In a post of 350-450 words, please choose a media object or event (e.g. a news story, film, pop song, etc.), and analyze it using one of the concepts from our last two course readings, Stuart Hall’s “Encoding/Decoding,” and Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford and Joshua Green’s “Why Media Spreads.” Your media object or event can’t be one that we’ve already discussed in class (e.g. Orson Welles’s broadcast of The War of the Worlds). Examples of concepts that you might reference in your discussion:

Encoding vs. decoding

-is there a distinction between the meanings encoded in the object or event you’ve chosen, and the meanings decoded?

Denotation vs. connotation and dominant or preferred readings

-are there multiple connotative codes present, and which are associated with dominant/preferred meanings?

Dominant-hegemonic reading, negotiated reading, and oppositional reading

-what would readings that use these strategies look like?

Spreadability and/or stickiness

-can you interpret the media object or event in relation to Jenkins et al’s notion of spreadability and/or Gladwell’s notion of stickiness? Is there a collision between these ways of thinking about media in the case you’re taking up? What happens when we think about it from both perspectives?

Virality and memes

-does the case you’re studying  function according to the narrower applications of these terms that Jenkins et al propose (see pp. 16-27)?

-Participatory culture

-do you see the dynamics of participatory culture at work in how  audience(s) have received your chosen media object/event?