Who Makes Meaning
This is the word we use to describe an audience that interprets media rather than passively absorbing it.
What is an active audience?
When a filmmaker chooses dark, desaturated lighting for a scene, they are doing this to the meaning of that scene; building a message into the text through deliberate choices.
What is encoding?
This refers to how your race, gender, class, and experiences shape how you interpret media.
What is social position?
When audiences push back against the intended meaning of media, this is called:
What is interpretive resistance?
This term describes how audiences are now also creators and distributors of content.
What is participatory culture?
True or false: according to the old "hypodermic needle" model, everyone exposed to the same media message would be equally affected.
What is true?
When an audience member watches a film and interprets its meaning, they are doing this to the message the filmmaker encoded.
What is decoding?
When two people watch the same protest footage but see “justice” vs “threat,” this explains why.
What is different interpretive frameworks?
This type of decoding rejects the dominant meaning and creates a completely different one.
What is oppositional decoding?
This scholar introduced the concept of participatory culture.
Who is Henry Jenkins?
The Office makes some people cringe at Michael Scott's behavior while others find him genuinely lovable. Having two valid yet opposite readings of the same show is an example of this concept.
What is polysemy?
A viewer who watches The Office, laughs along, and accepts that Michael Scott is a harmless buffoon being mocked by the show is in this reading position; the one where the intended meaning is received exactly as the producer encoded it.
What is the dominant reading?
This theory says audiences don’t passively accept media—they actively interpret it.
What is Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding theory?
When people remix ads or memes to critique corporations, this is known as:
What is culture jamming?
Name one barrier that prevents equal participation in content creation.
What is time, access, or skill?
Fill in the blank: according to the active audience model, meaning doesn't live entirely in the text and it doesn't live entirely in the viewer. It emerges in the _______ between the two.
What is the encounter?
A viewer who enjoys The Office but feels quietly uncomfortable about specific moments, laughing while also thinking "this hasn't aged well,” is in this reading position: the most common one according to Hall
What is the negotiated reading?
If one person sees a movie relationship as romantic and another sees it as controlling, this shows what key idea?
What is meaning is subjective but socially patterned?
This online space is known for shaping cultural conversations and creating shared interpretations within the Black community.
What is Black Twitter?
When users influence what becomes popular through likes, shares, and comments, they are acting as this:
What are gatekeepers?
This is the term for the discredited model of media audiences that was eventually overturned because researchers kept finding that people filtered, resisted, and selectively remembered media content rather than absorbing it uniformly.
What is the hypodermic needle model?
This is the name of the scholar who published "Encoding/Decoding" in 1980 and identified the three reading positions (dominant, negotiated, and oppositional) that audiences use when interpreting media texts.
What is Stuart Hall?
People disagree online not because they’re “wrong,” but because they are viewing content through this.
What is a different lens shaped by lived experience?
This creator is known for breaking down media and cultural issues in an accessible, analytical way (mentioned in your slides).
Who is FD Signifier (or Khadija Mbowe)?
Even though users help decide what goes viral, this group still ultimately controls visibility through algorithms.
What are platforms/tech companies?