Key Media Terms
Here are some of the key terms you may encounter when you begin to study the media:
The readers of a media text. A great deal of media studies work is concerned with the effects a text may have on an audience. All texts are aimed (targeted) at a specific audience, known as the target audience. The widely recognised way of doing something - this has to do with content, style and form
eg the conventions of music video
- they are the same length as the song (somewhere around 4 minutes, say)
- they present the band, who look as though they are singing
- they have lots of fast edits
The process of selecting and manipulating images and words to make a media text. The editor's job is a very important one whether you are producing a video or a newspaper page - the editor makes the ultimate decision on what goes into the final text, and thus decides what it will all mean to a reader or viewer. A question that is not immediately answered and thus draws an audience into a text
eg. a body is discovered at the beginning of a tv detective drama. The killer's identity is an enigma. We watch to find out who the killer is.
Quite an old-fashioned term to describe the way in which certain key personnel (news editors, newspaper owners mainly) have control over the information that is presented to audiences, and the way in which it is presented (the angle) A way of categorising a media text according to its form, style and content. This categorisation is useful for producers (who use a genre's conventions) and audiences (who have expectations of the genre) alike The way in which a story, or sequence of events, is put together within a text. All media texts have some sort of narrative, from a single photographic image to a sports report to a feature film.
Narrative may be reduced to one simple equation which is
equilibrium - disequilibrium - new equilibrium
Ways of categorising and assessing news stories to decide on their newsworthiness An important issue in media studies - and a constantly changing one. Who produces and distributes the media texts we read? What effect does their ownership have on content? The way in which the media "re-presents" the world around us in the form of signs and codes for audiences to read. A person who has become so famous, both for doing their job (actor, sport player) and appearing in many sorts of media, that their image is instantly recognisable as a sign, with a whole range of meanings or significations
eg - David Beckham's image represents a whole raft of meanings: England, football, wealth, Posh, success, fashion victim, expertise, sexuality etc...
Britney Spears is also a star but her image signifies youth, physical fitness, blonde (+associated stereotypical characteristics), singing, dancing, sexuality, fashion etc...
A star's image becomes a readily recognised sign that is used in many different media forms - think of where you have seen pictures of Britney and Becks. Stars can use the fact that their image has meaning by allowing it to be used for advertising purposes.
Stereotypes are representations of people that rely on preconceived ideas about the group that person is perceived as belonging to. It is assumed that an individual shares personal characteristics with other members of that group eg blondes are all stupid, accountants are all boring.
Although using stereotypes saves a lot of explanation within a text, it can be a very lazy method of characterisation. Stereotypes may be considered dangerous, as they encourage audiences to think large groups of people are all the same, and often have the same negative characteristics.
All media artefacts are described as texts, whether they have writing in them or not. A movie is a text, as is a magazine, a billboard ad, a radio jingle and a computer game. They are called texts because we 'read' them to decode their meaning.
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