. Yes, you can go back and watch or listen again, and even get something new or different out of it but you'll never again experience it the way you did the first time you consumed it. That particular experience has been consumed and is gone. Like if you buy a pack of oreos and you eat one oreo, yeah that oreo is gone and you can't get it back. You can eat another oreo, and it will be similar but you're not going to have an exactly identical experience eating that oreo as you did the first one. And the more oreos you eat, the way you digest and what you expel is going to differ.
I would argue that to a degree, the media we "consume" does disappear to an extent, however, not in a physical sense. While we can re-watch/read/listen to a piece of media, it will never have the same effect it initially had on us. The first time you read your favorite book or watch your favorite show/film is a unique experience that, while can be reminisced through repeated consumption of said media, can never truly be experienced again in the same way. Working with the food metaphor, its like taking a bite of a pear for the first time. You can eat other pears, but they will never be the same as the first pear you ever ate. The first time you watch your favorite film for instance is an experience that we can remind ourselves of by re-watching that film, but can never experience again. In that sense, media can be consumed.
decoding made me think about how education using media works. ex: you watch a show with your mom, and she asks "what did you think about how that character acted; did they do the right or wrong thing?" or you play Sim City in class and your teacher asks ... uh... I don't remember what she asked; that was years ago now :P THE POINT IS: viewing media as something which can be actively decoded, instead of passively consumed, allows OTHER PEOPLE to affect what you get out of media, which is precisely what happens in real life, whereas with the food analogy... someone else can't change how you digest food :P so, yeah: I'm now on-board with "decoding" rather than "consuming"
Two things 1) Could you increase the gradient on some of those quotes you threw on screen. They were pretty hard to read. 2) I would just call decoding a type of consumption but thats because I like my eating metaphors for media.
About decoding messages... I've watched multiple videos about "The Real Message" behind the movie Zootopia. Christian, Feminist, Men's Rights Activist, they all said something similar to "Ahh but what the producers don't know is that the _real_ message of the movie agrees with my viewpoint!" This reminds me of a message that is not intended to convey a message (I'm not saying Zootopia did that). Imagine a person giving a speech who intentionally avoids explicitly stating any position except obvious things people would agree with. The intent here is for consumers to put their own beliefs onto the speaker because they have to read into what they "really meant" to say. The speaker is taking advantage of confirmation bias. Or what about someone who most often decides to decode offense to another's behavior regardless of the encode? Tasty video! Thanks :)
In my opinion both metaphors describe the processing of media very well. Consumption describes the process where a person chooses to suspend critical thinking and just accept the message at face value (such as getting wrapped up in ones favorite tv series). While the encoding/decoding metaphor describes a process where the viewer/listener applies critical thinking to the content and chooses to interpret it in a manner consistent with their ideology. Different types of content are more appropriate for one method or the other and individuals tend to have a preference for one or the other. Neither one alone fully describes the processing of information because of the active and passive methods of processing information.
We call it consumption because we become finished with our act of experiencing a work of media very much like how we become done with consuming food. When their is sustenance extinguished, media ceases to be itself in a way meaningful to us.
We experience media by watching listening. Interpreting our experience of it though our own framework or life philosophy. Each iteration of experience of a media is differnet adding layers to our experience like a pearl. this feels antithetical to the computational connotation of "Decoading" media. There is no code for an epiphany.
There has to be a certain point however where you synchronize your code to the encoded meaning. Generally when you are first exposed to certain types and genres of media along with all their themes and tropes, there are things which you won't understand, but which you will and will appreciate as you increase exposure. This is especially the case when you bring into consideration the community surrounding that form of media and your interactions with that community as your exposure increases to that media.
I always assumed that folks used the consumption-metaphor because they were consuming the novelty of the information (thus using it up). The explanation in this video is much more interesting though.
I like the idea of decoding rather than consuming. My question is - When we consume something, it leaves an impact on us - Like getting sicker or healthier, or enjoying a sensual experience that leaves us with a memory. In that way consumption is a compelling theory - We're often truly shaped by the media we consume, consciously or not. That influence could be long or short term, tiny or huge, and could resound in more than one way. The idea that decoding can be "finished" could perhaps take away from that idea. If we apply our own code at a given point in time, we could get a host of results. Would the results "run on their own" to produce more... things, once that "initial" decoding is "finished"? Does reproducing have a stopping point? You could maybe argue that it doesn't have to or just doesn't ever, but then, how could it ever be "finished" as Mike suggested? Technically, if one interpretation of a code (or several) feeds into the discourse, wouldn't it have an infinite lifespan to some extent? Another thing I was thinking about was the nature of coding. I'm not a programmer myself, but I imagine that codes are meant to have some expected outputs that at least a computer could comprehend. If we as the recipients could gather an insane amount of input and output out of the media we decode through our preexisting code, are we essentially complex (but rather submissive and possibly complacent) computers in this scenario? Wouldn't that suggest media creators program us, or that we program each other? It could kind of go into "brainwashing" territory again. Human brains are still remarkably complex and mysterious, while even the most sophisticated computer is still enslaved to human usage at this point in time. Just a thought.
Your function of decoding and what results from it depend on all sorts of things. The understanding you have of the world, the thoughts that occur in your head, the feelings you experience, the people you're with, things that are happening in your life. Anything that contributes to your mental state or the soupy consciousness you live in at the time will affect the way you take in information. I would think what you can "decode" from any particular bit of media would be endless over time, since your brain is always changing. You could watch the same movie every year and it should continue to produce new meaning, so long as you pay some attention to it. If every time you view it you find yourself thinking the same thoughts or reciting dialogue, that might be a sign that you aren't decoding it in new ways. Things tend to get boring when we stop finding something new about it. Are we computers, running code and reprogramming ourselves? I'm not sure. Our hardware is constantly changing. Hold on, are our brains hardware or software? Or neither? I'm not really sure. A brain is physical, but malleable. There are some key differences between how a brain interacts with information vs how a computer does. I don't know what they are, but whatever. Is a brain more like a structure of nanobots? Every cell is a living creature after all. Idk. I'm not sure what the point of my comment is, but I'll leave it here even if I sound like an idiot, it doesn't matter.
Your function of decoding and what results from it depend on all sorts of things. The understanding you have of the world, the thoughts that occur in your head, the feelings you experience, the people you're with, things that are happening in your life. Anything that contributes to your mental state or the soupy consciousness you live in at the time will affect the way you take in information. I would think what you can "decode" from any particular bit of media would be endless over time, since your brain is always changing. You could watch the same movie every year and it should continue to produce new meaning, so long as you pay some attention to it. If every time you view it you find yourself thinking the same thoughts or reciting dialogue, that might be a sign that you aren't decoding it in new ways. Things tend to get boring when we stop finding something new to make of it. Are we computers, running code and reprogramming ourselves? I'm not sure. Our hardware is constantly changing. Hold on, are our brains hardware or software? Or neither? I'm not really sure. A brain is physical, but malleable. There are some key differences between how a brain interacts with information vs how a computer does. I don't know what they are, but whatever. Is a brain more like a structure of nanobots? Every cell is a living creature after all. Idk. I'm not sure what the point of my comment is, but I'll leave it here even if I sound like an idiot, it doesn't matter.
Given that the language we use around our interaction with media informs the interaction, "decoding" certainly locates more agency with the decoder than with the producer/encoder than the consumption metaphor does. That said, even "decoding" implies that there is a correct message to be uncovered, and "encoding" implies intentionality, though in the video you mention that encoding begins before intentionality, and includes anything that might impact the frame of reference of media producers. At any rate, common parlance for "encode" and "decode" would seem to undermine the ultimate conclusion that engaging with media is a subjective process, necessarily more complicated than simple production and receipt of a message. If that is the ultimate conclusion, I think it's worthwhile to find and use language that presupposes it. Language that assumes subjectivity moves away from the idea that there is a correct way to interpret media messages, that what one got out of the movie/book/etc. is incorrect if that meaning wasn't intended by the media's producer(s). I don't know that it's common practice to think of interpretations as completely correct or incorrect so much as it's common to consider other people's interpretations ridiculous. (I'm thinking specifically of comments like Robin Thicke's after the release of 'Blurred Lines'.) We seem to have this attitude that if a producer didn't intend a particular message, receiving that message is absurd, an overreaction. If we acknowledge that encoding of media is both active and unconscious, then decoding isn't just a subjective and personal act, but a possible unconvering of unconscious encoded messages (rape culture, gender roles, disproportionate objectification/sexualization of women in the 'Blurred Lines' example). That is, if we can find and use language that undermines creators implied ability to be intentional about absolutely every aspect of their message, and that presupposes an audience's co-creational role in identifying meaning in media, would the decoding of problematic messages in media by audiences be less easy to discount as hysterical or hypersensitive?
The equivalent of Calories could describe how "dense" the material is. With a simple comic strip or quick youtube video being small, and then you have works like War and Peace or Ulysses being very heavy.
My high school Literature teacher described books like Harry Potter and Twilight as "dessert" literature, whereas something like Ralph Emerson's Invisible Man as more like a proper meal. Personally, I always thought that comparison was a bit off since, like you said, a book isn't just a book; it is also what you choose to get out of it. I must agree that it is important to read books like Invisible Man, but I'm inclined to think that such a literary meal requires a certain type of setting. It's like a meal at a business conference or even a counceling session where the participants discuss the future and heal wounds. Harry Potter, on the other hand, is rather more like a brunch, where you might talk with friends and family about important aspects of life and realtionships, but the conversation also includes inside jokes and talk of importantly unimportant things. Of course, this comparison assumes that such media are not "consumed" and "decoded" in a vacuum, but rather in the context of culture and community.
Another metaphor we could use might be that of "translator". This has the benefits of "en-/decoding", namely the active role of the "decoder/translator", but also leaves more room for the "decoder/translator". Encoding/decoding suggests a picture in which there is one way in which is encoded, and one way in which is decoded; both the intended and received 'message' are determined by the codes both parties use. More significantly, choosing a code seems a monumental task; you are, in some sense, stuck with your code. Furthermore, it would seem hard for two very different codes to 'match' the same message, i.e. to both obtain meaningful 'content'. When we see this process as a 'translation', however, we get more 'wriggle room' for the translator. Two translations can differ in many ways and still both be completely intelligable. One translation of a novel might drop some subtext, while another may emphasize it. Still others will change the subtext because of peculiarities of the languages in question; some things cannot be translated; other things can be literally translated, but carry different subtexts in different languages. Finally (and this is something I am fond of), it removes the 'encoder' in favor of a 'producer'. This means that the step of 'encoding' some message into the medium is removed, and that the message has no 'actual' 'content'.
It seems to me the word "decoding" can easily be substituted with "interpreting" in this analogy. It's kind of just describing the matching, agreed upon and contrasting interpretations of media observed between media producer and audience member.
Phrases like "it's so bad it's good", "it's good for all the wrong reasons" or "it's so stupid it's funny" remind of the digestion metaphor in situations where different pieces, like movies, games, etc, turn out in a non-successful way, to put it simply, in comparison to what the creator intended, at least in the eyes of audiences, and turns out to have entertaining value in the sense of being a laughing piece or recurring to "cheesiness" to be entertaining. No specific example comes to my mind right now, but even if it did, it would probably be hard to find one that is recognisable by everyone.
What hits me about the language of it is that 'decoding' is as said, very much digesting, or finding some loose metaphor to how the media we expose ourselves to leaves an effect on us. I think saying i'm off to decode my favorite show, doesn't even work. The decoding or digestion comes after, when you're thinking about it when you put it down. When you think what would X character do when you are presented with a situation or let the dogmatic influence of the news cycle effect your stance of the world. Watching, reading, or 'consuming' media is just that the chewing or processing phase. I think either language choice could work, or in light of all this new info we might want to find something more apt.
Since 'consume' has a secondary definition of 'buy' for goods and services, which would refer to media, we could still be media consummers however in terms of using the media we have accumilated we 'decode' it in the way the decoding theory states.
i think we can see media as an infinite buffet of consumable goods, we go around to whatever one we want take from that good regardless of meaning. we intake these goods in passing or voluntarily partaking in it, just as we get tired of food and come back to it, we do the same with media fads and change up what we intake
I think "decode" may be appropriate if you're watching Mr. Robot. This theory is really interesting and has definitely opened my eyes a bit. However, I notice that it places a lot of emphasis on the conscious autonomy of the observers-- as if they're able to choose whether or not to decode a movie as "scary" or "funny." I imagine that envisioning it as such is a good mental exercise but so much has to depend on context. Like, maybe it's funny because we were expecting something and prepared to decode it as such but the departure from those "code-norms" made it funny? Just a thought! :)
Regarding the idea that media isn't used up or go away, I'd counter that media is experienced and that experience is temporal. You can revisit the same piece of media but have a difference experience days, month, especially years later. In 'consuming' media as 'using it up' it's the experience that is digested.
i would say a media calories is. the smallest point of information that will make you performing a behavior you would not have done otherwise. for example the weather man saying its Monday will make me act different than if he said it was a Friday, the information given by him saying the word Monday gives me one media calorie.
I like the idea of content decoding. Describing media as being consumed always, to me, smacked of the neoliberal project to redefine everyone as a "consumer" of everything - and the simultaneous effort to redefine previously common institutions like universities and public services as private ones.
Encoding and decoding information is a good model for the consumption of media but it can just as effectively be applied to any language i.e. Any form of communication in which informations is transmitted received and processed. Every culture with a different language has a slightly altered method of decoding syntactical information expressed through small mouth noises . The effect of this is actually shown to restructure the wiring of the brain.
Did anyone mentioned Susan Sontag´s "Against interpretation" yet? She says some very interesting, and somehow liberating, things about those "decoders" who "over-decode" every piece of media, especially when it comes to art. What do you think about that approach? I love this channel, it´s my weekly thought candy. Sorry if there´s any misspelled words, this is not my native language. Lots of love from Argentina, thank you for keeping us thinking.
I think the term "consume" is largely meant to denote economic activity - as "consumers", our use of a particular product is the end of the chain of production. For comparison, a computer chip might be produced at a factory and sold to a TV company. They aren't a consumer, because they're going to use it to build a TV. Then they sell the TV to someone who wants to watch stuff, and that person is the "consumer" because they are not a "producer" of anything and they provide the justification for the economic activity in the first place..
I think I first encountered this notion of the closeness of the Encoder to the Decoder when watching my first Tyler Perry movie. Instantly I was like, "oh, this is NOT for me" (well, first I was like, "this sh*t is terrible!" then I calmed down and decided it just wasn't made for me to enjoy, consume, decode what the encoded put into it) Tried to watch a 2nd one and couldn't stomach my way through it. There's a definite distance between our cultural codes...
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
Empowering cosumers into active decoders sounds awesome! The way we remix, and crtique and interpret media as you've mentioned before is our way of 'digestion' but a much more engaged process that can soemtimes leave us constipated. love the vid ideachannel!
To be honest, up until now I've always assumed that everybody has the view of decoding. This helps explain to me a lot of misunderstandings I've had in the past with others; them claiming that interacting with a piece of media is the same as agreeing with it, or, more precisely, looking at it in a linear, direct way where no meta-approach is taken to analyze its meaning and usefulness to yourself. There are two nice examples I can think of in which the two approaches, and especially the assumption of one of them being the correct one, leads to a "cultural" misunderstanding that is, indeed, just an interpersonal one.
One: Professional Wrestling. Obviously, it is scripted. No debate about that. Yet what is its purpose? What do you watch it for? From the direct, linear approach, it is complete nonsense as it represents no genuine "drama" or sport. It is missing things that one would normally expect from Sport, but still some people like it as even a replacement for other sports to watch. The sportsmanship and excellence of sport certainly is there, but still non-wrestling fans dislike it. Why is that? I think it's because they assume a "non-ironic" approach to watching sport. You watch sport because you like it. Plain and simple. But ProfWrestling has a degree of abstraction to it that distances it from other things. It "acts" as if it were real sport, while also simultaneously breaking all rules of good acting to more or less explicitly show it it fake. The idea behind the "entertainment" in PW is that it is a very professional, long-going parody of sports with some extra spicy drama in it. A lot of people don't like it, that's clear. But probably lots have a different idea of how it works, or SHOULD WORK. Their decoding procedure is different. They look for other things than fans. Fans of PW readily accept the laws of the "wrestling-universe (WWE universe)" as given for the meaning of the shows. The drama in WWE makes no sense- but that's the point. You are supposed to watch it on a meta-level, yet still play along as if you were really into it. At least, that's my decoding of it.
(BTW, you could argue similarly with MLP.)
Second: OFF, the video game. by mortis ghost.
A very athmospheric and intense experience, in my opinion. A lot of people agree about the fine work of its design and symbolism, yet when browsing the internet on fanart, I have a feeling that most people really see it as just a simple, primitive story, with characters you can like and those you don't like. When you play the game until its conclusion (sploilers BTW) You should know that the Batter is not necessarily a good person by any means. Yet most fanart depicts the batter more or less nicely. I was looking into this game on a more surrealistic analytic side, trying to accept the world of the game as having its own rules, not trying to force my ideals into the moral judgement of the characters. The symbolism is so heavy for the story, it is completely nuts. I delved so deep into the meanings, I eventually felt actual fear of the stuff happening there. Yet a lot of other people didn't get touched by the athmosphere at all, stating it to be "just another very weird game, but just weird and nothing else." I'm not saying my analysis approach is better. It's just interesting to see how the different expectations (and thus decodings) of a piece of media and completely change its overall cultural meaning.
+
+
+
>
Slangens I feel this all falls into the concept of willing suspension of disbelief and then accepting foreign, as to say not native to our world, concepts. To take WWE, something I enjoy from time to time, people who consume it realize its fantasy and it's narrative but willingly chose to treat them as if they were not. We do this, however, with all media. To become so engrossed in it in a single moments so that is no longer a narrative but simply is what is real even if it's only for an hour or two in Monday nights.
As for OFF, which I personal conceive as a story which questions the concept of protagonist prospective being somehow more "correct" than other prospectives within a given media. It slowly shows how the batter is not good, but it takes time because you, the player, is pigeon holed into a forced Batter perspective so, instinctively by traditional video game code he must be, if not explicitly stated, the good guy. The ending begs you to chose a different code of description one that lets you see other perspectives of the story than the Batter's.
Content decoder sounds more badass than content consumer. I like it.
sounds like something George Carlin would have hated. something like "we used to have viewers, but now they want to be called "content decoders", while eating Cheetos in their parents basements."
fartzinwind Well viewer isn't the word being replaced so I don't think so?
GOLD YOU BOTH GET GO.....oh yeah this is youtube
THUMB FOR YOU!!
I guess my Netflix-binging friends would really like that new job description..."Professional Content Decoder"...has a badass vibe to it.
Who did those sweet animations with the media consumption? Tell them they were great!
+
Anders Taylor +
+
Anders Taylor +
13:52 "Leah Feria Ordonia"
Negotiated Code is a useful framework for fans that participate in fandom. We can watch a show or read a book using the dominant framework--that is, 'normally'--and also interpret subtext using our fannish perspective or our "slash goggles." Canon and fanon can exist side by side; we can discuss a show's plot points and character relationships as they are presented to us by the show's writers with non-fandom friends, and also make fanart or write fanfic in accordance with our headcanon.
I think it would be even more accurate to say we experience media. We can have various reactions to it, we can experience it multiple times, or we can experience it once but remember and process it multiple times. It also ties it nicely to the fact that media isn't nearly as separate from everyday experiences as most metaphors would make it out to be. Seeing the grand canyon or visiting london could easily have the same sort of effect as most media even if it wouldn't be considered media.
I like that idea, but it may be too broad and doesn't get to the points that "code/decode" get so nicely (that is, creator - receptor relation, media impact on oneself and society, etc.).
Maybe the way we should see it is the broad term is "experiencing" but "code/decode" is a part of the experiencing. But then what would be the other part? That, I don't know.
Liam Baillargeon Correlating it with other data and storing it for later.
content creators are content encoders
fanfiction and fan theory are content reencoding
Super video. I teach Hall's theory in my large undergrad pop culture class and this will be a terrific addition. The one thing I stress that you don't is the degree to which encoding/decoding "miscommunications" are not random or idiosyncratic but tend to be systemic and patterned on the basis of things like age, race, class, gender, education, etc. This is why Hall refers to the various levels of decoding as "dominant," "negotiated," and oppositional." Admittedly reductive, this typology gets at the idea that decodings tend to correspond to one's position in a social hierarchy. While it's theoretically possible for 800 people to come up with 800 different readings of a film or tv show or whatever, decodings tend to cluster around patterns of meaning that relate to communities of people. E.g., straight folks saw nothing wrong with Silence of the Lambs when it came out (no pun intended), but queer and transgender folks were outraged that here was yet another example of an evil/deranged gender-nonconforming character. It's not a matter of political correctness, it's about different communities being differently positioned to see texts differently, often because they differently positioned along axes of power and privilege. Another theorist who's been super helpful in teaching these concept is Michele de Certeau. His theory of "poaching" is a nice complement to Hall's notion of "resistant" reading. Thanks again!
I'm so glad it took me like 2 months to get round to watching this video because I have a class at uni where we talked about exactly this type of stuff and actually read this text a few weeks ago, too. While reading it and in class I didn't really completely get the concept but now it's more clear!
Gary if you read this please come home.
I'm in Canada now. it's not happing!
It's weird hearing "encoding and decoding" in regards to media, mainly because I'm used to only hearing that about nonverbal behaviors. I find it interesting that it's easy to place encoding/decoding and media together, but kinda difficult to describe interpreting nonverbals by "consuming" them.
I think that encoding/decoding is a great way to describe viewing media because the theory requires that audiences interpret what they view, even if they just passively "consume" it. I feel like there's many more parallels between media and nonverbals that I can draw, but it's been a long week so I'm gonna go watch Arin and Danny play Mario Maker.
I love this abstraction of communication, it conveys so much more of the nuance of the situation.
I think that this theory fits very well for listening to music. Different people hear the same songs and take away different things from it, and one person can hear a song several times, and depending on which method of deciding they choose, they can take away different things each time.
The more knowledge about music, music theory, music production, and the more stylistic awareness you have of what you're listening to, the more ways you can choose to decode it.
A good example of this is with jazz music, where non-musicians can sometimes (but often not) like the overall sound, or the overall mood of the music, but there appreciation doesn't go much deeper. Whereas a trained jazz musician could hear it and enjoy it on a much more theory based level, as their knowledge of theory lets them effortlessly decide the nuances of the playing.
A sound engineer could listen to the same piece of music, and entirely be thinking about how terrible sounding the kick drum is, or how over compressed the saxophone is, or how the mix as a whole fits together.
Love that low key Peaches reference ;)
+
By a band whose name is is suited for the upcoming election
This paradigm makes so much more sense. I remembered creating and consuming media, and it's really clear with writers:
You need to make reader to be "on the same page" as you, so he would relate to characters you've written and to understand meaning of choices that character faces.
In game creating it's similar as well, let's just see puzzle game for example: if encoder and decoder are close, decoder will be able to solve every riddle as it was intended, but otherwise(which is common) decoder will get stuck on certain points and will require additional assistance, which could've been provided by encoder to appeal wider audience.
I'm really loving this paradigm!
I stopped watching Idea Channel the last months because I was busy with the University, but when I come back I find out that you talked about a lot of the theories I was studying at least in one subject lol. Very good explanation of Hall's theory, btw.
Totally. Gotta love an interesting and relevant Idea Channel episode.
This is great "content". Well done, and f'n brilliant. I'm going to digest/decode your lesson, and observe how it changes my perception of media. Thank you.
I feel like the connection between "consume" and products going away (cleaning products, fuel, etc) kind of still works. In the sense that a big part of how media is advertised is through the mystery.
You haven't seen it Yet. You haven't heard it Yet. When you 'consume' media the media itself doesn't disappear, but the mystery and experience does. You can never not know what it was, and you can never unsee or unhear it. Not sure how relevant to the whole conversation this is, but it was a thought I had.
This shows me the parallels between encoding-decoding and aesthetic appreciation. There is no limit to how something can be interpreted, especially with a mass audience that might not know the creator's background. And it can be ludicrously easy to overinterpret either a communicative exchange and the background which frames it.
5:42 Those little 'dings' in the background ^u^ props to the post-processing! :D
Wow. This, particularly the bit about decoding your media, is a very cogent baseline of understanding and is much on my mind as I wonder about the conflicting philosophies involved in authorial intent vs the death of the author. I've never seen it represented in diagram before.
As a story writer, The last portion about people decoding what was encoded into content is endlessly interesting.
The way you'e been saying "CONTENT" over the last few episodes gives me life.
The part of the subtitles that is written as [inaudible] is
"sladky glazzballs viddy"
Which translates in Clockwork Orange lingo to "sweet eyes see."
I've always loved that dance artists are called "interpreters" because they embody the interpretation of a choreographer's work. It might be similar to our automatic internal process of decoding, yet with the simultaneous encoding of the form (the action that subconsciously comes from decoding) for another audience to again decode. Yet, we always recognize that translations are changed from the original language, the original speaker/creator. We can never quite decode what we experience, because our experiences are limited by our own biases.
Great! I've a presentation to give on this Encoding/Decoding model two days from now and this video helped a lot. Plus the animation references are too awesome. Made the content much easier to decode ;)
Love this format! I run into the problem of decoding all the time when I share media with friends. Sometimes it's an issue of them not thinking to try and actively decode it but sometimes it's simply an issue of different contexts within our brains. We have been exposed to a host of different things throughout our lives so when I am reminded of a particular idea or I feel a metaphor fully encapsulates an idea, the differences between us don't translate the exact idea to the person I am sharing with. To get this point across, I would have to explain explicitly a ton of more basic ideas that lead up to the revelation that is the simple (at first glance) metaphor. This is particularly troubling when the metaphors involve math since explaining those ideas are easier said than done.
I always felt that what we were consuming from "content" was novelty - it's the one aspect of media that is necessarily used up, and when comparing "good" media vs "junk food" media, it has always seemed to me that it was the quality of the novelty that was in question - the daily soap opera contains little new circumstance, character depth or other opportunities to expand your context, but the media that is considered good for you (but not necessarily good) tends to provide new information/plots/etc, be it experimental music vs pop, complex drama vs predictable disaster movie, or radio show on Russian composers vs celebrity gossip talk radio.
I love the decoding metaphor! It helps me understand how we form headcanons and different ships in fandoms.
Decoding is also an ongoing process, like once you've eaten something and digested it, as you said it,s done, but even though I'v finished watching the play from the other day, I have barely set my foot on the ice berg of decoding it.
dude ! your show is great ! I loved it . To be fair , I am sold to all the work that you guys have done so far . I am totally bias : no doubt! loved it none less. thanx
I think I've found a new way to think about media. I'm gonna share this video with some of my friends.
Aaaaaah "man in a factory downtown" I see you with that Peaches reference :D
This is a good argument why The Room and Troll 2 is so enjoyable to watch
What about the time that is used up while consuming media (and the relation of time to consiousness)?
Maybe we consume time(at least under capitalism)?
+
I think it's "downloaded". I often find additional meaning in Film / TV / Books / Radio I "consumed" over 20 years ago, which I didn't manage to "digest" at the time, but because it's "downloaded" into my head, something happens in my life which reminds me of "that bit when" and it takes on new meaning.
I happen to love the Idea of "Decoding" your media. It allows for a much more nuanced breakdown of what it is that we actually do. Including a generalization of a "Simple Code" for some people, and a "Complicated" one for others.
I Will definitely label myself a Media Decoder, and Refer to myself as such, Because I like to place myself within a Perceived group who also does this. (Regardless of if this group is literally or mostly imagined x3 )
I think the phrase "consumption" is not just a shorthand, but also useful for both people who would like to think of media as a disposable product to sell, with the intention that 'consumers' move on and are ready to dump it and consume the next iteration tomorrow, or next week, or whatever. It's also been useful for those who would accuse publishers of turning art into said disposable product and doing just that.
I think there are people who are more inclined to experience a work of art (/music/literature/etc) once and forget it, and others who hold on dearly to the media that appeals to them. I think there are also = producers of media who wish to make a product to be parceled out regularly, just as there are those who wish to construct an edifice to last generations. Perhaps the value judgment a lot of us tend to place against 'consumption' isn't necessarily fair, but I think media as a consumable is certainly something that happens, even if it isn't universal.
Great video. It was a very interesting, but nuanced difference identified about the communication experience.
As an amateur writer, I've spent a good deal of time figuring out how to communicate specific meaning to potential readers. My greatest desire has been to effectively communicate certain ideas and meanings to those interacting with what I've "produced" (using the food analogy, I've tried to blend spices together to create a certain taste). I've viewed media as an encoded message from at least my early college years. So as a "content creator", the one fear that is most strong for me is that people interpret my message incorrectly, or attribute meaning to it that was never there. I don't mind so much if people use the "take it or leave it" approach, as long as they understand the basis of what I'm trying to say.
On a separate note, I've been thinking about how this view of media might be applied to religion. Often times there is the traditional way of interpreting a religious work such as the Bible, "operating inside the dominant code". For those who view themselves in this way, even the idea of a "negotiated code" is threatening to them, let alone the oppositional code. The sad fact is that for some traditionalists and especially extremists, they may think they are using the dominant code while in fact are using the oppositional code. I would argue that Christians who say that it's okay to hate "the gays" have fallen into this trap. They think they understand the message of the Bible but are in fact taking hate away from a message communicating love.
The distinctions between consuming and en/de-coding a fine. But there are people who are passive in that process. The passive viewer is still affected by media closer to the consuming metaphore (have to integrate sugar if you're eating candy) when one is close enough or familiar with the "dominant code".
you ignore the aspect of consumption that comes from "taste" the taste of the thing is actually the aspect of decoding. but a better metaphor, you can't decode more than was encoded really, when you run a code through a computer you get exactly what was encoded, when you taste something you get whatever you get from it, and have the option to get a "taste" for it.
the topic itself is actually a really interesting one, i'd love more videos like this, on the topic of media consumption!
Hell yes you can decode out of something more than you encode into something! This is where we get conspiracy theories and things like that. People believing they see patterns or overarching connections because "you're not looking deep enough into it, man"
To take your computer example: say you encoded something into say Hexadecimal. If someone decodes it out using octal or binary, you get 2-8 more characters or bits of data. The message might still be the same at its core but some people might read into the extra bits that they got. Sometimes people using a different text editor or document processing program get a whole bunch of garbage data out it because of differences in decoding.
"you can't decode more than was encoded"
I disagree. Someone can decode information/subtext from their media and then put that together with other experiences to create something entirely new. I think Hideaki Anno said once he wanted people to form their own meanings from NGE.
You totally can decode more than is encoded, both on a computer and in media. You just have to realize that when decoding media you bring to the table more information than the media itself contains. When you send an emoji over text message, you aren't sending a picture, you're sending a reference to a picture that you both have on your phones.
Similarly, when your friend receives that emoji they will bring their own thoughts, experiences, and context when decoding what that symbol means. We've just turned two bytes of information into a small jpg, into potentially petabytes of neural information just by snowballing through larger and larger databases of meaning.
Yeah! While this applies to all language really, Idea Channel did talk before about "speaking in emoji"
You know the saying goes that 'a picture is worth a thousand words' but which of those words are of value to the viewer are not necessarily in the mind of the photographer or the artist.
I was hoping an image relating to MLP would slip in to this episode. As usual Idea Channel never disappoints :)
I find the terminology “decoding media” to be very useful because it differentiates between two very different interactions with a text. When we learn to “read” a book, we learn how to look at each word, sentence, paragraph with no additional purpose other than to figure out what the text says. This is very different from writing an essay about the novel, where one not only need to read the text, but one also must examine its metaphors, devices, and themes. I know in my high school we spent all our time “analyzing” and “close reading” every text, which really area both terms for the same process: decoding.
To complete the analogy, I also think one can “decode” the food we eat, though most are more likely to call this “tasting.” Like decoding a text, one must first consume an edible before one can taste it, but one need not taste their food without consuming it. Similarly, one can spend as much or as little time tasting a food regardless of how much flavor the chef put into it.
This idea certainly fits better with media interactions like fan theory (and by extension slash and other fan fiction) than "consumption" does. In this way of looking at things, those are actually different decoding processes, as opposed to say, reactions after consumption.
The same media can also evolve for the individual, as our understanding changes the outcome of decoding media can change over time. Rewatching a movie or rereading a book after a few years can provide new insights depending what we have learnt/experienced in that time. In that same way our current state when watching/reading/lisening to meda for the first time can influence how we decode it. Adding to that the decoding of media will effect the decoding of future media if we allow it to effect us.
Eat any good books lately?
Readers Digest
I've always had a hard time with the 'Comsume' phrase for media. It always felt too automatic, but I ended up using it in writings because despite it's inaccuracy it has a collectively shared meaning that transcends the food eating analogue.
The only problem I have with this "decoding" of media is that sometimes media can have an effect with someone without even that person decoding anything. The process of decoding relates to how someone views media, what they take out of it, in the simplest terms, the "moral of the story." But what if someone doesn't actually interpret the story? Or, rather, they interpret the story as real. I personally believe that every character in every story that has ever existed is "real," not in the sense that they exist in this reality, but that they exist in a world separate than ours, in a fictional world. But just because this world is fictional to us, doesn't make it any less real. The reason why we can empathize with certain characters is because of how their decisions affect their reality, and we view that as being "real."
Anyway, I digress. The reason I bring this up is because a lot of people have discussions about the actual stuff in the story, not just the "meaning" of the story. I don't know if the process of decoding is just an interpretation of media, or if it also includes this, but what I'm talking about doesn't really yield anything that someone can practically apply to their own lives, but it does still affect their life patterns. Like, lets say your a huge Star Trek fan. Talking about the various relationships between species and the new technology that is introduced isn't very practical, but people still do it.
This is a clumsy methaphor but to be able to fit with the consumption metaphor couldn't we view media as ingredients and our decoding is how we choose to cook or prepare them for eating. Flour can be used to make bread, cake or gravy, the same way media can be decoded differently.
this reminds me of one of platos dialogues where he states that food and ideas are similar. the only difference is that one could go home and check to see whether the food is good or not, but as soon as one hears an idea one has already consumed it, and in some sense is harder to reject once already accepted.
also couldn't the couldn't ingesting media but getting nothing from it be likened to alchohol( maybe it was just beerl, which i've heard described as empty calories.
"Nicely put! Analogy is always suspect but that one is close to the facts. Bring me mathematical proof tomorrow." Major Reid, Starship Troopers - Robert A. Heinlein. I guess using food analogies to describe media interactions was always going to be a little fraught.
I love consuming Mike's media content.
I really like the idea of decoding being able to be passive or active. You can choose to go into something looking for a certain meaning or subtext but I think there is still always an underlying passive aspect that's born from your own beliefs, attitudes, and cultural norms. So on the active side you get all the fan theories, espescially the really abstract ones where you have to add your own meaning into a film, while on the passive side you can't help but see something differently to what was intended, such as finding what is meant to be a touching scene in a movie as uncomfortable or funny.
Plus it explains cultural differences well. A good example for me is Iron Chef. Even though it is presumably designed to be taken somewhat seriously a lot of western people, espescially here in Australia see it as very funny and love the dramatic and excited way everything is talked about, so we "consume" it the same way we would a parody of a cooking show more than an actual cooking show. Which is why when producers saw its popularity and made an Iron Chef Australia it flopped because it lost the interesting Japanese cultural aspects and the unintentional humour.
one of the important things that thinking of an audience as decoders rather than more passive consumers allows for is something you touched on briefly at the end. namely that media is put forth into the media and cultural landscape and then people can watch, listen, hear, feel, etc. as they choose and in whatever way they choose. people often say things like "This is a kids show" "This is for black people" and other things which claim ownership over certain types or pieces of media. these are certainly important things to realize or think about and can even be true in a certain sense, but they also seem to preclude engagement with such texts by those who belong to groups outside of the "designated" group. consumption seems to suggest that this kind of thought is correct. that if a piece of media was not intended for some group or type of person then they are doing something wrong or unhealthy by "consuming" it. the encoding decoding theory that hall establishes instead suggests that media may have an intended audience or message but that the ultimate result of any piece of media is only to become a part of the discourse in general. in that way adults watching kid's cartoons or white people listening to Beyonce are not transgressing but are decoding those media that they choose or are exposed to. this is not to say that everyone is right or that all interpretations are "good" but it does allow for conversation to occur and for general interpretative conventions to shift over time as a result of the generated discourse.
hall's encoding/decoding model suggests that people may still find some enjoyment in things that are oppositional to their own identities or embodiments and that this can be beneficial. as Juana Maria Rodriguez talks about in her work "sexual futures, queer gestures, and other Latina longings" (a work dealing with pornographic movies depicting interactions between latinas and boarderguards and the authors own critical interpretation of such works) the existence of highly problematic representations of one's own identity or identity group does not necessarily mean that an individual will not find enjoyment in a piece of media, but the existence of that enjoyment similarly does not preclude critical thought. it is this possibility for critical thought and genuine pleasure that Hall identifies in his work which consumption theories tend to undervalue or even deny existing.
As always, thanks, Mike, for the thoughtful and incisive video, and also for indirectly costing me $30 to get the shirt you are wearing in this video. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to have it (I have the Cosmos-themed one already).
Really, you should be more careful what you wear. It has consequences, you know.
My teacher keeps assigning Idea Channel videos and my God do I miss this show
I want to look a little more at the part you brought up in the beginning, about how we consume media but it itself is not consumed. I think that's an important point to consider. Decoding, I think, is difficult because even though it allows for the audience to have multiple code options, it still has a certain teleological flair to it that I'm not all that comfortable. I don't think media should be "I've cracked the code!" so much as ought to be a question of interpretation through one's own lens and comparison with other lenses.
Since this episode sort of begs for suggested alternate metaphors, I think I would see viewing and interpreting media as an act of Translation. This implies a couple things. First, in the same way that there are many languages and one can translate between nearly any two of them, albeit with some imperfections, I think there are many perspectives for viewing media and one can translate to them together or separately. These can be things like different amounts of life experience, education, subject matter, humor of different cultures, etc. Second, I think that in the same way translation is open to multiple ways of phrasing the same sentence based on the training and fluency of the translator, I think that different students of media can take the same thing and render it differently even when looking through a similar lens (e.g., two same age same culture students can still get a subtly different translation after watching the same show).
Would the best word to describe it be to *experience* media? We grow and learn from the media we experience, and I believe the "junk food" programming would be somewhere along the line of sitcoms. The episodes are typically predictable with little to learn from, as the characters remain mostly unchanged from episode to episode.
I think the main reason we find "consuming" to be the best word is that we typically don't feel the need to re-experience the media. If we repeat our experience with the same media over and over again, we "get full" (think of how we get annoyed hearing the same 10 songs on the radio). Repeat "consumption" is typically only warranted when we're still "hungry/thirsty" for that experience.
Fun side note: I believe if the IDEA Channel were a consumable good, it'd be a smoothie. Healthy in the sense that it's jam-packed with nutrients (sources and context) while still being tasty (entertaining). You could even argue that smoothies are consumed quicker than most other meals, as IDEA Channel episodes are typically shorter than conventional TV programming. Apologies for the pandering, but it was a fun analogy! :D
Edit: added to the side note.
Great Video on how we as humans consume Media throughout our daily lives.
I think it's important to highlight the difference between conscious/active decoding and unconscious/passive decoding(which is arguably what people often mean by "consuming"). When we use out conscious mind to decode media, it's basically using the media as a tool or springboard for thought. But when we allow our unconscious mind to do so unchallenged, it tends to encode the most basic surface meanings of a thing into our subconscious and contribute to bias and the like. It's what leaves culture so vulnerable to negative influence by media, despite media only being a product of culture.
People failing to decode their media properly is not only a shame for the quality of discourse, it's also a real factor in making the world worse.
Joke's on you, consumption itself is a way of decoding something. A body unravels food in the ways it knows how to, and repurposes it into something else. If you're starving, you'll spend your molecules differently than if you're full.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go have a debate with a five year old over where we keep our crayons.
I can see where the consuming vs decoding is prominent specifically in that english class we all took in high school where your teacher decoded something like the colors and giving them meaning where we as the student hadn't really thought of them meaning anything other then there reference to colors. so at that point we were decoding differently then the teacher and maybe the author mean something different by them then the teachers decoded
I suppose I've always sort of mentally combined the concepts of "consumption" and "decoding" without realizing it (because I didn't know about the encode/decode theory before watching this video). Basically what I mean is, I compared media consumption to actual physical consumption this way: When you consume something, it goes through three basic steps. You ingest it, you process it, and then you expel the byproducts of processing. With food this is obviously eat, digest, and then expel through perspiration/urination/defecation. With media consumption, ingestion is reading/viewing/listening/etc., processing/digestion varies person to person and can be a complex process of thinking critically or it can be as simple as realizing you understand the punchlines of the jokes on your favorite tv show, and finally the expelled product is sharing your thoughts and opinions on that piece of media. Of course what you expel depends on how you processed the media. It can be "oh yeah, that's a funny show" or it can be an in depth analysis of a piece of media.
As far as media not "going away" once we consume it, I suppose you could say that it goes away in the sense that once you consume it you can never have not consumed it? Like once you listen to a song, you know what it sounds like. Once you've watched a tv show you know how the episode is going to end. Yes, you can go back and watch or listen again, and even get something new or different out of it but you'll never again experience it the way you did the first time you consumed it. That particular experience has been consumed and is gone. Like if you buy a pack of oreos and you eat one oreo, yeah that oreo is gone and you can't get it back. You can eat another oreo, and it will be similar but you're not going to have an exactly identical experience eating that oreo as you did the first one. And the more oreos you eat, the way you digest and what you expel is going to differ.
FYI the first vowel in Lakoff's name is the same as the word "hay". Source: I had classes with him.
I would argue that to a degree, the media we "consume" does disappear to an extent, however, not in a physical sense. While we can re-watch/read/listen to a piece of media, it will never have the same effect it initially had on us. The first time you read your favorite book or watch your favorite show/film is a unique experience that, while can be reminisced through repeated consumption of said media, can never truly be experienced again in the same way. Working with the food metaphor, its like taking a bite of a pear for the first time. You can eat other pears, but they will never be the same as the first pear you ever ate. The first time you watch your favorite film for instance is an experience that we can remind ourselves of by re-watching that film, but can never experience again. In that sense, media can be consumed.
Read the book Feed by M.T Anderson for the dystopic version.
decoding made me think about how education using media works. ex: you watch a show with your mom, and she asks "what did you think about how that character acted; did they do the right or wrong thing?" or you play Sim City in class and your teacher asks ... uh... I don't remember what she asked; that was years ago now :P THE POINT IS: viewing media as something which can be actively decoded, instead of passively consumed, allows OTHER PEOPLE to affect what you get out of media, which is precisely what happens in real life, whereas with the food analogy... someone else can't change how you digest food :P so, yeah: I'm now on-board with "decoding" rather than "consuming"
Two things
1) Could you increase the gradient on some of those quotes you threw on screen. They were pretty hard to read.
2) I would just call decoding a type of consumption but thats because I like my eating metaphors for media.
About decoding messages... I've watched multiple videos about "The Real Message" behind the movie Zootopia. Christian, Feminist, Men's Rights Activist, they all said something similar to "Ahh but what the producers don't know is that the _real_ message of the movie agrees with my viewpoint!"
This reminds me of a message that is not intended to convey a message (I'm not saying Zootopia did that). Imagine a person giving a speech who intentionally avoids explicitly stating any position except obvious things people would agree with. The intent here is for consumers to put their own beliefs onto the speaker because they have to read into what they "really meant" to say. The speaker is taking advantage of confirmation bias.
Or what about someone who most often decides to decode offense to another's behavior regardless of the encode?
Tasty video! Thanks :)
In my opinion both metaphors describe the processing of media very well. Consumption describes the process where a person chooses to suspend critical thinking and just accept the message at face value (such as getting wrapped up in ones favorite tv series). While the encoding/decoding metaphor describes a process where the viewer/listener applies critical thinking to the content and chooses to interpret it in a manner consistent with their ideology. Different types of content are more appropriate for one method or the other and individuals tend to have a preference for one or the other. Neither one alone fully describes the processing of information because of the active and passive methods of processing information.
We call it consumption because we become finished with our act of experiencing a work of media very much like how we become done with consuming food. When their is sustenance extinguished, media ceases to be itself in a way meaningful to us.
Do we consume media...or does it consume us?
I used to control my remote control but now it controls me.
Welcome to Soviet Russia.
We experience media by watching listening. Interpreting our experience of it though our own framework or life philosophy. Each iteration of experience of a media is differnet adding layers to our experience like a pearl. this feels antithetical to the computational connotation of "Decoading" media. There is no code for an epiphany.
There has to be a certain point however where you synchronize your code to the encoded meaning. Generally when you are first exposed to certain types and genres of media along with all their themes and tropes, there are things which you won't understand, but which you will and will appreciate as you increase exposure. This is especially the case when you bring into consideration the community surrounding that form of media and your interactions with that community as your exposure increases to that media.
I always assumed that folks used the consumption-metaphor because they were consuming the novelty of the information (thus using it up). The explanation in this video is much more interesting though.
I like the idea of decoding rather than consuming. My question is - When we consume something, it leaves an impact on us - Like getting sicker or healthier, or enjoying a sensual experience that leaves us with a memory. In that way consumption is a compelling theory - We're often truly shaped by the media we consume, consciously or not. That influence could be long or short term, tiny or huge, and could resound in more than one way. The idea that decoding can be "finished" could perhaps take away from that idea. If we apply our own code at a given point in time, we could get a host of results. Would the results "run on their own" to produce more... things, once that "initial" decoding is "finished"? Does reproducing have a stopping point? You could maybe argue that it doesn't have to or just doesn't ever, but then, how could it ever be "finished" as Mike suggested? Technically, if one interpretation of a code (or several) feeds into the discourse, wouldn't it have an infinite lifespan to some extent?
Another thing I was thinking about was the nature of coding. I'm not a programmer myself, but I imagine that codes are meant to have some expected outputs that at least a computer could comprehend. If we as the recipients could gather an insane amount of input and output out of the media we decode through our preexisting code, are we essentially complex (but rather submissive and possibly complacent) computers in this scenario? Wouldn't that suggest media creators program us, or that we program each other? It could kind of go into "brainwashing" territory again. Human brains are still remarkably complex and mysterious, while even the most sophisticated computer is still enslaved to human usage at this point in time.
Just a thought.
Your function of decoding and what results from it depend on all sorts of things. The understanding you have of the world, the thoughts that occur in your head, the feelings you experience, the people you're with, things that are happening in your life. Anything that contributes to your mental state or the soupy consciousness you live in at the time will affect the way you take in information. I would think what you can "decode" from any particular bit of media would be endless over time, since your brain is always changing. You could watch the same movie every year and it should continue to produce new meaning, so long as you pay some attention to it. If every time you view it you find yourself thinking the same thoughts or reciting dialogue, that might be a sign that you aren't decoding it in new ways. Things tend to get boring when we stop finding something new about it.
Are we computers, running code and reprogramming ourselves? I'm not sure. Our hardware is constantly changing. Hold on, are our brains hardware or software? Or neither? I'm not really sure. A brain is physical, but malleable. There are some key differences between how a brain interacts with information vs how a computer does. I don't know what they are, but whatever. Is a brain more like a structure of nanobots? Every cell is a living creature after all. Idk.
I'm not sure what the point of my comment is, but I'll leave it here even if I sound like an idiot, it doesn't matter.
Your function of decoding and what results from it depend on all sorts of things. The understanding you have of the world, the thoughts that occur in your head, the feelings you experience, the people you're with, things that are happening in your life. Anything that contributes to your mental state or the soupy consciousness you live in at the time will affect the way you take in information. I would think what you can "decode" from any particular bit of media would be endless over time, since your brain is always changing. You could watch the same movie every year and it should continue to produce new meaning, so long as you pay some attention to it. If every time you view it you find yourself thinking the same thoughts or reciting dialogue, that might be a sign that you aren't decoding it in new ways. Things tend to get boring when we stop finding something new to make of it.
Are we computers, running code and reprogramming ourselves? I'm not sure. Our hardware is constantly changing. Hold on, are our brains hardware or software? Or neither? I'm not really sure. A brain is physical, but malleable. There are some key differences between how a brain interacts with information vs how a computer does. I don't know what they are, but whatever. Is a brain more like a structure of nanobots? Every cell is a living creature after all. Idk.
I'm not sure what the point of my comment is, but I'll leave it here even if I sound like an idiot, it doesn't matter.
Given that the language we use around our interaction with media informs the interaction, "decoding" certainly locates more agency with the decoder than with the producer/encoder than the consumption metaphor does. That said, even "decoding" implies that there is a correct message to be uncovered, and "encoding" implies intentionality, though in the video you mention that encoding begins before intentionality, and includes anything that might impact the frame of reference of media producers. At any rate, common parlance for "encode" and "decode" would seem to undermine the ultimate conclusion that engaging with media is a subjective process, necessarily more complicated than simple production and receipt of a message.
If that is the ultimate conclusion, I think it's worthwhile to find and use language that presupposes it. Language that assumes subjectivity moves away from the idea that there is a correct way to interpret media messages, that what one got out of the movie/book/etc. is incorrect if that meaning wasn't intended by the media's producer(s).
I don't know that it's common practice to think of interpretations as completely correct or incorrect so much as it's common to consider other people's interpretations ridiculous. (I'm thinking specifically of comments like Robin Thicke's after the release of 'Blurred Lines'.) We seem to have this attitude that if a producer didn't intend a particular message, receiving that message is absurd, an overreaction.
If we acknowledge that encoding of media is both active and unconscious, then decoding isn't just a subjective and personal act, but a possible unconvering of unconscious encoded messages (rape culture, gender roles, disproportionate objectification/sexualization of women in the 'Blurred Lines' example).
That is, if we can find and use language that undermines creators implied ability to be intentional about absolutely every aspect of their message, and that presupposes an audience's co-creational role in identifying meaning in media, would the decoding of problematic messages in media by audiences be less easy to discount as hysterical or hypersensitive?
The equivalent of Calories could describe how "dense" the material is. With a simple comic strip or quick youtube video being small, and then you have works like War and Peace or Ulysses being very heavy.
New intro is rad.
My high school Literature teacher described books like Harry Potter and Twilight as "dessert" literature, whereas something like Ralph Emerson's Invisible Man as more like a proper meal. Personally, I always thought that comparison was a bit off since, like you said, a book isn't just a book; it is also what you choose to get out of it.
I must agree that it is important to read books like Invisible Man, but I'm inclined to think that such a literary meal requires a certain type of setting. It's like a meal at a business conference or even a counceling session where the participants discuss the future and heal wounds. Harry Potter, on the other hand, is rather more like a brunch, where you might talk with friends and family about important aspects of life and realtionships, but the conversation also includes inside jokes and talk of importantly unimportant things.
Of course, this comparison assumes that such media are not "consumed" and "decoded" in a vacuum, but rather in the context of culture and community.
Thank you for the POTUSA reference!! :)
Nice Presidents of the United States of America reference with the peaches at 3:28
Another metaphor we could use might be that of "translator". This has the benefits of "en-/decoding", namely the active role of the "decoder/translator", but also leaves more room for the "decoder/translator". Encoding/decoding suggests a picture in which there is one way in which is encoded, and one way in which is decoded; both the intended and received 'message' are determined by the codes both parties use. More significantly, choosing a code seems a monumental task; you are, in some sense, stuck with your code. Furthermore, it would seem hard for two very different codes to 'match' the same message, i.e. to both obtain meaningful 'content'.
When we see this process as a 'translation', however, we get more 'wriggle room' for the translator. Two translations can differ in many ways and still both be completely intelligable. One translation of a novel might drop some subtext, while another may emphasize it. Still others will change the subtext because of peculiarities of the languages in question; some things cannot be translated; other things can be literally translated, but carry different subtexts in different languages.
Finally (and this is something I am fond of), it removes the 'encoder' in favor of a 'producer'. This means that the step of 'encoding' some message into the medium is removed, and that the message has no 'actual' 'content'.
It seems to me the word "decoding" can easily be substituted with "interpreting" in this analogy. It's kind of just describing the matching, agreed upon and contrasting interpretations of media observed between media producer and audience member.
Phrases like "it's so bad it's good", "it's good for all the wrong reasons" or "it's so stupid it's funny" remind of the digestion metaphor in situations where different pieces, like movies, games, etc, turn out in a non-successful way, to put it simply, in comparison to what the creator intended, at least in the eyes of audiences, and turns out to have entertaining value in the sense of being a laughing piece or recurring to "cheesiness" to be entertaining.
No specific example comes to my mind right now, but even if it did, it would probably be hard to find one that is recognisable by everyone.
What hits me about the language of it is that 'decoding' is as said, very much digesting, or finding some loose metaphor to how the media we expose ourselves to leaves an effect on us. I think saying i'm off to decode my favorite show, doesn't even work. The decoding or digestion comes after, when you're thinking about it when you put it down. When you think what would X character do when you are presented with a situation or let the dogmatic influence of the news cycle effect your stance of the world. Watching, reading, or 'consuming' media is just that the chewing or processing phase.
I think either language choice could work, or in light of all this new info we might want to find something more apt.
Since 'consume' has a secondary definition of 'buy' for goods and services, which would refer to media, we could still be media consummers however in terms of using the media we have accumilated we 'decode' it in the way the decoding theory states.
i think we can see media as an infinite buffet of consumable goods, we go around to whatever one we want take from that good regardless of meaning. we intake these goods in passing or voluntarily partaking in it, just as we get tired of food and come back to it, we do the same with media fads and change up what we intake
I think "decode" may be appropriate if you're watching Mr. Robot.
This theory is really interesting and has definitely opened my eyes a bit. However, I notice that it places a lot of emphasis on the conscious autonomy of the observers-- as if they're able to choose whether or not to decode a movie as "scary" or "funny." I imagine that envisioning it as such is a good mental exercise but so much has to depend on context. Like, maybe it's funny because we were expecting something and prepared to decode it as such but the departure from those "code-norms" made it funny? Just a thought! :)
The phrase "Non-stop stake"is very pleasing to my ears.
Consumed, and digested too :) Very nice.
Regarding the idea that media isn't used up or go away, I'd counter that media is experienced and that experience is temporal. You can revisit the same piece of media but have a difference experience days, month, especially years later. In 'consuming' media as 'using it up' it's the experience that is digested.
i would say a media calories is. the smallest point of information that will make you performing a behavior you would not have done otherwise. for example the weather man saying its Monday will make me act different than if he said it was a Friday, the information given by him saying the word Monday gives me one media calorie.
I like the idea of content decoding. Describing media as being consumed always, to me, smacked of the neoliberal project to redefine everyone as a "consumer" of everything - and the simultaneous effort to redefine previously common institutions like universities and public services as private ones.
Encoding and decoding information is a good model for the consumption of media but it can just as effectively be applied to any language i.e. Any form of communication in which informations is transmitted received and processed. Every culture with a different language has a slightly altered method of decoding syntactical information expressed through small mouth noises . The effect of this is actually shown to restructure the wiring of the brain.
Did anyone mentioned Susan Sontag´s "Against interpretation" yet? She says some very interesting, and somehow liberating, things about those "decoders" who "over-decode" every piece of media, especially when it comes to art. What do you think about that approach?
I love this channel, it´s my weekly thought candy. Sorry if there´s any misspelled words, this is not my native language. Lots of love from Argentina, thank you for keeping us thinking.
if you consumed the hallmark channel you'd turn into a tree from eating all that sap
I think the term "consume" is largely meant to denote economic activity - as "consumers", our use of a particular product is the end of the chain of production. For comparison, a computer chip might be produced at a factory and sold to a TV company. They aren't a consumer, because they're going to use it to build a TV. Then they sell the TV to someone who wants to watch stuff, and that person is the "consumer" because they are not a "producer" of anything and they provide the justification for the economic activity in the first place..
I think it's more fair to say that sometimes we consume and sometimes we decode, but we never really know which one happens until it happens.
I think I first encountered this notion of the closeness of the Encoder to the Decoder when watching my first Tyler Perry movie. Instantly I was like, "oh, this is NOT for me" (well, first I was like, "this sh*t is terrible!" then I calmed down and decided it just wasn't made for me to enjoy, consume, decode what the encoded put into it) Tried to watch a 2nd one and couldn't stomach my way through it. There's a definite distance between our cultural codes...