This document summarizes several key media concepts and theories related to genre, representation, media language, and audience. It discusses how genre is a negotiated process that changes over time according to theorists like Buckingham, Neale, and Metz. Representation theorists like Peirce, Gauntlett, and Baudrillard explore how identity and reality are constructed through signs. Theories of media language from Goodwin and Vernallis analyze elements like narrative, editing, camerawork, and diegesis in music videos. Theories of audience from Hall, Hartley, McQuail, and Ang examine how audiences are defined, relate to institutions, and exist as imagined entities.

1. Key Media Concepts/Theory’s
Genre
David Buckingham (1993)– Argues that ‘genre is not
simply given “given” by the culture: rather, it is in a constant
process of negotiation and change’.
Claude Levi-Strauss (1958) – Ideas about narrative
amount to the fact that he believed all stories operated to
certain clear Binary Opposites e.g. rich vs. poor.
Steve Neale (1995) – “Genres are processes of
systemisation” – they change over time.
Christian Metz (1994) – argued that genres go through a
cycle of changes during their lifetime.
Barthes (1997) – suggested that narrative works with five
different codes and the enigma code works to keep up
setting problems or puzzles for the audience. His action
code ( a look, significant word, movement) is based on
our cultural and stereotypical understanding of actions that
act as a shorthand to advancing the narrative.
Pam Cook (1985) – “Linearity of cause and effect within an
overall trajectory of enigma resolution”. A high degree of
narrative closure. A fictional world that contains
verisimilitude especially governed by spatial and temporal
coherence.
Representation
Charles Sanders Peirce (1993) – “ we think only in signs”
David Gauntlett (2007) – argues that “Identity is
complicated. Everybody thinks they’ve got one. Artists play
with the idea of identity in modern society.
Baudrillard – discussed the concept of hyperreality – we
inhabit a society that is no longer made up of any original
thing for a sign that is now the meaning. He argued that we
live in a society of simulacra – simulations of reality that
replace the real.
Media Language
Andrew Goodwin –
- Thought Beats

2. - Narrative and Performance (repeatability)
- Star Image ( also Dyer)
- Relation of visuals to a song ( illustration, amplification,
disjuncture)
- Technical aspects( Camera, editing, effects etc.)
Carol Vernallis – Vernallis’ theory centres around four
key concepts that all relate to the way the music video is
constructed (how it creates meaning). They are:
1. Narrative
2. 2.Editing
3. Camera movement and framing
4. Diegesis
Audience
Mass/Niche & Mainstream/Alternative
Stuart Hall (1980) – analysed the readings within
audiences as either:
1. Dominant or Preferred Reading: The meaning they
want you to have is usually accepted.
2. Negotiated Reading: The dominant reading is only
partially recognised or accepted and audiences might
disagree with some of it or find their own meanings.
3. Oppositional Reading: The dominant reading is
refused, rejected because the reader disagrees with it
or is offended by it, especially for political, religious,
feminist, reasons etc.
John Hartley (1987) – “institutions are obliged not to
only speak about an audience, but – crucially, for them –
to talk to one as well; they need not only to represent
audiences but to enter into relation with them.
McQuail (1972) – An audience can be described as a
“temporary collective”
Ien Ang (1991) –“Audiences only exist as an imaginary
entity, an abstraction, constructed from the vantage point
of the institution, in the interest of the institution”.