PEMAKNAAN KHALAYAK LINTAS GENERASI PADA PENGAKUAN KEHAMILAN DILUAR NIKAH PADA PODCAST (Studi Resepsi Viewers Podcast Close The Door Episode "Saya Hamil 9 Bulan Om")

Podcasts have become a digital medium widely used by the public for information and entertainment. An Episode of "Close the Door," "I'm 9 Months Pregnant, Uncle," aired on July 18, 2025, featuring Erica Carlina as a guest speaker, who addressed the issue of premarital pregnancy. The episode garnered considerable public attention because the sensitive topic was packaged into a podcast and widely consumed, eliciting responses from the audience. This study aims to determine how audiences interpret podcast content. This research employed Stuart Hall's reception analysis with a qualitative approach, focusing on the encoding and decoding processes of media messages. Using purposive sampling to identify subjects for in-depth interviews based on Stuart Hall's theory, three reading positions were identified in the audience's interpretation of the Close the Door podcast content: Dominant Hegemonic, Negotiated, and Oppositional.
The results show that audiences are not passive recipients of messages but actively construct meaning based on their social, cultural, and personal experiences. Podcasts, as a digital medium, provide a suitable space for public discussion on sensitive social issues, but each audience member's interpretation varies widely according to their individual characteristics.