Key term
AQA A-Level Media Studies 7572
Media Language
Topic overviewCodes and conventionsConstructing meaning through media languageGenre, hybridity and intertextualityViewpoints, ideology and audience interpretationSemiotics: signs and their typesSemiotics: paradigm, syntagm and anchorageBarthes: denotation, connotation and mythNarratology: narrative codes and diegesisTodorov: equilibrium, disruption and new equilibriumGenre theory as summarised by NealeStructuralism: binary oppositions and mythemesStructuralism: ideological reading and deconstructionPostmodernism: pastiche, bricolage and implosionBaudrillard: simulacra, simulation and hyperreality
Media Representation
Topic overviewConstructing representationsWhy producers make the representational choices they doSocial and cultural context in representationStereotypes: positive and negative useUnder-representation and misrepresentationRepresentation, realism and the values it carriesIndustry contexts and representational choiceDiscourse, ideology and audience positioningTheories of representation: stereotypes and countertypesTheories of representation: misrepresentation and selective representationTheories of representation: ideology, hegemony and constructed realityHall on representation: encoding and decodingTheories of identity as summarised by GauntlettFeminist theories: the male gaze and patriarchyFeminist theories: van Zoonen and hooksTheories of gender performativityTheories around ethnicity and postcolonial theory
Media Industries
Topic overviewProduction, distribution and circulationOwnership and controlEconomics and funding of media industriesMarketing and maintaining audiencesRegulation of media in the UKDigital convergence and the individual producerRegulation in global production and circulationCurran and Seaton: regulation, deregulation and the free marketCurran and Seaton: concentration, conglomerates and public service broadcastingCurran and Seaton: neo-liberalism, surveillance and privacyCurran and Seaton: the central argumentLivingstone and Lunt: the public sphere and governanceLivingstone and Lunt: media literacyLivingstone and Lunt: power, value and globalisationCultural industries as summarised by Hesmondhalgh
Media Audiences
Topic overviewGrouping and categorising audiencesTargeting, attracting, reaching and addressing audiencesMedia technologies and patterns of consumptionMass and specialised audiencesNiche and fan audiencesAudience interpretation and its circumstancesMedia effects: uses and gratificationsMedia effects: hypodermic needle and moral panicMedia effects: media literacyBandura: social learning and imitationCultivation theory: socialisation and the bardic functionGerbner: cultivation differential, mainstreaming and resonanceReception theory: agenda setting, framing and myth makingHall on reception: the three reading positionsFandom'End of audience' theories
Contexts of the Media
Media Forms and Products
Contexts of the Media
Cultural context
- 3 things to know
- Media One and Media Two
Overview
Shared values and conventions of meaning, high and popular culture, subcultures, hybridity and national identity.
What you need to know
Answer each one before you reveal it.
Your recallNot started
Key term
What is cultural hybridity?
Key term
What distinguishes high culture from popular culture?
Questions from this subtopic
Each one with the model answer underneath.
- 1
What does cultural context refer to in media analysis?
Model answer
The shared values, beliefs, traditions and forms of expression of the culture within which a product is made and received, and the conventions of meaning that culture supplies.
- 2
How does cultural context differ from social context?
Model answer
Social context concerns the structure of a society and the position of groups within it, whereas cultural context concerns the shared meanings, values and traditions that give its products their significance.
- 3
Why do audiences need cultural knowledge to read a media product fully?
Model answer
Because much of a product's meaning rests on references, associations and conventions that are learned within a culture rather than being self-evident.
- 4
How does the distinction between high and popular culture affect how products are valued?
Model answer
Products associated with high culture have historically been treated as art deserving serious attention, while popular products were dismissed as entertainment, which shaped what was studied and preserved.
- 5
What is a subculture and how does it relate to media?
Model answer
A group within a wider culture with its own distinct values, style and practices, which media both represents and supplies with material that members use to mark their identity.
- 6
How can a media product carry meanings its producers did not intend for audiences in another culture?
Model answer
Because gestures, colours, settings and references carry different associations elsewhere, so the same content is decoded against a different set of conventions.
Other ways to work this
The same content, four other ways.
What is inside Levo
Six ways to work the same material.
Every question in Contexts of the Media, on a schedule.
Attempt a question from memory, write the correct version, then attempt it again. Levo records the jump between your first attempt and your last, and brings each question back on the day you are due to forget it.
Or £46 a year, about £3.83 a month. Cancel anytime.