1. AS Media Studies Induction
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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2. AS Media Studies Induction
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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3. AS Media Studies Induction
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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4. AS Media Studies Induction
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.
Name
The last film you
watched
Your favourite
film
Websites that you
visit regularly
Magazines that
you read
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?
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5. AS Media Studies Induction
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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6. AS Media Studies Induction
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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7. AS Media Studies Induction
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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8. AS Media Studies Induction
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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9. AS Media Studies Induction
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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10. AS Media Studies Induction
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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11. AS Media Studies Induction
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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12. AS Media Studies Induction
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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13. AS Media Studies Induction
• 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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14. AS Media Studies Induction
• 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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15. AS Media Studies Induction
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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16. AS Media Studies Induction
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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