Negotiated decoding spaces are pivotal to media legitimacy

Evidence

Since the media not only are widely and diffusely distributed throughout the classes, but bring them within the grid of social communication, and must continually reproduce their own popular legitimacy for commanding that ideological territory, these negotiated spaces and inflections, which permit the subordinate readings to be contained within the larger ideological syntagmas of the dominant codes, are absolutely pivotal to media legitimacy, and give that legitimacy a popular basis. The construction of a “consensus” basis for media work is how, in part, this work of legitimation is realized. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 921

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: User-generated journalism struggled to match the perceived legitimacy of mainstream media. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 109