Within the context of media and communications studies, this idea of distorted communication was proposed by the cultural theorist Stuart Hall in one of his papers “Encoding/Decoding” (1973). In this paper, Hall argues that the meaning of the message is never static or fixed, the message is not fully linear or transparent and that the audience is never simply a passive recipient (Hall, 2006). He went on to propose the theory of encoding and decoding. By encoding, Hall referred to the process where creators of the message embed hidden meaning based on their context or ideologies. Whereas decoding is the process where the interpretation of the message by the audience is impacted by social and cultural framework (Mambrol, 2020).
Let’s further reflect on the idea of encoding and decoding.
“Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?”
In October, Chante Joseph wrote an article for the British Vogue called “Is having a boyfriend embarrassing now?” which sparked yet another opinion-driven online conversation. The article uses strong language to describe frustration around women posting their boyfriends online and how this is no longer a trendy phenomenon (Joseph, 2025). It is clearly written to provoke a conversation targeted at heterosexual relationships. Joseph, as the writer of this article has embedded the article with a certain message of frustration. She is pointing out that women’s identities are built of more than just getting praised for keeping a man. This message is encoded with an ideology of feminism. That is to say, the article does not just have a fixed meaning but a deeper ideology behind it encoded by the author.
As the reader reasons through this article, he decodes it within such frames as religion, ethnicity, age, sexuality, gender and class (Mambol, 2006). Think of it as certain lenses. The polarised conversation this article provoked online, proves Halls point of the audience taking a stance in one of the three formats: dominant, oppositional or negotiated. If the audience were passive receivers, everyone would have decoded the message similarly.
However, in this case some chose to fully agree with the article (dominant), some fully rejected the idea of it being embarrassing to have a boyfriend (oppositional) whilst others seemed to accept but were not fully convinced by the idea (negotiated). Single and taken women across the globe started posting videos across social media platforms expressing their opinions on this matter.
In conclusion, based on Hall’s theory, media never produces passive or fixed messages. Media has a deep impact on society due to its fluid nature caused by humans coding and interpreting the codes in various ways.
References
Chante Joseph. (2025). Is Having A Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?. [Online]. British Vogue. Last Updated: 25 October 2025. Available at: https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/is-having-a-boyfriend-embarrassing-now [Accessed 14 November 2025].
Durham, Meenakshi Gigi. (2006). Media and cultural studies: keywords. [Online]. Wiley-Blackwell. Available at: https://www.vlebooks.com/Product/Index/22528?page=0&startBookmarkId=-1 [Accessed 14 November 2025].
Nasrullah Mambrol. (2020). Analysis of Stuart Hall’s Encoding/Decoding. [Online]. Literary theory and criticism. Last Updated: 7 November 2020. Available at: https://literariness.org/2020/11/07/analysis-of-stuart-halls-encoding-decoding/ [Accessed 14 November 2025].
Photo by Alasdair McLellan
