ABSTRACT
SINCE the advent of uses and gratifications research, scholars inmass communication have focused more directly on the audi-ence member as an active participant, an orientation that has led to a host of studies attempting to explain what audience members do with media messages as opposed to what media messages do to audience members. While conceiving of the audience as an active part of the mass communication process has been a significant step in the appropriate direction, audience activity has been explicated within a relatively limited frame. Hall (1980) has contended that contemporary research in mass communication concentrates on behavioral manifestations of communication. The guiding assumption has been that meaning is constituted behaviorally or that behavior is meaning made manifest. Hall (1980, p. 130) has argued rightly that "before a message can have an 'effect' (however defined), satisfy a 'need' or be put to a 'use,' it must first be appropriated as a meaningful discourse and be meaningfully decoded." In essence, Hall has posited a research approach that explores the process through which mediated messages become meaningful to audiences.
