How would Stuart Hall respond to the question: How does L&O affect the audience in terms of ideology?

Law and Order is the longest running drama on American television. The success of the show is due to its ability to convey realism by basing its episodes on actual news headlines, as well as on the professional and personal lives of prosecutors and police officers in New York City. Its wide spectrum of compelling stories and characters offer several opportunities for distinct interpretations, hence its resilience seeing in its consistent ratings.

Stuart Hall, theorizes about mass communication, he says that its "primary process of reality construction and maintenance whereby positions of inequality, dominance and subservience are produced and reproduced in society and at the same time made to appear 'natural' ". Therefore, Hall would conclude that the vast appeal of Law & Order can be explained by the existence on the show of certain codes that emphasizes social factors, which are interpreted and evaluated by the spectators in three distinct ways. A portion of the public, while watching an episode, just takes in the message as it is intended by the show's creators, as they exercise the dominant reading form of interpretation and evaluation. Another portion, trying to relate themselves to the story, sees the encoded messages of the television programme and interprets it differently. These people have a negotiated reading of the story, which is somehow twisted in order to reflect their own personal preconceived ideas and experiences. There is another portion of the public who sees a TV show in a way that is the complete opposite of what was originally intended by the writers, they have an oppositional reading. The different forms of interpretations happen because the spectators have diverse backgrounds and life experiences, thus each person perceives what they see in movies and television in their own unique way.

People can empathize or despise a particular criminal depicted on Law & Order depending on what they have been through. A convicted felon may feel sorry for the criminal and a real-life prosecutor or judge may wish the death penalty to the very same character.