2. All media products communicate ideas and values to the
audience. Simply these are the attitudes and beliefs embodied
within a media product. Some of these values ma be explicit and
easy to identify.
For Example the headline ‘EU Plot to axe British Number plates’
in the Daily Express leaves no doubt as to the ideological values
regarding Europe held by the newspaper. The choice of the word
‘plot’ has associations of certain behaviours and ‘axe’ comes
across more violent. The combination of these language choices
creates a representation of the EU as sneaky and dangerous
organisation reinforcing the papers explicit ideological position
that the UK should leave the European union.
Text’s ideological values can be discussed by analysing the media
language choices and considering the type of representation
being created.
Ideology and Values
Information source – Media Magazine, September 2014
3. Until recently the genre of a text was an important
factor in its meaning. Media products were grouped
according to categories – the Western movie, the film
noir, the nom- com, for example and could be
identified by their use of recurrent and familiar codes
and conventions. Genres helped audiences select (or
reject) media products, and institutions found them
useful in a number of ways, not least in the marketing
of a product. In the contemporary era, genres are
increasingly less concrete and predictable; across all
platforms, old generic conventions are giving way to
blurring of genre differences, therefore subverting
audience expectation. Nevertheless, genre can still be
useful starting point for analysis.
Genre
Information source – Media Magazine, September 2014
4. Narrative is the term used to describe the way media
product structures and tell its story. The events of a
story are plot; and the narrative is the structure of the
story and the techniques used to tell it. Link other
media concepts, narrative is an outcome of media
language choices, and representations are used to
create characters that have specific roles within the
telling of the story. All narratives rely on conflict in
some way, and so narratives take ideological positions
in their use of certain roles and in their resolution
.However, there are many ways conventional narrative
can be subverted and character creates particular
experiences for audiences
Narrative
Information source – Media Magazine, September 2014
5. Media language refers to the choices made by a media
producer when constructing a media product. The
‘language’ will depend on the type of media product.
The producers will have deliberately chosen the media
language they use, however these producers do not
always have a totally free choice; they maybe
influenced by the target audience they are trying to
appeal to, or by the institution or organisational
interest behind the construction. Some genres depend
on the familiarity or repetition of specific media
language choices, the ability to analyse the reason that
a choice has been made, its potential impact on
audiences. This is basis of good analysis
Media language
