as media induction booklet

AS Media Studies Induction

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AS MEDIA STUDIES Morecambe Community High School

Introduction to key concepts in Media Studies

This booklet will provide you with the key approaches required to successfully deconstruct media texts. You should file this document in your Media Studies folder. Additional material will be provided on the media blog: www.mchsfilmandmedia.blogspot.com


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Welcome to AS Media Studies This booklet will take you through al of the basics involved in studying the media. For some of you who will have studied GCSE Media Studies, there will be some familiar terms and ideas as well as some new ones so some of this work may be revision for you. For those who are new to the subject, this will provide a necessary introduction for the course. It is worth reminding you all that this is AS level and as such it will be a challenging course with higher demands than that of GCSE level. The formal examination at the end of the year will be 2 hours 30 minutes in duration and will test you on what you have learned over the year. This will mean that your work should remain well organised and be revised regularly throughout the year at home as well as in class. The coursework element of the course is also a demanding element with a requirement for you to work on projects in your own time as well as in class. Of course the Media teachers will be on hand to help and guide you through all of this but you must be able to work independently as well,

The Modules MS1: Media Representations and Responses This module will encompass a broad study of media texts in the form of print, moving image and new media. The focus will be on how audiences read and interpret such texts as well as who or what is being represented and why. Assessment: formal examination June 2010, 2hrs 30m. You will answer a series of questions based on a previously unseen text. This may be print or moving image. Weighting: 50% of AS mark (25% of A level) MS2: Production Processes You will submit two pieces of work from a set of prescribed briefs. These may be print, new media or moving image. These will be accompanied by a reflective evaluation (750 words). Assessment: Coursework marked internally. A selection will be sent to be assessed by the exam board. Weighting: 50% of AS mark (25% of A level)


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Overview of the year

Term / dates Content Autumn 1

• Introduction to key concepts

• MS1 Case Study: Representation of Gender in Lifestyle Magazines

• MS1 Case Study: Advertising

• MS2 Coursework (pre-production): Marketing for a new film (Thriller)

Half Term

Autumn 2

• MS2 Coursework (pre-production): Marketing for a new film (Thriller)

• MS1 Case Study: Sit-coms

• MS1 Case Study: Women and Ethnicity in Film

Christmas Holidays Spring 1

• MS1 revision/mock exam

• MS1 Case Study: Video Games

• MS1 Case Study: Youth Representation Half Term

Spring 2

• MS1 Case Study: TV News

• MS2 Coursework (production): Opening sequence for a new Thriller (group work)

Easter Holidays Summer 1

• MS2 Coursework (production): Opening sequence for a new Thriller (group work)

• MS1 Revision of case studies Half Term

Summer 2

• MS1 exam

• Bridging work for A2 Media Studies


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Keeping up to date with the world of the Media is a difficult job, But you should at least try! Reading a quality newspaper at least once a week is a good way to start. Magazines and journals also help, as well as an awareness of what is happening in the new media. As a way of measuring how much you are already doing, fill out this box.

Filling out this box indicates that we are all media consumers. We all consume media texts and products, sometimes against our own free will.

• Make a list of as many different forms of media as you can. Try to put them into categories.

• From the list or categories, is it possible to identify which are more attractive to certain age groups? Is there a dominant age group?

Name

The last film you watched

Your favourite film

Websites that you visit regularly

Magazines that you read


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Audience Profiling Media producer are of course aware that there is a need or desire to consume media products. As a media producer, to understand the consumer is to understand what they need or desire. Then, a product can be ‘tailor made’ to suite that consumer. This process is call demographic profiling

• Imagine that you are producing a new multi-media device to

rival the i-Pad. What would you need to know about a potential consumer before marketing this product? Make a list using the marketing picture for i-Pad to help you.


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A demographic profile then can be broken down into the following areas:

• Age

• Sex

• Race/ethnicity

• Geographic location

• Occupation

• Social class

• Look at the list. Do any stand out as more important than others?

Some of these elements dictate disposable income. This is how much money someone has left over after basic living expenses have been paid off. This may then be spent on consumables / products if media producers can persuade them!

• Compile a demographic profile of yourself. What products would be suitable for you? Can you think of any examples of such products and how they target you?

The JICNAR Scale (Joint Industry Committee for National Readership Surveys)

Media producers use this scale in order to help identify and target a specific demographic. The are six elements to the scale and are identified as follows:

Group A (Professionals) Upper middle class, e.g. Barristers Group B (Managerial) Middle class, e.g. Bank Managers Group C1 (Non-Manual) Lower middle class, white collar workers, e.g. Office Workers Group C2 (Manual) Skilled working class, Blue collar workers, e.g. Car Mechanic Group D (Partly Skilled) Semi or unskilled manual workers, e.g. Assembly line worker Group E (Unskilled) Casual workers or dependent on state benefits

• What are the advantages of compiling a demographic profile in this way? Are there any disadvantages?


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Psychographic Profiling Often, measuring the disposable income of a consumer is not enough to tell us what a person really wants in a media product. More information is needed, for example what a consumer desires or aspires to be. A product can then be made to offer a chance to realise these dreams. So, a psychographic profile tells us the dreams, hopes desires and aspirations of a particular demographic. Obviously when we build a profile in this way we do often refer to stereotypes, but the producers of media - those who make television programmes, print newspapers, publish magazines etc, all have a clear sense of the audience at which they are aiming. You would be considered part of the youth audience. Here’s a list of media texts. Try to predict what other tastes the consumers of these media texts might have. Consider their possible tastes in food, drink, mode of transport etc.

Media texts Other Tastes Nuts Magazine

Facebook

Coronation Street

Guardian Newspaper

Sun Newspaper

• Analyse an advert o Identify a target demographic o identify the psychographic profile of the

target demographic


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Textual Analysis: Reading a Media Text A large part of your assessment on your AS Media course will be measured through your understanding of interpreting meaning from a media text. Specifically, are two key areas: audience and representation. We have already discussed some of the ways we can analyse a target audience using demographic and psychographic profiling. We will now move on to how to reading a media text using the correct terminology. Firstly, all media texts will have a different meaning to different audiences. Who we are as a demographic, where we live and what experiences we have had all potentially have an effect on how we interpret what we see. For example, a news report on a terrorist attack in a Middle Eastern country may sadly sound all too familiar if you watch the news regularly. The event happened thousands of miles away and casualties are reported as cold statistics with little ‘human’ connection. But what if the country and city were specified? What if you had family or friends over there? What if children were involved? What if graphic images of the aftermath were broadcast? Would the word ‘terrorist’ be enough or us as British citizens to create an emotional impact? Any number of these details of course could feature in a contemporary news report but our reaction may be different from others depending on profile and experience. Images themselves can also be open to interpretation, and in turn media produces can manipulate us. Cropping Cropping an image is the process of taking an element out to help us focus on something specific within an image. This can be used to manipulate the reading of a text.

• Looking through the images on the PowerPoint presentation, how has the meaning of each been changed? Which do you think have the most dramatic change? What does this tell us about audiences being manipulated?


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Anchorage Drawing attention to a particular element of an image is called anchorage. This can be achieved by simply cropping an image but the most common form of anchorage in the mainstream media comes by adding text to make clear or anchor a particular reading or interpretation.

• Look at the front covers of The Sun newspaper. Consider the text and the image of each lead story. What is our attention drawn to and how is this achieved?


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Denotation/connotation As you may have gathered by looking at the cropped pictures, certain images have a particular significance to an audience. There are two key terms to remember when analysing media texts:

1. DENOTATION (or signifier). This is exactly what we see, for example a green light.

2. CONNOTATION (or signified). This is our reading or interpretation of the signifier, for example a green light may signify GO!

• Complete the following table. Think carefully about what each signifier may signify.

Signifier Signified

A blue flashing light

A white swan

The colour red

A pair of handcuffs

A red rose

David Beckham

A crown

Images such as these can be used in media texts to help create meaning for an audience. Signifiers with more than one connotation are referred to as polysemic.


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Audience Theories

Uses and Gratification Model is concerned with what people do with the media. (Active Audience) Blumer, McQuail and Brown identified four major types:

Reinforce personal identity by comparing our own roles with similar roles in the media. Need for companionship and interaction The need to be informed. The need for entertainment and diversion. - Watch a film trailer. Apply the Uses and Gratifications model using the four uses identified in the theory as sub-headings.

Encoding/Decoding Model put forward by Stuart Hall and David Morley centred on the idea that audiences vary in their response to media messages because of their social position, gender, age, ethnicity, occupation, experience and beliefs.

Hall and Morley argue that media texts are encoded in such a way as to present a preferred reading to the audience but the audience does not necessarily accept that preferred reading. Hall categorised three kinds of audience response. Dominant – the audience agree with the dominant values. Negotiated – the audience generally agree with the dominant values expressed within the preferred reading but they may disagree with certain aspects according to their social background. Oppositional – the audience disagree with dominant values expressed within the preferred reading of the text. -Watch the second film trailer and apply the Encoding/Decoding theory identifying dominant, negotiated and oppositional readings.

Hypodermic Syringe model – this theory asserts that the media are powerful agents of influence, capable of ‘injecting’ ideas and behaviours directly into relatively passive audiences of isolated individuals. Children and teenagers are consistently been considered susceptible to the harmful influence of popular entertainment. From time to time moral panics have been generated, often orchestrated by the media, especially the tabloids. The heightened social concerns associated with moral panics usually stimulate more stringent controls over the media to protect the ‘innocent’. Concern over young people’s access to violent videos became an issue in the 1980s. The 1983 Video Recordings Act was passed. This introduced strict regulation of videos via the British Broad of Film Classification. However, concerns rose again in the early 1990s. A number of highly publicised crimes of aggression in which a violent film was implicated (most notably the linking of the James Bulger murder with a video, Child’s Play) resulted in further restrictions being enacted in 1994.


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Representation Representation is about:

• How social groups, different subcultures, occupations, ages, social classes, races and places are portrayed in the media.

• How audiences interpret these portrayals. You will examine a range of representations of:

• Gender

• Ethnicity

• Age

• Issues

• Events

• Regional & National Identities representations.

It is possible to see representation as divided into three levels.

• At the most general level we can talk about something called type. We recognise a category of character in a story, such as shopkeeper type. But for some reason this character does not emerge as a stereotype. It may be that, that particular character lacks a clear set of characteristics reinforced by years of repetition.

• A stereotype is a simplified representation of human appearance, character and beliefs. A stereotype becomes established through years or representation in the media. Countries and even whole continents are often represented in the media in a stereotypical way. Consider, for example, the most common media representations of Africa, which is often presented through images of starvation and war.

• The most intense examples of types are also deeply embedded in our culture. The term archetype is defined as an ‘original model’ or a ‘mental image inherited by all; a recurrent symbol or motif’. We can take it to mean characters – heroes, heroines and villains – that stand for the deepest beliefs, values and perhaps prejudices of a culture.

Essentially the discussion of representation enables the audience to ask questions about how certain media texts present the world as we know it back to us. Studying representation reminds us of how we are given information and ideas about the world. It is a ‘political’ term that enables us to study the ways in which certain ideas and values are either restricted or opened up for wider interpretation.


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• Let’s look at an example: youth culture

1. List as many youth ‘types’ as you can. Next to each, make a note of some of their attributes. Consider appearance and behaviour. What elements of that type help you identify them as such?

2. Choose one group from your list that you think has been

stereotyped. Can you identify how repetition in the media has reinforced this stereotype? Try to give some examples of such stereotypes in the media.

3. Is it possible to identify an archetype for any of the

groups in your list? 4. Overall, what are your own views on how young people

are represented in the media?

Ideology Ideology simply means ideas, values and beliefs in a society. These are often taken for granted and seen as ‘commonsense’. However, ideas, values and beliefs are not static; they evolve and develop over time. Dominant Ideology Although societies are made up of people with different ideas and values, there is always a dominant ideology. Dominant ideology then means the ideas and values of those in power. In terms of the media, some would argue that media producers have the power to exert their ideologies over the mass public. Others suggest that the media ‘reflects’ and shares the ideologies of the public at large. In truth, both of these arguments are valid.

• Who do you think holds power in the media? Think of some examples of media texts that you think are capable of swaying public opinion to meet their own ideological beliefs.

It could be argued that ‘hegemonic power’ (the shared view of everybody) is exerted by the Hollywood studios through their overseas trade organisation, the MPAA (Motion Pictures Association of America). The studios ‘occupy’ most countries by owning cinemas and distributors, usually in partnership with local companies. This can ensure that their films get shown. The studio also ‘persuades’ us that their films are the best and that we have a right to see them. Nobody forces audiences to watch American films, but in reality they have little choice since Hollywood dominates the film industry.


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• Watch extracts from a Hollywood studio film. What conclusions can we draw regarding the ideologies of the producers? Try to identify dominant ideologies.

• Watch extracts from a second film. In what ways does this challenge dominant ideologies?

Genre Genre is the classification of any media texts into types or categories. Each genre can be identified by a range of elements that allow us both to recognise that particular genre and to expect certain things to occur within it. These elements are commonly known as conventions. If we say that we like westerns or sit-coms people will share these expectations and instantly recognise what we mean when we say we like them.

• Write down as many genres in films and TV programmes as you can think of. Do they all fit conveniently into a genre or can you say that there is a mixture of genres taking place?

Look at your list of genres.

• How did you recognise them?

Conventions Conventions are really ideas that we all share about particular genres. We would be unlikely to see all of the conventions in any one film, TV programme or magazine. But we would expect to find a few of them and would be disappointed if they were not there. You could say that part of our pleasure in a media text comes from knowing what might happen next whilst still having the possibility that our expectations may be wrong. What are the conventions of the following genres?

Media Text Characters Settings Props Plots Science Fiction

Horror

Western


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Genres are not restricted to one medium. They can exist across a range of different media, from print to new media.

• Analyse a trailer from a video game, a film and a TV programme from the horror genre. What conventions were consistent?

Narrative Narrative is a term used to describe the devices and conventions used to organise a story into sequence. There are different types of narrative structures.

• Linear Narrative = A plot that moves forward in a straight line without flashbacks or digressions. E.G

• Parallel Action = A narrative device in which two scenes are observed at once. E.G

• Anti-Narrative = Describes a text which seeks deliberately to disrupt narrative flow in order to achieve a particular effect, such as the repetition of images or the disruption of a chronological sequence of events. E.G

• Watch three film extracts. Using sub-headings, identify how each film uses one of the above techniques.

• Why do you think complex methods of storytelling are becoming more commonplace in films?

Tzvetan Todorov suggested that most narratives start with a state of equilibrium in which life is ‘normal’ and protagonists happy. This state of normality is disrupted by an outside force, which has been fought against in order to return to a state of equilibrium.

EQUILIBRIUM DISRUPTION EQUILIBRIUM

Established state An event disrupts A return to equilibrium Of affairs the order although this is not the same as at the start

Apply Todorov’s narrative structure to a film of you choice.


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Quiz

1. What is a demographic profile?

2. What is a psychographic profile?

3. What does the JICNAR scale measure and why?

4. What is ‘cropping’ and why might it be used?

5. What does Anchorage mean?

6. What is the difference between denotation and connotation? Provide an example for each.

7. What does ‘polysemic’ mean?

8. What are the four ‘needs’ identified by the Uses and Gratifications

Model?

9. What does the Encoding/Decoding model set out to identify in media audiences?

10. What does the ‘hypodermic syringe’ model suggest about media

audiences?

11. Define the term ‘stereotype’.

12. What is an ‘archetype’?

13. What does ideology mean?

14. What is a ‘dominant ideology’? Provide an example.

15. What does the term ‘genre’ mean?

16. Provide three variations of narrative. Give a definition for each.

17. Explain Todorov’s theory of narrative.

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