Oppositional decoding as an act of resistance
- 1 March 1988
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis in Critical Studies in Mass Communication
- Vol. 5 (1) , 1-15
- https://doi.org/10.1080/15295038809366682
Abstract
This essay, based on a reading of 10 years of the “No Comment” feature of Ms. magazine, argues that when submitting insulting advertisements and clippings from various mass media for republication in Ms. , readers are engaging in oppositional decoding. That is, the readers are resisting the “preferred readings,” to use Stuart Hall's term. The essay speculates why such oppositional decoding is a satisfying group process for the Ms. readership; it also notes that the fact that a particular interpretive community might decode oppositionally presents another challenge to conventional linear models of communication.Keywords
This publication has 2 references indexed in Scilit:
- Finding Community In Nineteenth Century Suffrage PeriodicalsAmerican Journalism, 1983
- The encoding / decoding model: criticisms and redevelopments for research on decodingMedia, Culture & Society, 1983