Media and circuit of culture.

Culture can be understood in terms of 'shared meanings'. (Hall 1997) In modern world, the media is the biggest tool of circulation of these meanings.

Stuart Hall presents them as being shared through language in its operation as a 'representational (signifying) system'and he presents the circut of cultural modelcircut of cultural model as a way of understanding this process.

The process that culture gathers meaning at five different “moments” is - representation, identity, production, consumption and regulation.

Hall's circuit model of communication is a refined version of his orignal encoding/ decoding model:

In sender-receiver model Hall emphasied the importance of specific cultural conditions at every stage of any communication process. Creators of media texts produce them in particular instituational context, drawing on shared framework of knowldge etc. The same media text is engaged by audiences in different context.

Hall states that reality exists outside the language but constantly mediated by and through language, what we can know or say has to be produced in and through discourse. Discursive knowldge is not the representation of real language but articulation of language used in real condition/ situation.

RepresentationRepresentation meaning from language, painting, photography and other media, it uses “signs and symbols to represent whatever exists in the world in terms of a meaningful idea and concept, image".

Representation is the discursive process by which cultural meaning is generated and given shape: “we give things meaning by how we represent them”.

For Example: A Bird, A Cross, Traffic Lights.

A Bird in a Political Conference Between Two nations can

be a Symbol Of ”Peace”

While the same bird in a advertisment

Of beauty soup is a symbol of

”beauty and softness”

A Dog is a symbol of Loyality

in USA While abuse in Pakistan.

Consumption,when Consumption,when messages are decoded messages are decoded by audiences.by audiences.

Consumers actively Consumers actively create meanings bycreate meanings byusing  cultural  products using  cultural  products in their everyday lives. in their everyday lives. 

Production(construction) is the process by which creators of cultural products imbue(arise) them with meaning, a process often called encoding (Hall, 1993). Producers  encode  dominant  meanings  into their cultural  products.

For Example the Use of word ''HALAL” in islamic countries On the product of snacks ”Lays” by its manufacturing

mulinational Company.

Regulation are conditions What’s allowable or expected in a culture often is deter  mined.

Identities are meanings that accrue to all social networks,  from  nations  to  organizations  to publics.Identities, then, are never fixed entities but are multiple,  culturally  constructed  meanings  that evolve and change. 

For example they deals with:To target the ideal young costumers: prizes had to be low. Name must be cool. Addition of new demand (e.g Diet coke)

Indian and Pakistani advertisment of Lays

To understand the

cicuit model of Culture

take the example of ''Pepsi”.

● Sign = Pepsi + micheal Jackson

● Signifier= particular drink

● Production= Soft drink Pepsi by Pepsicon

● Consumer= people of Usa

● Representating= dance , Rock and Roll culture.

Same Pepsi in Iraq and Africa

In Pakistan dominating CricketIn India dominating Bollywood

Presenting Egyptian and Arab culture

This is how Media tries to fool us but when we truely understand all discourses in a text

we often laugh:

Discorse analysis engages directly with Circut-of-culture-model, given its political aim of Putting the forms of text, the process of production of text, the process of readings, and the structure of power that have given rise to them.In  media  the  interpretation  of  texts  is  depends upon viewers even viewers can produce their own text  in  response  to  a  particular  visual/oral  stmuli (Talk shows in response to a Poltical event). Media message  also  perform  ideational  function  of language;  function  to  performe  communicate process,  or  express  our  thoughts  through language.