Chapter 1 : Why Study the Media? Chapter 3 : A Basis for Media Studies: Key Words Chapter 4 : Institutions as Source

1. Media Studies
More Than Meets the Eye
Chapter 1 : Why Study the Media?
You should have learned the following things from this chapter on
reasons for studying the media.
These reasons include:
1. personal interest
2. beliefs in the power and influence of the media
3. the scale on which they operate combined with the
access they have to many people
4. *the great economic power of the media
5. they are our main source of information and
entertainment
6. they construct many messages, which may influence our
views of the world
Q1 : Institutions and Influence
1. Is it the size and wealth of a given media company that
matters, in terms of its potential influence?
2. Or is it the nature of the material put out by that company that
matters more?
Q2 : Media Study and Media Effects
1. Should one study the media because of a belief in media
effects?
2. Or is it valid to study media material and media audiences
even if there isn't much evidence of influence?
Chapter 3 : A Basis for Media Studies:Key Words
You should haw learned the following things in this chapter, as a
basis for Media Studies.
1 PROCESS
• All communication is a process. The media are no exception to
this.
• There are key factors in the process of communication through
the media which one may look at; these are source, need,
encoding, message content and treatment, decoding, context and
feedback.
• Process also involves looking at how meanings are created and
taking account of the social/cultural context in which media
communication takes place.
2 INSTITUTION
 These are organizations that have different kinds of power in
society.
 Media institutions include advertising agencies, news gatherers
and those organizations that manufacture media material.
3 TEXT
• All media material, visual or otherwise, may be seen as a text to be
read. This reading may involve a variety of approaches to get at the
meanings in a text, including structural analysis.
• There are open and closed texts, readerly and producerly texts.
4 STRUCTURALISM
• All media texts have some organizing principles or structures within
them. Two useful examples of these are binary oppositions and
narrative structures. These help organize and produce meanings
from texts.
5 CULTURE

2. • Texts and their meanings are very much governed by the values of
their given culture.
6 REPRESENTATIONS
• This refers to ways in which the media construct views of the world,
and of social groups in particular. These views may be inaccurate,
but we are often persuaded that they are 'naturally' true.
7 MEANINGS
• Meanings are in messages, which may be overt or covert.
• Meanings and messages are often about values.
• The meanings we get from texts may be put there by the
producers, but are also made from the text by the audience.
8 IDEOLOGY
• This is about a particular view of the world based on certain value
judgements. Ideologies are powerful in their influence over people's
thoughts. Ideologies provide meanings about who is and who is not
powerful. Ideologies work in the interests of the powerful.
9 SIGNS: SEMIOTICS
• 9.1 The meanings in media communication are signalled to us
through a variety of signs. We need to identify these in order to get at
the meanings. Signification is the process through which we
recognize many meanings that are signified. Meanings work on the
levels of denotation and connotation; what is obviously meant and
what is more obscure.
• 9,2 These signs are organized into codes covering words and
pictures. How they are organized, put together and understood
depends on rules or conventions that we also need to recognize.
• 9.3 There are codes within the general codes of speaking, writing
and pictures.These special codes are called secondary codes. They
have their own rules. They help organize categories or media
material - such as genre, and treatment of media material - for
example, in terms of realism.
10 AUDIENCE
• This refers to the readers and viewers of media product. There are
problems with the term because audiences can have so many
different characteristics that their members have nothing in common
except the text they are reading or viewing,
• There are big questions about how audiences understand or read
texts.
11 MASS MEDIA AND SOCIETY
• There are a number of general theories about how the media do or
should operate in relation to the society of which they are a part.
These may be summarized as follows: the Authoritarian Theory, the
Free Press Theory, the Social Responsibility Theory, the
Developmental Media Theory, the Democratic Participant Theory.
These theories should be cross-referred to ideas about media
functions.
• Some important critical views of the relationship between media
and society are defined as follows: Marxist the Political Economy
model, Pluralist, Feminist, Postmodernist.
Q1 : Media and Audience
1. In what ways do the media give us 'a picture of the world'?
2. In what ways may we, the audience, create our own picture
from what the media put out?
Q2 : Culture and Media
1. Do the media reflect a culture that is 'out there' in society?

3. 2. Or do the media create new kinds of culture?
Q 3 : Text and Meanings
1. Does a story have as many meanings as it has readers?
2. Does it have only one true meaning, which is what the writer
intended?
Q4 : Media and Society
1. Should the media be free to provide whatever people want?
2. Should the media be regulated by the government, which
represents the people?
Chapter 4 : Institutions as Source
You should have learned the following things about the media as a
source of communication and as institutions, through this chapter.
1 DOMINANT CHARACTERISTICS
• The media are mainly characterized by the following aspects:
monopoly, size, vertical integration, conglomeration,
diversification, as multinationals, control and domination of
production/finance/product/distribution, particular values.
2 SOURCES OF FINANCE/COSTS
• The media have access to enormous sums of money through their
means of finance. These means are dominated by selling advertising
space, by the sales of their main product and through the sales of
associated products.
3 ASPECTS OF PRODUCTION
• There are distinctive patterns to the way in which media material is
produced. These may be summarized in terms of routines,

4. deadlines, slots, specialized production roles, use of new technology
and heavy marketing of the product.
4 CONSEQUENCES
• There are major consequences to the way that media institutions
are set up, run and financed. These may be summarized in terms of
mass product, targeted product, repetition of product, elimination of
unprofitable audiences, exclusion of competition, polarization of
audiences and reduction of choice for the consumer. However, there
are some alternatives to the dominant patterns of ownership and
distribution.
5 MEDIA POWER
• The points already made lead us to conclude that the media have a
great deal of power over what we read and see. The nature of this
power may be discussed in terms of ownership, monopoly, levers of
power, power over product and ideology, the power of
professionalism, cultural imperialism.
6 MEDIATION
• The media inevitably change the material they draw on and shape it
in certain ways. They construct this material and the meanings in it.
They offer us representations, but not real life or real events.
9 MEDIA AND GOVERNMENT
• There is a power relationship between media and government. The
government exerts power over the media in various direct and
indirect ways. The media need the government as a source of
information, the government needs the media as a means of
communication.
10 PROPAGANDA
• This implies total control and deliberate use of media towards some
end, which does not happen in this country.
• Some talk of the influence of government and advertising on the
media, as being something like propaganda.
• There has been propaganda in times of war; this may be discussed
in relation to government management of news.
11 FUNCTIONS OF THE MEDIA
• These may be summarized in terms of entertainment,
information/culture, social and political functions.
12 MEDIA AND NEW TECHNOLOGY
• The arrival of new technology, symbolized by computing power,
has changed institutions, production, distribution, product.
• The convergence factor, based on a common digital language, is
bringing media and institutions together.
• Access to this new technology raises problems of media access
and of pirated products.
13 GLOBALIZATION
• Refers to the way in which media ownership and media operations
now work across the globe. This brings wider cultural influence:
cultural imperialism. It changes the way in which we understand the
world/Using new technology 'shrinks the planet' by making more
material more quickly available from ever greater distances.
Q1 : Media Ownership
1. Is the apparent concentration of media ownership something
to be criticized because it gives too much power to the media?
2. Is this concentration to be approved because it helps British
media to be strong enough to compete in a global market-
place?

5. Q2 : Advertising and Media Finance
1. Is it a good thing that advertising helps subsidize the cost of
media to the audience?
2. Is it a bad thing that most examples of media depend on
advertising and sponsorship for their survival?
Q3 : Institutions and Control of Product
1. Do the public get only the media product that institutions
decide will sell?
2. Do the public as purchasers decide which products it is worth
the institutions making?
Q4 : Institutions Shaping Culture
1. Is media power used to bring us global culture (Coca-Cola and
Levi's)?
2. Do the media use their power to support minority culture such
as community radio and local newspapers?
Q5 : Institutions and their Regulation
1. Is regulation of the media so tight that it interferes with
freedomof speech and the public's 'right to know'?
2. Are the media so loosely regulated that they 'get away with too
much'?
Q6 : Media and Government
1. Do you see the government as representatives of the people
with a right to 'talk' to the people through media?
2. Do you see the government as interfering with free speech in
the media and using media for its own ends?