Process
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
Media Representation
Social and cultural context in representation
- 3 things to know
- Media One and Media Two
Overview
Why representations date, how media can shift attitudes rather than only record them, and why representations travel poorly across cultures.
What you need to know
Answer each one before you reveal it.
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Process
How does globalisation complicate the cultural context of representation?
Process
How have representations of women in advertising changed since the 1950s?
Questions from this subtopic
Each one with the model answer underneath.
- 1
How does social context shape media representations?
Model answer
Social context affects representations by shaping what is considered acceptable, normal, or controversial at a given time in society.
- 2
Explain how cultural context influences the interpretation of media representations.
Model answer
Cultural context affects representations by influencing the codes, conventions, and shared meanings that audiences use to interpret media texts.
- 3
Why do representations that once seemed unremarkable often appear offensive later?
Model answer
Because the social values against which they were produced have shifted, so conventions that passed as normal at the time are read against a different set of expectations.
- 4
How does the concept of acceptability change what can be represented?
Model answer
What a society treats as acceptable at a given moment sets the boundaries producers work within, and those boundaries move as attitudes change rather than remaining fixed.
- 5
How can media representations contribute to changing social attitudes rather than only reflecting them?
Model answer
By making unfamiliar perspectives visible and repeating them until they become ordinary, media can shift what audiences regard as normal rather than simply recording attitudes that already exist.
- 6
What is meant by cultural specificity in representation?
Model answer
That a representation is built from the references, values and conventions of a particular culture, so its meaning depends on being read within that culture.
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