Stuart Hall's seminal essay, 'Encoding and Decoding' was so crucial to Culture Studies, discussing the process of production and reproduction of media. Hall's theory was (in a nutshell) stating that the audience of media is not only the receiver but is part of the source, because the system of production is not closed, as it draws on topics and agendas of its audience (Hall, 1998). It adapts to its audience, and thus works much like any other mode of production, echoing Adorno and Horkheimer's analysis in The Cultural Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception (1944).
Hall developed a more optimistic view of the Cultural Industry, offering a more hopeful analysis, which acknowledges that the dominant views of the Bourgeois class are being forced onto the Working classes. However, he explores the different codes of reading that exist. There are 3 types according to Hall;
1) The Professional code
2) The Negotiated code
3) The Oppositional code
Now, the third code gives us the opportunity to go against what is being produced in the cultural industry. Then, our response as an audience will then shape what is next produced, and so the cycle continues.
Now that Hall's theory has been briefly explained, I would like to propose my idea of applying this theory to Social Media Content creation, with regards to the Case Study of a trend of 'productivity vlogs' and, what I like to call them, the 'anti-productivity' vlogs that influencers are now branding under titles such as 'Realistic day in my life'. As a consumer of YouTube videos, I am one of the millions who have noticed the trend of 'productivity' vlogs or motivational study/work content over the last year. I am guilty of watching them, instead of doing my work - which is the strange paradox of this type of content: you are watching it to 'gain motivation' when in reality, watching the video is keeping you from working.
With all this being said, recently a backlash has formed against this type of content, with people calling out 'toxic positivity', a new Gen-Z term that we have adopted online. Content creators were accused of projecting unrealistic expectations on students and self-employed people. I am proposing that this backlash from viewers is what Hall called, the oppositional code, because they are going against the dominant meaning that the creators wanted to impose on them. The hope of the creators was that their viewers would a) enjoy the content so as to continue subscribing to their social media presence, and b) agree with their point of view on productivity so as to watch more of their videos surrounding the subject. The point is that the creators profit off content, and so they must make content that their following will enjoy in order to earn money. I think it is always important to keep that in mind when consuming.
Therefore, when the backlash came against this type of content after its initial success, the creators (probably) panicked and changed strategy - the oppositional code had worked! Now, we are seeing an increasing amount of what I have referred to as 'anti-productivity' vlogs, where creators bang on about "not putting pressure" on themselves, and boasting about the amount of procrastination they have done that day. It's the antithesis of the content they were creating just 6 months ago, in which they boasted about the 12-hour study days they had completed. They have now decided to preach a new message to their audience about their definition of self-care and people are finding them 'relatable' once more.
But, can we entirely blame the creators? I watched a really good Video Essay by Alice Cappelle, who regularly uploads videos discussing contemporary topics and applying Cultural and sociological theory to them. This video is titled We Created 'that girl', linked below.
Cappelle effectively explains that our demands as the audience for productivity style content and motivational content, our desires to see people who 'have their life together' was so great that it sparked the trend of productivity vlogs, and the glamorization of them through the concept of 'That Girl' - the girl who wakes up early, eats healthy, exercises, meditates and journals, and drinks the perfect Matcha Latte every day. It is absolutely unrealistic, but yet people bought into it and continued watching until the backlash/oppositional code kicked in when people realised how harmful this type of content is.
This is all to say that we can choose to oppose what is produced for us and that it clearly has an impact. I think that I have demonstrated this with my Case Study of Youtube Productivity vlogs, that content creators will 'listen' to their audience, and that the agendas of that audience have a great impact on what is created, even to the point where they are contradicting themselves only a few months apart. Culturally, I think that it is impactful to recognise what we are consuming and to choose whether to conform or oppose, because in the cultural industry it could have an immediate impact, in contrast to other industries where it is harder to enact faster change. Perhaps this is naive on the larger scale, but when you think about how many consumers there are on platforms such as Youtube, this changes can have a great impact in a cultural sense.
Reference List
Adorno, T. W., & Horkheimer, M. (2007). The culture industry: Enlightenment as mass deception. Stardom and Celebrity: A Reader, 1944, 34–43. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446269534.n4
Alice Cappelle (2021) We created 'that girl'. [online video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDklDH4PVAs&t=174s
Hall, S. (1998). Encoding, decoding. In S. During (Ed.), The Cultural Studies Reader (Routledge, pp. 90–103). Routledge.
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