This document outlines key concepts from a media studies lesson, including media language, audience, institutions, and representation. It provides examples of each concept and asks questions to help understand how each can be applied. Students are asked to consider how these concepts explain relationships between media and audiences and to analyze various media texts using the concepts. As homework, students must create a timeline of their media use over a day to understand their own interactions with media.

1. Lesson Two
Thursday 8th
September
The Key Concepts

2. • Doctor Who 2005 trailer
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hQyujVvRcY

4. Connect the Learning
• 10 million people watched the first episode of
“new” Doctor Who in 2005
• How did the trailer/ billboard persuade
people to watch it?

5. Learning Intentions/ Progress Criteria
• Learning intentions
– To outline key concepts of media studies
– To understand how these can be applied to all media
products
• Progress criteria
• We will
– Know what the four key concepts are
– Understand how each of them can be used to explain
why media products are the way that they are

6. Key Concepts
• Foundation for Media Studies
• Used throughout course
• Essential to understand what they are and
how to use them to analyse media texts/
products
• Help explain relationships between media
and audience

7. Media Language
• How media producers communicate with
audience
• Words, visual images and sounds used to
create meaning in media products
• What you see/ hear

8. • Title sequence – Justified (2011-2015)
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR_2WcMjO6w

9. Media Language
• What techniques used to communicate with
audience?
– Audio
• Music/ Effects/ Dialogue
– Video
• Text/ Image/ Composition
• What did you see/ hear?
• How was meaning
created?
• Why was it like that?

10. Audience
• People who experience
a product
– Mass (large) or niche
(small but important)
– Actual audience may differ
from target audience
• Minecraft
• My Little Pony “bronies”

11. Mass or Niche?

12. Mass or Niche?

13. Mass or Niche?

14. Mass or Niche?

15. Mass or Niche?

16. Mass or Niche?

17. Audience?
• How do you know?

18. Institutions
• Companies/ businesses that produce media or
make/ enforce regulations
– E.g. BBC, News International (The Sun, Fox, Sky,
MySpace, The Times) - producers
– OFCOM, IPSO, BBC Trust, ASA – regulators
• What is the difference?

19. What do they make?

20. What do they make?

23. What do they regulate?

24. Representation
• How people or places portrayed
– Way in which media constructs its own version of
reality
– Way in which people, places, issues etc. shown in
the media
• E.g. gender, race, age, class

25. • The Guardian, Points of View advert (1986)
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SsccRkLLzU

26. Representation
• How are people represented in the advert?
• How does the media create versions of
reality?
• Where do these ideas come from?

27. Representation?

28. To review…

29. Language
• How ideas are communicated
– How we “read” the media
– How we describe the media
• Different products described in different ways
using different terminology
– Codes and Conventions
• How the “message” is sent

31. Audiences
• People targeted by media products
– Many different audiences
– Audiences broken up into groups
(mass/ niche)
• Audiences interaction with media
– Interpretation
– Distribution
• Relationship is complicated
• Who the message is for

32. How do audiences
interact with…?
• Hello! Magazine
• Big Brother
• YouTube
• Radio 1
• CoD?

33. Institutions
• Companies who make/ monitor media
– Often huge (like BBC or Disney)
– Sometimes small (like Mojang)
– Sometimes just one person
(like Jonathan Coulton/ Scott Cawthon)
• Who sends the message?
• How and why was it produced?

34. Name some institutions

35. Representation
• How groups/ places/ ideas/ values
presented (or not presented)
• How this affects how we see the world
• How this changes over time (hegemony)
– Can be negative or stereotypical
– Can be positive or countertypical
• Helps explain audience response
• What does the message say/ mean?

36. Brexit…

37. …David Cameron…

38. … Islam

39. KCs
• Institution?
• Media Language?
• Audience?
• Representation?

40. Homework Task
• To understand the media, you need to
understand your own use of it
• Create your own ‘timeline’
– Choose a day this week
– Note all your activities that day (including those
where you use no media products)
– Create a chart in your book presenting your
findings
– Deadline: Monday 12th
September

41. End of Lesson Two