AS Media Studies U1 Flashcards
To Learn All Theorists and Terminology
What is an Active Audience?
This describes an audience who responds to and interprets the media products in different ways and who actively engages with the messages encoded in the products.
What is meant by Aspirational?
Aimed at or appealing to people who want to improve how they look, attain a higher social position or have better standard of living.
What is an Audience surrogate?
A character within a text that stands in for the audience. They may think as we do, or act as we ourselves might act in the same situation.
What Audience theory was Albert Bandura’s?
Media Affects:
What Audience theory was George Gerbner’s?
Cultivation Theory:
What Audience theory was Stuart Hall’s?
Reception Theory:
What is Brand Identity?
The image that a brand projects and the associations the audience makes with the brand. This is built up over time.
What is Colloquialism?
An informal expression that is often used in casual conversation rather than in writing. However, it is used in some media products to establish an informal communication with the audience.
What is connotation?
Refers to the meanings we associate with the sign, for example a red rose may connote love or the hoot of an owl may connote night-time.
What are cover lines?
The written text that features on the cover of the magazine providing a preview of the content that features inside.
What is cross-platform marketing?
When one form is advertised on another media platform. For example, BBC 1 will broadcast promotional advertisements for its radio stations; these will also be on the BBC website.
What are cultural competences?
Within a media context, this concept suggests that the cultural competence of an audience is the shared knowledge, related to their cultural understanding, of that audience, which means that they will take a particular pleasure from a media product. For example, the audience who understand and engage with the rules of Call of Duty, and have a certain computer literacy, will enjoy the control aspect of the game and the online sharing of techniques.
What is decoding?
The proccess through which an audience interprets a message.
What is Demographic profiling?
A way categorising audiences by dividing consumers into groups based on age, sex, income, education, occupation, household size, marital status, home ownership or other factors. This information is use to some media industries, for example it can help advertisers determine their target audience for particular products and develop adverts that focus on a specific demographic.
What is Denotation?
The literal or common sense meaning of a sign rather than the associated meaning of a sign.
What is Discourse?
The topics and lauangage used by a media text snd the way they are used. There are topics that would never appear in the discourse of a magazine tends to centre on image and how to look good
What is a Dominant-Hegominic position?
The position that the media encoder encourages the decoder to adopt when interpreting a text. If they adopt the dominant-hegominc position they read or interpret the message in the way that the encoder intended, making a preferred reading.
What is a Dominant-Ideology?
A set if values and beliefs that have broader social or cultural currency. This may be implicit or explicit as is evident in texts such as tabloid newspapers.
What is an ellispis?
Where sentences are incomplete and instead are finished with a set of three dots; the words need to be filled by the reader.
What is meant by encode?
Communicate ideas and messages though system of signs.
What is an enigma code?
Enigma codes are the questions or mysteries that a narrative sets up in order to make the audience continue watching. Roland Barthes refers to this as the hermeneutic code.
What is ethnocentric?
Roger Brown defines ethnocentric as ‘the application of the norms of ones own culture to that of others’ (Social Psychology, 1965, page 183). Stuart Hall refers to this definition in his theory of representations as he suggest that ethnocentrism is an example of the way in which stereotypes reinforce the power of certain groups over others.
What is meant by Foreshadow?
To hint at something that will happen later in the narrative.
What is meant by Formulaic Structure?
Where the texts has clear structure that is recognisable and rarely changes. For example, the front cover of a lifestyle magazine has key conventions and the audience has expectations of what will appear throughout the publication.
What is a Gatekeepr?
A person or organisation that is involved in filtering content in some way. For example, in the newspaper industry, editors generally perform this gatekeeping function as they determine which stories make it into the paper (through the gate) and which do not.
What are Gender Norms?
Cultural expectations regarding how men and women should act or behave - the patterns of behaviour that a particular society considers to be ‘normal’ for men or women.
What are Graphics?
A precise type of design. For example, in media terms, the titles and credits in a film or for a television programme, or the seemingly hand-drawn but usually computer-generated images in a video game.
What is a Hard Sell?
This is ‘in your face’ advertising. These adverts are usually short, loud and employ a direct mode of address. They give clear information about the product, for example the price and where you can get it.
What is a hook?
The element if a media product that catches the attention of the audience and draws them in. On a film poster it may be the image, the tag line or the copy.
Wha is meant by House- Style?
The distinctive ‘look’, aethetic or visual style of magazine, which helps to convey a sense of its brand identity.
What are Hybrid Genres?
These are media texts that incorporate features of more than one genre, Strictly Come Dancing includes features of reality television, game shows and entertainment programmes, for example.
What is a Hyperbole?
Exaggerated language used to create a dramatic effect.
What is a Hyperlink?
A word, phrase or image in an electronic document or web page that the reader can click on to navigate to a different page.
What is Hypermasculinity?
Where stereotypically masculine traits such as power, toughness or physical strength are presented in exaggerated form. In many cases this is conveyed symbolically through particular aspects of the iconography or mise-en-scene - cars and guns often function as symbols of masculine power, for example.
What is a Hypodermic syringe model?
Also known as the hypodermic needle model. Now largely viewed as an outdated effects theory, which suggests that the audience are a mass that behave the same way in response to a media product. The media product injects ideas into the minds of the assumed passive audience who will respond as one.
What is meant by iconography?
The visual elements of a media product such as the props, costumes and settings that are used.
What is meant by ‘in house’?
The companies that create the product also produce the advertising campaign and do not recruit an advertising agency.
What is an Independent Productions?
In the broadcasting industry these are productions that are produced by companies that are independent of the broadcasters.
What is Intertextuality?
When one text is used or referenced within another. For example, the use of memorable scenes from an iconic film in an advert. A good example of intertextuality is the use of Yoda from Start Wars in the Vodafone advert.
What is meant by an Issue?
An important matter or topic that is of public concern.
What is a Jump Line?
Used at the end of a cover line. Usually tells the audience which page to turn to in order to read the full story.
What is Juxtaposition?
Involves placing two or more items next to one another to meaningful effect.
What are Lexis?
The specific type of language or vocab that is used. The football magazine Four Four Two uses the lexis of sport, for example, while the women’s lifestyle magazine Glamour uses the lexis of fashion and beauty.
What is a lifestyle magazine?
An umbrella term for mens and women’s magazines that are concerned with aspects of modern living such as fashion, beauty, health and fitness, culture, the home , etc. The ideology of these magazine tend to focus on consumerism and aspirations.
Mise-en-scene
Everything that appears within the frame in, for example, a television programme. This includes characters, iconography and graphics.
Motif
A recurrent thematic element used by an artist and recognised by fans of that artists. It is usually established by the iconography surrounding the artist, including props, costumes and settings.
