Media texts are often made to appear very realistic in appearance – so much so that they are often said to provide their audience with a ‘window on the world’.

It’s a fact that we learn a great deal about the world simply through what we see, hear and read in the media.

It’s important, therefore, that we can analyse just how the media does represent the world to its audiences.

Is the way it does so wholly fair and objective, for...

Associated Resources

Analyse Rambo Poster: Media Language.doc

The Four Media Studies Key Concepts

These four ideas or concepts are at the core of your course and will, eventually, come to be at the core of all the many analyses and discussions of media texts you carry out. You’ll be covering each one in increasing detail over the next two years of your course but, for the next few lessons, there’ll be just a brief introduction.

MEDIA...

This video was created using a combo of three programs. First, a cheap Mac program called Noodle Flix. This allows green screen and allows you to animate half a dozen digital heads, male and female.

Second a “cloud” program called Xtranormal which used to be free but they now charge for downloads. This gives you camera moves like a studio and third a PC program called Crazytalk which is very versatile. You can animate eyes and mouths on...

Source: http://www.manifestoformediaeducation.co.uk/

Get Involved

We hope that readers of this site will become writers too; we would like to invite you to participate in a number of ways.

To kick start the manifesto we asked a few media educators to provide us with their view on the purpose of media education (media studies/practice/production and media literacy). This initial set of contributions is only a starting point and is not supposed...

Associated Resources

Click on the link below to download a Word version of this article. You’ll find it easier to read.

Media Representations - Sunday Times Article on Teen Magazines.doc

• Read the following extract from an article that appeared in the Sunday Times in 2005.

• Using your knowledge of semiotics (that is, the use of signs and codes), choose one of the images below of girls’ magazine covers to analyse.

• Can you identify a few of...

Whilst the technology available to the giant media corporations is nowadays quite phenomenal in its ability to recreate what looks, to the audience, to be reality, it’s important that as a Media Studies student you are able to stay thoroughly objective.

• Being objective means ‘standing well back’ from a media text and avoiding getting too involved in its story or detail. This will allow you to recognise it for what it is: its...

‘Narrative’ (1)

Learning about an idea called ‘narrative’ can be very useful for your GCSE in Media Studies as it provides you with a subtle way of analysing many media texts including your own productions. This is because narrative is such a very common technique used to create many different kinds of media text, including news stories, films, TV series and advertisements.

• Narrative is a way of giving information in a way that is not...

‘Narrative’ (2) - The Used of Narrative

Even advertisements are often created with a kind of ‘story’ lurking hidden within them. In ads for household cleaners, for instance, the ‘germs’ and ‘dirt’ are often presented as ‘the baddies’ and we need the product to overcome them. If you analyse the ad below, can you uncover a ‘goodie’ and a ‘villain’ as well as a ‘problem’ that needs to be overcome?

• The technical term for...

Dominant Ideologies

Some people see media texts as harmless and just there for their audience’s entertainment – we can take them or leave them; others suggest that media texts help create, reinforce or support a certain view of society and the world. This is a view, they claim, that reflects not the concerns of the majority, but the concerns of those who own companies and have wealth and power.

• Society’s commonly held ideas or...

One of the most difficult Media Studies ‘Key Concepts’ to write about meaningfully in your essays is ‘Media Institutions’; but write about it you must if you want to obtain a high grade at the end of your course.

It can help to think about what it means when a concentration of media companies – those that can manufacture high quality media texts and products and distribute them widely and easily – lies in just a few hands. These...

Analysing Media Texts Using Semiotics

Semiotics is a way of analysing any media text to uncover the ways it creates meaning for its target audience. Some key terms in semiotics are sign, code, denotation and connotation.

Media texts, like the magazine ad on the right (from a charity’s campaign against verbal abuse), can be made powerful and compelling.

If you’ve been to any recent film at a multiplex cinema with an ultra-wide screen and...

Ever since the mass media began in earnest with newspapers, magazines, cinema and radio way back in the early decades of last century and before, understanding just how an audience might or might not be affected by watching or ‘consuming’ what the media text presents has occupied the thoughts of many academics throughout the world.

It is what has led to media censorship, to the state taking control of the media in some countries, to the...

This video was created using a combo of three programs. First, a cheap Mac program called Noodle Flix. This allows green screen and allows you to animate half a dozen digital heads, male and female.

Second a “cloud” program called Xtranormal which used to be free but they now charge for downloads. This gives you camera moves like a studio and third a PC program called Crazytalk which is very versatile. You...

Source: http://www.manifestoformediaeducation.co.uk/

Get Involved

We hope that readers of this site will become writers too; we would like to invite you to participate in a number of ways.

To kick start the manifesto we asked a few media educators to provide us with their view on the purpose of media education (media studies/practice/production and media literacy). This initial set of contributions is only...