Encoding and Decoding: The Perpetual Charm of Meaning Production——Re-examining Participatory Culture Through Nietzsche’s “Eternal Recurrence”

Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding theory highlights the agency of audiences, an aspect overlooked in prior research, thereby injecting new vitality into Western cultural studies of its time. However, in today’s participatory cultural environment, this theory—originally developed in the context of television studies—inevitably reveals limitations in explaining the role of audiences. The present study seeks to identify these limitations and construct a more comprehensive chain of meaning production. The flourishing of secondary creation vividly demonstrates that the communication process has evolved into an adventurous journey of meaning: “encoding–decoding–re-encoding–re-decoding–re-encoding.” Drawing on Nietzsche’s concept of “eternal recurrence”, this paper further elucidates this mechanism, revealing that the enduring charm of meaning production lies in the courage to engage in creative decoding and re-encoding, as well as in the steadfast commitment to cultural responsibility.