Date of Award

2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Multi-sector Communications (Ph.D.)

Department

Division of Mass Communication

First Advisor

Thomas Kitts

Second Advisor

Randolph Ortiz

Third Advisor

Candice Roberts

Abstract

Cinematic and televisual media express the thoughts and emotions of people and cultures with the potential of unifying people through the social realities that are created around the visuals, narratives, and on-screen interpersonal interactions. Through media like film, television, and short-form online video, people interact with others in ways that, because of barriers like physical distance and/or social structures, they may not be able to in real life. The images, sounds, and stories depict their own realities, which are consumed, interpreted, and understood by viewers and can inform their perceptions and interpersonal interactions. Stuart Hall, Jamaican-British, cultural theorist, and political activist, suggests that there is a negotiation that occurs in the communication process between viewers and the producers of the media. Messages that are intended by the producers are not inherent within the text (film, tv show, video) or content itself; instead, it is understood through the relationship between the text and the viewer. Considering Hall’s concept that meaning comes from the relationship between the viewer and the text, I suggest that character portrayals impact the people who identify with the ethnic and social identities being portrayed. In the present work, I explore this relationship, using films released between 1990 and 2024 and propose a theoretical model inspired by Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding Model of Communication that synthesizes Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman’s Social Construction of Reality with additional theoretical frameworks to understand social impacts from relationships between texts, producers, and audiences.

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