What distinguishes online, social and participatory media from earlier media forms?

Audiences can produce and circulate content themselves and communicate with one another, so the flow is not only from institution to audience.

What is Web 2.0 and why is it significant for media studies?

The shift to websites built around user contribution and interaction rather than published pages, significant because it made audiences producers of the content platforms distribute.

What is user-generated content?

Material created and published by members of the audience rather than by media institutions, which platforms host and distribute without commissioning.

How do social media platforms make money without charging most users?

By collecting data on user behaviour and selling precisely targeted advertising against the attention that behaviour indicates.

What is an algorithm's role in a social media feed?

It ranks and selects which content each user sees, typically to maximise engagement, so it determines visibility rather than presenting everything available.

What is an influencer and how does the role work commercially?

A person who has built an audience on a platform and earns income by promoting products to it, which trades on the trust and familiarity that audience relationship provides.

AQA A-Level Media Studies 7572

Media Language

Topic overview Codes and conventions Constructing meaning through media language Genre, hybridity and intertextuality Viewpoints, ideology and audience interpretation Semiotics: signs and their types Semiotics: paradigm, syntagm and anchorage Barthes: denotation, connotation and myth Narratology: narrative codes and diegesis Todorov: equilibrium, disruption and new equilibrium Genre theory as summarised by Neale Structuralism: binary oppositions and mythemes Structuralism: ideological reading and deconstruction Postmodernism: pastiche, bricolage and implosion Baudrillard: simulacra, simulation and hyperreality

Media Representation

Topic overview Constructing representations Why producers make the representational choices they do Social and cultural context in representation Stereotypes: positive and negative use Under-representation and misrepresentation Representation, realism and the values it carries Industry contexts and representational choice Discourse, ideology and audience positioning Theories of representation: stereotypes and countertypes Theories of representation: misrepresentation and selective representation Theories of representation: ideology, hegemony and constructed reality Hall on representation: encoding and decoding Theories of identity as summarised by Gauntlett Feminist theories: the male gaze and patriarchy Feminist theories: van Zoonen and hooks Theories of gender performativity Theories around ethnicity and postcolonial theory

Media Industries

Topic overview Production, distribution and circulation Ownership and control Economics and funding of media industries Marketing and maintaining audiences Regulation of media in the UK Digital convergence and the individual producer Regulation in global production and circulation Curran and Seaton: regulation, deregulation and the free market Curran and Seaton: concentration, conglomerates and public service broadcasting Curran and Seaton: neo-liberalism, surveillance and privacy Curran and Seaton: the central argument Livingstone and Lunt: the public sphere and governance Livingstone and Lunt: media literacy Livingstone and Lunt: power, value and globalisation Cultural industries as summarised by Hesmondhalgh

Media Audiences

Topic overview Grouping and categorising audiences Targeting, attracting, reaching and addressing audiences Media technologies and patterns of consumption Mass and specialised audiences Niche and fan audiences Audience interpretation and its circumstances Media effects: uses and gratifications Media effects: hypodermic needle and moral panic Media effects: media literacy Bandura: social learning and imitation Cultivation theory: socialisation and the bardic function Gerbner: cultivation differential, mainstreaming and resonance Reception theory: agenda setting, framing and myth making Hall on reception: the three reading positions Fandom 'End of audience' theories

Contexts of the Media

Topic overview Social context Cultural context Economic context Political context Historical context Analysing media products in context

Media Forms and Products

Topic overview Advertising and marketing Music video Radio Newspapers Film as an industry Television Magazines Online, social and participatory media Video games

The Cross-Media Production and Assessment

Topic overview Close study products and how they are used The NEA brief and its requirements The Statement of Intent Applying the theoretical framework in production Producing across platforms for a specified audience Extended response and synopticity

Media Forms and Products

Online, social and participatory media

3 things to know
Media One and Media Two

Overview

Web 2.0, user-generated content, how platforms earn from data, algorithms, influencers and the Online Safety Act.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Your recallNot started

Key term

What distinguishes online and participatory media?

Key term

How do social platforms generate revenue without charging users?

Key term

What is an influencer?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1
What distinguishes online, social and participatory media from earlier media forms?
Model answer
Audiences can produce and circulate content themselves and communicate with one another, so the flow is not only from institution to audience.
2
What is Web 2.0 and why is it significant for media studies?
Model answer
The shift to websites built around user contribution and interaction rather than published pages, significant because it made audiences producers of the content platforms distribute.
3
What is user-generated content?
Model answer
Material created and published by members of the audience rather than by media institutions, which platforms host and distribute without commissioning.
4
How do social media platforms make money without charging most users?
Model answer
By collecting data on user behaviour and selling precisely targeted advertising against the attention that behaviour indicates.
5
What is an algorithm's role in a social media feed?
Model answer
It ranks and selects which content each user sees, typically to maximise engagement, so it determines visibility rather than presenting everything available.
6
What is an influencer and how does the role work commercially?
Model answer
A person who has built an audience on a platform and earns income by promoting products to it, which trades on the trust and familiarity that audience relationship provides.

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Media Language

Media Representation

Media Industries

Media Audiences

Cram a whole paper in one sitting

Sort every topic into what you know and what you do not, then drill only the weak ones.

Postmodernism holds that the hierarchy has .

collapsedstrengthenedwidened

Blank Blitz makes facts automatic

Rapid timed gap-fills on the terms and numbers you need to recall without thinking.

AAccessing media forms the first component.

BUnderstanding media content forms the second.

CCritically evaluating content forms the third.

Build It gets the exam shape right

Assemble a full-mark answer from its marking points, in the order an examiner wants them.

Denotation means the literal, common-sense meaning of a sign.

TrueFalse

Test It catches misconceptions

Spot the fault in a statement. The traps are the mistakes students actually make.

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Short focus games to reset attention, so the next set lands better than the last.

Every question in Media Forms and Products, on a schedule.

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