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...

In Media Studies we see iconography as part of genre, and particularly film genre. Students need to know the term and how it is used. It is quite a complex concept, that informs image analysis and the deconstruction of genre. Iconography originates from the study of art.

In Europe in the15th & 16th centuries artists creating work of a Christian nature would look up reference books to check the colours, composition, hand gestures, poses and...

What is it?

The concept is one which has become increasingly useful in the analysis and understanding of contemporary media culture but unfortunately is not a simple one to define.

It is at once a sociological condition which it is argued that the western world has moved in to over the last 30 years or so, a way of working (i.e. we can talk of a pomo film/book/work of art, etc.) and a set of philosophical ideas about the nature of reality; and...

We had an enquiry recently about Postmodernism which led to some productive responses. Ellen Grundy’s approach involved:

(L)ooking at representation and postcolonialism (as follows):

A research task on Gurinder Chadha and her films. How do her life and the themes of her films suggest a post colonial identity? For example Bend it like Beckham as a coming together of different ethnicities / cultures.

The classic clip of going for an ‘English’...

MEST3 Critical Perspectives

MEST4 Research and Production

2012 Section B Topics: Representation and New Digital Media (3 Media Platforms) - 30 Week Scheme of Work

Overview

• AQA A Level Media Studies Overview

Scheme

• 2012 AQA A2 Media Studies SOW.doc

Concepts

• Analysing Text, Stimulus Material - Audiences
• Regulation and Censorship
• Critical Investigation - Viral Marketing
• Skills Development - Planning and Production
• Representation of Masculinity...[ read full article ] »
  

Associated Resources

• Semiotics Glossary.doc

Anchorage

The fixing of a set of meanings, often found in a photograph or advert, usually through captions or other written text

Arbitrary Sign

Where the signifier has no connection to the signified e.g. Snow and Christmas

Codes

A system of signs, languages or symbols that allow audiences to decode meaning e.g. Technical and Symbolic codes or Narrative codes

Content Analysis

A way of decoding...

Associated Resources

• Moving Image Terminology and Semiotics.doc

Semiotics/Semiology

The study of signs that help us to deconstruct Media Texts

Signifier/Denotation

The physical form of the sign, without deeper meaning

Signified/Connotation

Meaning associated with the relationship between signifier and signified. Connotation is open to interpretation

Mythical Connotation

Meaning which is subjective interpretation, yet untrue

Anchored...

Associated Resources

• Representation Theory Simplified Handout.doc

The media literally re-presents the world to us. Dominant and oppositional arguments conflict e.g. on one hand the media is showing us how things actually are, on the other hand they are telling us how things should be (dictating representations, not just reflecting society).

The main representations we study in the media are:

• Masculinity
• Femininity
• Social Class
• Sexuality
...

Outnumbered is a successful British Situation Comedy (Sitcom) named so simply because the two parental central protagonists, ‘Sue’ and ‘Pete’ are outnumbered by their three children. It is set in West London and although on the surface offers pluralistic representations in the guise of their unruly children who often intellectually challenge their parents it very much follows a standard genre template established by family based...

Gender is a sociological / cultural concept that arose out of the feminist movement and is concerned with ideas of both femininity and masculinity.

David Gauntlett in Media, Gender and Identity: An Introduction argues that:

‘Femininity is not typically a core value for women today. Instead, being ‘feminine’ is just one of the performances that women choose to employ in everyday life – perhaps for pleasure, or to achieve a particular...

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...

Source: TRAMA Textiles weaves lives back together, Columbia Missourian

This page, when completed, will provide you with advice on how to use theory in Media Studies.

It will include examples of how theory has been used effectively in students’ responses.

• texere to weave textum woven fabric

Manasa Vedula’s opening to the article referenced above begins:

COLUMBIA — Two vibrantly dressed, petite Guatemalan women are weaving away on their...

Background

David Buckingham studied 8-12 year olds undertaking this experiment.  He found that:

“genre was being used as an unspoken rationale for moving from one topic to the next. Thus, discussion of one comedy programme was more likely to be followed by discussion of another comedy programme, rather than of news or soap opera.” (Buckingham 1993: 139)

Genre is a French word that means type or kind. Genre is a way of classifying a media...

For A2 you will need to know these theories about Media Audiences.

Many theories try to make sense of the question: What effects do media texts have on audiences?

This question has interested people ever since the invention of the printing press, and it became possible to make hundreds of copies of a document, and a ‘message’ could reach a mass audience.

Researchers investigating the effect of media on audiences have considered the...

Click on the link below to download a revision guide you can print out.

Postmodern_Media.pdf

This model stems from the idea that audiences are a complex mixture of individuals who select media texts that best suits their needs – this goes back to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

The Uses and Gratifications Model suggests that media audiences are active and make active decisions about what they consume in relation to their social and cultural setting and their needs.

This was summed up by theorists Blumler and Katz in 1974:

‘Media...

Introduction

Extract from Daniel Chandler’s Guide to Semiotics for Beginners (undergraduates):

If you go into a bookshop and ask them where to find a book on semiotics you are likely to meet with a blank look.

Even worse, you might be asked to define what semiotics is - which would be a bit tricky if you were looking for a beginner’s guide.

It’s worse still if you do know a bit about semiotics, because it can be hard to offer a simple...

In theory, the proliferation of web 2.0 user- generated content and the appropriation of creative technologies by media audiences challenges the role of the media professional. In a very real sense it would seem that YouTube, Blogs and Myspace etc, not to mention the affordability of digital editing software and other home studio facilities, embody the collapse of the distinction between the real and the...

The music video is a classic example of a media industry that flourished on the back of technological advance.

The proliferation of home VCR and satellite technology created a fertile environment in which the new medium flourished, eating up the spare capacity in the schedules. Indeed, when MTV was launched in 1981 it only had access to...

Practical ways to study the concept of genre.

The new specifications for A-level (AQA) doesn’t require the study of genre explicitly at A/S Level.  However, at A2 the Specification suggests that candidates could consider Genre Theories as part of their understanding of why and how texts are created as they are.

For the research element of the MEST 4 study, it may well be that students wish to study a particular genre.

For example, a...

Theory | A Level Deconstruction Resources.zip

Theory | Connotation and Denotation.ppt

Theory | Intro to Psychoanalytic Film Theory.ppt

Theory | Marilyn Manson Star Theory.ppt

Theory | Representation Ugly Betty.doc

Theory | Signs and Signifiers.ppt

Theory | Star Theory.doc

KEY FIGURE 8: Stuart Ewen (1940 approx to present)

KEY IDEA: Style is political: visual signifiers encode systems of belief. While these visual codes are often long and complex histories their appropriation by consumer culture often dilutes their ideological potency. The ideological significance of the punk safety pin, example, is diminished when adopted by mass-produced clothing lines; what is left is in Ewen’s terms ‘cultural waste...

KEY FIGURE 6: Valentin Voloshinov (1895 to 1936)

KEY IDEA: Language is ideological: it reflects a dynamic system of beliefs or ideas; it is the key to what makes us human and the structure of the social networks we build. Volosinov views the meaning of words as arbitrary yet fluid: changing over time and according to context.

He coins the term ‘multi-accentuality’ to descibe this. Volosinov argues that it is in the interests of the ruling...

KEY FIGURE 7: Stuart Hall (1932 to present)

KEY IDEA: Proponent of audience reception theory, Hall looks at the way in which cultural interaction generates consent for hegemony (a term he borrows from Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci) – the dominant ideology of the ruling class. Hall views audiences as both the producers and consumers of texts: decoding the meaning encoded by the originator of the text. His approach to textual analysis is...

KEY FIGURE 5: Ferdinand de Saussure  (1857 to 1913)

KEY IDEA: Structuralist approach to semiology; Saussure argues that all signs are double entities made up of the signifier and the signified.

The signifier is the linguistic coding of a concrete object, abstract emotion or physical act.

The signified is that to which the signifier refers to.

The two things are inseparable; however, the relationship is arbitrary: meaning that there is no...

KEY FIGURE 4: Frederic Engels (1820 to 1895)

KEY IDEA: Influenced by Hegel and Heraclitus, Engels contribution to the Communist Manifesto is that of ‘Dialectic Materialism’. Change in the economic structure of society works through the dialectic principles of conflict between thesis and antithesis. In his logic the emergence of a synthesis of the two, i.e. a new economic thesis is characteristic of a new phase in history.

KEY TEXT: The...

KEY FIGURE 2: Pierre Bourdieu (1930 to 2002)

KEY IDEA: Social class is constructed by cultural taste; cultural taste is produced by education. Social class facilitates access to education and so cultural order replicates itself. In the process of education, the individual acquires cultural capital, which gives the individual the ability to identify culturally noble activity. Culture evolves through the nomination of new cultural activity as...

KEY FIGURE 3: Karl Marx (1818 to 1883)

KEY IDEA: The economy is at the base of society; everything else is determined by it. Under capitalism, the economy is exploitative: serving only the interests of the ruling class (the Bourgeoisie). This inequality will lead to revolution, which will be characterised by the workers (the proletariat) seizing control the means of production and the end of capitalist economic exchange.

KEY TEXT: The...

KEY FIGURE 1: Jean Baudrillard (1929 to present)

KEY IDEA: The proliferation of information technology alienates man from real lived social existence, forcing him to enter a new media induced reality known as hyper-reality: hyper-reality is characterised by the collapse of the distinction between the real and the simulated and the predominance of the simulacrum.

KEY TEXT: Symbolic Exchange and Death (1976; 1993 reprint; Sage Publications,...

Advertising

This dialogic approach to the production of media texts has also informed contemporary ideas about advertising. The traditional view of the adverts as a paid one-way communication, in which the sponsor controls the message, has been replaced by...

The theme of resistance is explored in the seminal work by Dick Hebdige ‘Subculture and the Meaning of Style’ (1979), which builds not only on the work of other cultural theorist from the Centre for Cultural Studies in Birmingham but also the work of French sociologist Jean Baudrillard, particularly The Consumer Society (1970).

Like Baudrillard,...

Media and Cultural Theory Guidebook by Stephen Hill and B. Fenner

Mediaed.org on Audience Theory

Popcultures on Theorists

Theory.org.uk David Gauntlett’s ingenious and imaginative approach to social theory and popular culture.

Theoryhead.com David Gauntlett’s guide to Media Studies

Wikipedia on Film Theory

Introduction

Extract from Daniel Chandler’s Guide to Semiotics for Beginners (undergraduates):

If you go into a bookshop and ask them where to find a book on semiotics you are likely to meet with a blank look.

Even worse, you might be asked to define what semiotics is - which would be a bit tricky if you were looking for a beginner’s guide.

It’s worse still if you do know a bit about semiotics, because it...