Key Terms 2

Institutions – The organisations which produce and control media texts such as the BBC, AOL Time Warner, News International.

Intertextuality – the idea that within popular culture producers borrow other texts to create interest to the audience who like to share the ‘in’ joke. Used a lot in the Simpsons.

Media language – the means by which the media communicates to us and the forms and conventions by which it does so.

Media Platform – nothing to do with trains, this refers to the different ways that media content is delivered, mainly via TV, laptop, tablet, smartphone, cinema, video/computer game, printed page etc. for instance the BBC delivers content via TV, laptop and mobile device, and also through printed publications. Most media organisations deliver  their content via a multitude of platforms.

Media product – a text that has been designed to be consumed by an audience. E.G a film, radio show, newspaper etc.

Media text – see above. N.B Text usually means a piece of writing

c – literally ‘what’s in the shot’ everything that appears on the screen in a single frame and how this helps the audience to decode what’s going on.

Mode of Address – The way a media product ‘speaks’ to it’s audience. In order to communicate, a producer of any text must make some assumptions about an intended audience; reflections of such assumptions may be discerned in the text (advertisements offer particularly clear examples of this).

Montage – putting together of visual images to form a sequence. Made famous by Russian film maker Eisenstein in his famous film Battleship Potemkin.

Moral Panic – is the intensity of feeling stirred up by the media  about an issue that appears to threaten the social order, such as against Muslims after 9/11, or against immigrants, or against ‘video nasties’  following the Jamie Bulger murder.

Multi-media – computer technology that allows text, sound, graphic and video images to be combined into one programme.

Myth – a complex idea by Roland Barthes that myth is a second order signifying system ie when a sign becomes the signifier of a new sign (2nd years only this one!)

Narrative code – The way a story is put together within a text, traditionally equilibrium- disequilibrium, new equilibrium, but some text are fractured or non liner, eg Pulp Fiction.

News values – factors that influence whether a story will be picked for coverage.

Non-verbal communication – communication between people other than by speech.

Ownership – who produces and distributes the media texts – and whose interest it is.

Patriarchy – The structural, systematic and historical domination and exploitation of women.

Popular Culture – the study of cultural artefacts of the mass media such as cinema, TV, advertising.

Post Modernism – Anything that challenges the traditional way of doing things, rejecting boundaries between high and low forms of art, rejecting rigid genre distinctions, emphasizing pastiche, parody, intertextuality, irony, and playfulness. Post-modernism favours reflexivity and self-consciousness, fragmentation and discontinuity (especially in narrative structures), ambiguity, simultaneity, and an emphasis on the de-structured, decentered, dehumanized subjects!

Preferred Reading – the interpretation of a media product that was intended by the maker or which is dictated by the ideology of the society in which it is viewed.Oppositional Reading – an interpretation of a text by a reader whose social position puts them into direct conflict with its preferred reading. Negotiated Reading – the ‘compromise’ that is reached between the preferred reading offered by a text and the reader’s own assumptions and interpretations

Propaganda – the way ruling classes use the mass media to control or alter the attitudes of others.

Reader – a member of the audience, someone who is actively responding to the text.

Regulation – bodies whose job it is to see that media texts are not seen by the wrong audience (eg British Board of Film Censors) or are fair and honest (EG Advertising Standards Association)

Representation – The way in which the media ‘re-presents’ the world around us in the form of signs and codes for audiences to read.

SFX – special effects or devices to create visual illusions.

Shot – single image taken by a camera.

Sign – a word or image that is used to represent an object or idea.

Signifier/Signified – the ‘thing’ that conveys the meaning, and the meaning conveyed. EG a red rose is a signifier, the signified is love (or the Labour Party!)

Sound Effects – additional sounds other than dialogue or music, designed to add realism or atmosphere.

Stereotype – representation of people or groups of people by a few characteristics eg hoodies, blondes

Still – static image.

Sub-genre – a genre within a genre.

Two Step Flow theory – the idea that ideas flow from mass media to opinion leaders, and from them to a wider population.

Uses and Gratifications – ideas about how people use the media and what gratification they get from it. It assumes that members of the audience are not passive but take an active role in interpreting and integrating media into their own lives.

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