Archetype: an
often- repeated character type or representation which is instantly
recognisable to an audience
Attitudes, beliefs
and values: terms commonly used when
discussing the audience for media products and the factors influencing the
reception of media messages.
·
Attitudes are the positions people adopt in
relation to a particular issue, e.g.
Being for or against foxhunting.
·
Beliefs are deeply held views, e.g. A belief in the principle of human equality
or a belief in God.
·
Values represent the moral or ideological
structure within which beliefs and attitudes are formed, e.g. Belief in Christianity or Islam.
·
All these factors affect the reception of media
texts. Research also focuses on the ways
in which media content influences the formation, representation and
reproduction of attitudes, beliefs and values.
Audience: key
concept the groups or individuals targeted by producers as the
intended consumers of media texts. Owing
to the wide availability of media texts, the actual viewers, readers or
listeners may not be those originally targeted.
·
Audience studies are usually structured in terms
of gender, age and social and cultural background, and are concerned with the circumstances
in which media texts, are consumed and the nature and the consequences of this
consumption.
·
The identification of an audience is a vital
ingredient for the successful production and marketing of and media text.
·
Considerations of audience motivation and
behaviour are at key focus of attention in both active and passive audience theories.
Composition: the
arrangement fee of visual elements within the frame, for clarity, balance or
aesthetic judgement.
Connotation: a
meaning attributable to an image beyond the obvious denotational level.
·
Such meanings may be metaphorical, symbolic or
culturally generated and will vary line with the cultural background and attitudes, beliefs and values of the
individual viewing the material.
·
e.g. An
image of a red rose has connotations of New Labour, or England, or on a
Valentine card can represent hot-blooded passion.
Conventions: the expected ingredients
in a particular type of media text.
Convergence: the
coming together of new media Technologies.
·
e.g.
Television is now digital and interactive, with the potential for 1000
channels and with technology available to download and store programmes;
television can also be used for banking and shopping; Internet web cams allow
for visual interaction between users; music can be downloaded and burnt onto
CDs and mobile phones can take and send pictures and access the Internet.
Demographics:
information concerning the social status, class, gender and age of the
population.
·
Audience
profiles use demographic information, the best-known system being the ABC1
scale.
Gender:
psychological and cultural aspects of behaviour associated with masculinity and
femininity, acquired through social socialization, in accordance with the
expectations of a particular society.
·
Representations
of gender increasingly challenged traditional concepts of masculinity and
femininity.
·
Girl power, launched as a marketing device for
the Spice Girls in the early 1990s,
created new role models have a certain young women, rejecting the traditional
passive female role.
·
Traditional masculine trades of violent
aggression, sexual promiscuity and high levels of alcohol consumption are
increasingly represented without gender distinction, and female representations
in film made challenge or subverted traditional femininity and female roles
e.g.Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and Kill Bill Vol. 2 (Quentin Tarantino
2003, 2004) and Tomb Raider (Simon
West, 2001)
·
Masculinity is represented increasingly as soft
or ambivalent. Men can outcry, show
affection for babies and talk about their feelings openly, or characteristics
traditionally associated with femininity.
Males are also shown as uncertain about their gender identity, e.g. Fight
Club (David Fincher, 1999)
Gendered Consumption: the way that gender affects our consumption
of media texts.
·
Ann Gray suggested (1992) that women prefer
open-ended narratives, such as soap operas, whereas men preferred closed
narratives with a clear resolution, for example, police dramas. The concept of (women’s fiction) (Christine
Geraghty, 1991) involves identifying characteristics and media texts that
appeal to women.
·
e.g. Soap
operas attracting large female audiences have strong female leads, deal with
personal relationships in the domestic sphere and contain an element of
escapism.
Genre: key concept a category of
media products classed as being similar in form and type.
·
Film, magazine, newspaper and television are all
media genres. Types of film, magazine,
newspaper and television programme are also genres. Westerns and musicals are filmed genres,
lifestyle magazines are a magazine genre, tabloids and broadsheets a newspaper
genres, situation comedies, crime dramas and soap operas a television genres.
·
Genres operate alongside narrative constructions
in line with the audience expectations, for example, magazines of a particular
genre are expected to contain a specific kind of narrative discourse.
·
Genres can be further divided into subgenres.
Genre Theory: an
explanation of the role played by genre in differentiating media texts and
aligning audiences.
·
Genre theorists consider the relationship
between audiences, media texts and media producers and the ways in which
genres, particularly in film, can be used by producers to target specific
audience groups, with predictable expectations of audience numbers and
responses.
·
e.g. In
explaining their appeal to audiences, Richard Dyer (1973) argues that the genres
a pleasurable because they offer escapist fantasies into fictional worlds which
remove the boredom and pressures of reality.
He sees these worlds as utopian, offering the audience abundance,
energy, excitement, spontaneity and community-none of which are present in
their everyday lives.
Hybrid: a cross
between one film genre and another.
·
E.g. From
Dusk till Dawn (Robert Rodriguez, 1996) starts as a crime drama and becomes
a vampire movie.
Icon: a sign
resembling the thing in represents.
·
An icon can also be an image representative of
an ideology or religion. Icons were
originally religious paintings of Christ and the Virgin Mary and treated as
sacred objects.
·
E.g. A
photograph.
·
TIP
of a public figure who, having achieved the ultimate in a particular field, has
become the focus of mass adoration is also called on icon, e.g. Pop icons such as Kylie Minogue or Madonna.
Ideology: key
concept of a set of attitudes,
beliefs and values held in common by a group of people and culturally
reproduced within that community to sustain its particular way of life.
·
Ideologies can be described as dominant,
subservience, or opposition all depending on their status within a society.
·
E.g.
Capitalism, Communism, Christianity and Islam.
·
TIP Ideology
is present in all media texts. You can
explore it by assessing the attitudes, beliefs and values within the text and
the assumptions made about what the viewer or reader thinks and feels.
Incidental music: the use of music to
punctuate for a specific events or action, or to provide a sound background.
Independent: a media organisation or
activity that is not connected to a major company.
Institution: key
concept any of the organisations responsible for the production,
marketing, distribution or regulation of media texts.
·
Institutions are business and social structures
that produce media texts and regulates and structure media activities. If they are collectives within which
individuals are encouraged to work toward a common goal and to develop working
practices based on assumptions about the aims and ethos of the
institution. Institutions assumed shared
values of all employees and have a status and power relationships with other
institutions and the wider public.
·
E.g. BBC,
Sky, CNN, British Board of Film Classification.
Interactive: media texts which of
audiences the opportunity to choose, respond or shape the text in some way.
Intertextuality:
the practice of deliberately including references to one text in the narrative
of another, either as homage to the text referred to or as a device intended to
engage the interest of the audience by appealing to their prior knowledge and
experience of media texts.
·
Intertextuality can generate levels of meaning
for the viewer and anchors a current text within texts of similar or related
genre.
·
For example, Kill
Bill Vol. 1 (Quentin Tarantino, 2003) makes many references to Westerns,
gangster and Japanese Samurai films.
Key Concept: any
of the core concepts on which a media studies programme focuses, specifically audience, genre, ideology, institutions,
language, narrative and
representation.
·
These key concepts provide a systematic
structure for the study of the media and media products and provide terms of
reference in any media assignment or project.
Any analysis of the media topic should be related to the key concepts
where appropriate.
Language key concepts: the particular
codes used within different media to convey messages to audiences.
·
This includes the content, theme and purpose of
a print-based text, its layout and design, the use of written language and of
photography and illustration.
·
With the moving image, language involves
iconography, mise en scene, use of
lighting, colour, editing and montage techniques.
·
Visual language involves selection and
construction from paradigms to produce syntagm’s e.g. a poster, photograph or film.
Media access:
describes the degree of ease with which citizens can be seen and/or heard in
the media, respond to the media and be provided with a dialogue with
institutions, and the opportunities evident for people to produce media texts
themselves and for them to be distributed.
Media language:
an umbrella term that describes the ways in which audiences read media texts
through understanding formal and conventional structures (for example, the
grammar of film editing). Media literacy
describes our ability to read and write in this extended sense of language.
Media Studies 2.0:
a response to web 2.0, proposed by Gauntlet (2007) , in which the role of
online user-generated content and sharing is seen as fundamental to how we
understand media audiences.
Mediation: the
means by which, through the use of representation, a media organisation and its
employees stand between an event and the public’s perception of that event.
·
Mediation involves the process of constructing,
interpreting and editing material in accordance with the requirements of the
chosen medium of communication.
·
TIP
It is useful to remember the term indicates other media change events by
reporting and representing them.
Mode of Address: in narrative studies,
the way in which media texts talk to an audience.
·
In audiovisual texts, this can be in the form of
a voiceover where an unseen narrator
addresses the audience. The narrator
could be one of the texts characters and provide insight into what occurs on
screen us.
·
In film noir, the private detective’s voice
often provides a running commentary on the action, from his perspective.
·
TIP
fans of the cult movie Blade Runner
(Ridley Scott, 1982) dispute which of the two versions of the film, one with
lead character Deckard’s (Harrison Ford) off-screen narration and one without,
is the most successful.
MP 3: Computer Software package which
allows a user to convert a music CD track into a computer file and post it on
the Internet for downloading by others.
·
The implication of MP3 and other similar
software, for example, Windows Media Audio (WMA), is that music can be
downloaded free of charge.
·
Websites such as Napster were created solely for
the purpose of allowing free music downloads that came up against copyright
law. Legal action by music publishing
companies against Napster, which created the file sharing system in 1999,
forced the company to close in 2001. It re-launched in 2003 as a legal service
charging for music.
·
The development poses a problem for the artist
and the music industry as copyright law is being broken Anthony them makes any
money from the practice.
MTV (Music Television): worldwide music
television channel founded in the USA in 1981 and owned by Viacom.
·
MTV operates in 136 territories, reaching over
300 million households, and has various versions such as MTV Europe, MTV
Mandarin, MTV India, MTV Nordic and MTV Australia. The company claims that it is sensitive to worldwide
cultural and musical diversity. In spite
of this claim, critics argue that its prime concern is to deliver use the
audiences to advertisers and that it promotes essentially Western consumer
values.
Multi media: the text created in a
variety of media.
Narrative: key concept the storyline and structure of a media text.
·
Narratives all stories helped to shape and
explain all aspects of our lives from earliest infancy. They are part of the ways in which we make
sense of the world and provide reassurance in the face of the dangers and
contradictions of everyday experience.
·
Narratives are structured within genres, which provide frameworks of
expectation, predictability and outcome.
Niche Marketing:
the targeting of a small but significant group of consumers with a media
product directed specifically at their interests.
- E.g. Living France magazine is directed at people who have a specific interest in the French way of life, in holidaying in France and who may have a second home there.
Ofcom: the public
body responsible for regulating the television, radio and telecommunications
media in Britain.
- Ofcom replaced the Independent Television Commission, the Broadcasting Standards Council, the Radio Authority and the Radio Communications Agency under the terms of the 2003 Communications Act.
- Ofcom’s remit does not currently include the BBC.
- Complaints to Ofcom about media content tend to be about offence caused by language, sexual portrayal and violence, where the regulator is particularly concerned to monitor the 9.00 PM watershed, and also religious offence, accuracy and impartiality. The regulator publishers regular Ofcom Broadcast Bulletins with details of complaints, the responses of broadcasters and conclusions.
Parody: the
imitation of one media text by another for comic effect.
·
E.g. Blazing Saddles (Mel Brooks, 1974)
parodies all the iconographic, narrative and character features of the Western
genre; scary movie (Keenan Ivory Wayans, 2000) parodies the horror genre.
Pleasure: a
motivating factor in the consumption of media texts.
- Pleasure has often been ignored by researchers seeking to explain the motivation of audiences that is reflected in the uses and gratification theory and is an increasing feature of the appeal media products have in a hedonistic, self-gratifying and consumption-orientated Pop Culture: text which are consumed by a wide range of people, as opposed to a smaller group that is seen as an elite; they tend to be described as ‘popular’ and this implies a lesser cultural status or value.
Pop Music:
technically, any music that reflects popular culture but usually applied to the
development of rock and roll from the 1950s to its present widely diverse
variations.
Primary Research:
research undertaken through direct interview with a source or by direct access
to original, unmediated documents or images.
Reception Theory:
an active audience theory which sees the audience as being actively engaged in
the interpretation of media texts rather than as passive consumers.
- Audiences decodes media texts in ways that relate to the social and cultural circumstances and individual experience. Reception theory uses qualitative and ethnographic methods such as group interviews and participant observation.
- In Morley’s 1980 Nationwide study (Nationwide was an evening news programme) he found that an audience’s response to media texts was influenced by family, class and educational factors. He showed the different groups interpreted the same texts in different ways depending on their background and level of involvement with the subject matter. For example, a group of management trainees saw the programmes items on trade unions as being biased towards the unions, whereas a group of workers saw the same items as being anti-union.
- Morley’s approach is important because it combines semiological and sociological approaches. Semiological study involves the idea of directed preferred readings of media texts, while sociological study is concerned with how age, sex, race, class, gender, sexuality and disability may determine the reading of a text.
- The approach is also known as audience studies or new audience research and in the 1990s was associated with the work of David Buckingham. His research concludes that even by the age of seven children have become skilled readers of media texts and a able to interpret, challenge and reject media messages, including advertising.
- TIP this research can be used to challenge effects theory models which argued
that audiences, particularly children, are affected negatively by media
content.
Representation: key concept of the process whereby
the media construct versions of people, places and events in images, words or
sound for transmission through media texts to an audience.
- Representations provide models of how we see gender, social groups, individuals and aspects of the world we all inhabit. They are ideological in that they are constructed within a framework of values and beliefs. Representations are therefore mediated for and reflect the value systems of their sources. No representation is ever real, only a version of the real.
- The representations are part of cultural mythology and reflect deep-seated values and beliefs e.g. Of such places as the north of England, Scotland and America.
- TIP representation is the key to many media debates and
is usually described as being positive or negative, depending on the view
of the group being represented.
Achieving positive representations (versions of themselves that
they agree with and approve of) has been a goal of minority groups who
have criticised the perceived negativity of media stereotypes, e.g. homosexuals, ethnic minorities,
religious minorities, disability groups and women.
Scheduling: the
strategic positioning of media texts within broadcasting time. Digital television is increasingly disrupting
this approach, since viewers can choose more easily than before when to
watch.
Stereotype: the
social classification of a group of people by identifying common
characteristics and universally applying them in an often oversimplified and
generalised way, such that the classification represents value judgements and
assumptions about the group concerned.
- E.g. The ‘dumb’ blonde, the ‘mean’ Scotsman.
Target Audience:
the intended audience for a media product.
- When producing a media text for mass consumption, identification of the target audience is essential so the media institutions can assess the likely response to the product and the investment risks involved.
- The BlockBuster movie titanic (James Cameron, 1997) was carefully crafted to appeal to a range of audiences, with its generic mixture of disaster movie, historical reconstruction, action movie and romance. To this was added a hit single theme song by Celine Dion. In spite of costing $200 million to produce, it grossed$1 billion at the box office, a record at the time.
- TIP the target audience is not always the actual
audience for a text, e.g. children under the age of 15 watching a 15 or 18
rated film when their parents are at.
Terrestrial:
analogue broadcasts from land-based transmitters as opposed to cable or
satellite digital transmissions.
Upload: for
transferring information or material from a computer to an online network.
Vertical Integration:
the merger or takeover of companies operating at different stages of the
production/distribution process.
- Total vertical integration gives a company control of a product from raw materials to distribution.
- E.g. In media Industries, the takeover by newspaper owner of the distribution service and retail outlets such as newsagents would be vertical integration.
