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Contexts of the Media

Social context

  • 2 things to know
  • Media One and Media Two

Overview

Class, gender, ethnicity, age and family, why representations date, and how media can move what counts as normal.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

What does social context cover?

Evaluation

How can media contribute to social change rather than only reflect it?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What does social context mean in the analysis of a media product?

    Model answer

    The condition of the society in which a product was made and received, including its structures of class, gender, ethnicity, age and family, and the attitudes prevailing at the time.

  2. 2

    Why does a product's social context help explain the representations it contains?

    Model answer

    Because producers work within the assumptions of their society about who people are and how they should behave, so those assumptions shape what is depicted and what passes without comment.

  3. 3

    How can changing attitudes to family life be traced through media products?

    Model answer

    Comparing how households are composed and how domestic roles are shared across products from different decades shows which arrangements were treated as ordinary at each point.

  4. 4

    How does the social position of a product's intended audience affect its construction?

    Model answer

    Producers pitch language, references and concerns at the group they expect to reach, so the assumed social position shapes the tone and content of the product.

  5. 5

    What does the presence or absence of particular social groups in a product reveal about its context?

    Model answer

    It indicates whose experience was regarded as central and whose was treated as marginal or invisible at the time and place of production.

  6. 6

    How do changing attitudes to gender roles appear in advertising over time?

    Model answer

    The tasks, settings and forms of authority assigned to women and men in advertisements shift with social expectations, so the same product category is sold differently in different periods.

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Media Language
Media Representation
Media Industries
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Postmodernism holds that the hierarchy has .
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AAccessing media forms the first component.
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