Section B questions and theories for revision

1. PossibleSection B questions:
 Linking between platforms – audiences and intertextuality, promotion,
revenue generation including relationships with advertising.
 Advantages and disadvantages of each media platform, techniques
used to attract and maintain audiences.
 The impact of synergy across platforms.
 DifferentNarrative and Genre functions across platforms.
 The role of the audience in creating and shaping media output across
platforms (representation of audience and institution – ownership and
control).
 How audiences use and respond to media products from different
media platforms.
 How institutions respond to change e.g. new digital technologyacross
platforms.
 How audiences respond to changes in digital technologye.g.
interactivity.
 Institutions and Platforms – equal/unequal presence and why media
products have more of a presence onsome platforms than others.
 Issues of regulation across platforms.
Theories:
Media Forms incl. Genre and Narrative
 Roland Barthes – sign and signifierbut also 5 narrative codes
(Hermeneutic, Proairetic, Semantic, Symbolic,Referential).
 StuartHall – encoding/decoding theory, audience positioning
 Todorov – four act narrative structure (Equilibrium, Disruption,
Resolution, New Equilibrium)
 Levi Strauss– binary oppositions
 Propp – 8 character roles (limited application, only mainstream texts)
 Steve Neale – genre is about repetition and difference
 DanielChandler– genre is too restricting, pro hybridization
 Goodwin - 6 key features of music videos
Audiences

2.  Blumler and Katz – Uses and Gratifications theory (Surveillance,
Diversion, Personal Identity, Personal Relationships)
 Katz and Lazarsfeld – Two Step Flow (opinion leaders taking
messageson)
 Jeremy Tunstall – Primary, Secondaryand Tertiary audiences
 Adorno/Frankfurt School– audiences are passive (negatively
affected without challenging media output)
 StuartHall – audiences are positioned into decoding a dominant,
negotiated or oppositionalreading
Representation
 Andy Medhurst– stereotyping is shorthand for identification
 TessaPerkins – elements of truth in stereotyping
 Laura Mulvey – male gaze (can map onto the female gaze)
 Richard Dyer – stereotyping is in the interest of powerfulgroups
 Levi-Strauss– dominant v subordinate representations
Institution and Cross Media Study
 Jason Mittel– industry uses genre commercially
 Nick Lacey – on synergy
 StuartPrice – on global media and ownership
 David Gauntlett– the Prosumer
 MichaelWesch – YouTube as cultural phenomenon
 Dan Gilmour – the future is citizen journalism
 ProfessorJulian Petley – censorship and social class