From Hey, you there! to Got you: Re-materializing the encoding/decoding model in the computationally mediated city

For European media studies, Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model epitomizes the transition from the mass communication research paradigm to the cultural one in the 1970s. Given its canonical status, Hall’s model offers an apt point of reference for reflecting on the challenges that cultural media studies itself faces today—after more than a decade into the turn to materiality in social theory. My suggestion is that the pervasively computed contemporary city provides a strategic context for media scholars in discussing the theoretical relevance of the encoding/decoding model, as well as semiotic models more generally, in terms of the ongoing paradigm shift.