Forms Flashcards
What is the definition of mass media?
All public means of communication and expression. The term mass refers to large audiences that consume media products. Modern mass media affects most people in some way. It can shape our understanding of ourselves and the world we live in.
What is the basic communication model?
Sender (producer) - Message (context/meaning) - Medium (media) - Receiver (audience)
What are technical codes?
Colours, camera angles, sound etc.
What are symbolic/narrative codes?
Objects, settings, body language, character etc.
What are written codes?
Headlines, typeface, captions etc.
What is the narrative?
How stories are structured by producers and understood by audiences.
What is genre?
The type or category of media text.
What are ideology and values?
The ideas/values/opinions encoded within a media text (e.g. individualism is good or women are less able than men).
What is the semiotic approach to analysing media texts?
The study of signs and symbols and their role in the construction and reconstruction of meaning.
What is an open text?
An open text may have a variety of meanings dependent upon the age, sex and cultural background. of the reader. It means that the text is open to interpretation.
What is a closed text?
A term used to describe a text that contains a dominant or preferred meaning. Such texts attempt to direct audiences into understanding one particular meaning. This is often done through the process of anchorage.
What is anchorage?
A process where words captions or logos are used to direct a reader towards a particular meaning. It’s about how particular aspects of a text help to pin down/anchor its meaning.
What is direct address?
A direct address refers to a text that address you, the audience, directly to create a more personal connection, e.g.a face looking directly at you through a camera.
What is indirect address?
It is more observational, less formal and the audience is addressed as a casual observer or a voyeur (looking into someone else’s world).
What are the 3 main types of audience decoding according to Stuart Hall?
Dominant - when the reader accepts the full preferred reading offered by the text.
Negotiated - where the content of the message is adapted to fit the specific social condition of the reader to produce a new meaning.
Oppositional - where the dominant reading is contested and a reading which opposes it is produced.
What us the male gaze?
Laura Mulvey argues that the dominant Hollywood perspective is male. She argues that we see everything in the media through the eyes of a heterosexual male.
What is intertextuality?
When a media text refers to another text, e.g. an advert that refers to a film. Intertextual texts can offer a number of meanings.
What is mise-en-scene?
Everything that is ‘in the scene’ or frame.
What is diegetic sound?
Sound generated from within the narrative.
What is an enigma code?
A narrative technique that involves the creation of riddles or problems to be solved by the resolution.
What is high-key lighting?
Bright, often studio lighting/sun.
What is low-key lighting?
Darker lighting scene.
What is iconography?
Visual symbols or look that characterise a media text or genre.
What is realism?
A film or television style that attempts to represent the real world.
What is editing/montage?
How images are selected, cut/cropped and put together.
What are font types?
San Serif - informal
Serif - formal
What is composition?
The placement of objects within a frame to create meaning or enable an audience to access and read visual information in a clear and pleasurable way.
What is a denotation?
Describing objectively what you can see.
What is a connotation?
An image meaning of association.
Who is the knowing receiver?
People who may derive a certain amount of pleasure from knowledge of intertextuality and may be more receptive to the message.
What is non-diegetic sound?
Sound that is added to the scene during the editing process (a sound that cannot be seen on screen).
What are the 11 different forms of mass media?
Television Radio Cinema Magazine Adverts Popular Music Images Animation New Media (Social Media) Newspaper Gaming
What is meant by the term ‘no time’ in media
When people claim that they have no time or less time in the day; even though there are still 24 hours in a day. People just happen to spend more time on social media and therefore feel as if they have less time in the day.
What is meant by the term ‘pester power’?
Children pestering their parents to buy them things because they do not have the money to buy things themselves.
Who are the biggest target audience in the advertising industry?
20-35 year olds.
Middle class (C1 and C2)
This is because they have less children, no mortgage and a job.
What is meant by the term ‘disposable income’?
Spare money to spend on yourself.
What does subliminal mean?
You’re not aware of the message you’re getting.
How was the name ‘soap opera’ decided?
Because it was meant for women to listen to on the radio while they were cleaning the house.
What is the two-step flow?
The idea that ideas flow from mass media to opinion leaders, and then from them to the wider population.
What is regulation?
Bodies whose job it is to see that media texts are not seen by the wrong audiences.
What is propaganda?
The way ruling classes use the mass media to control or alter the attitudes of others.
What is an oppositional reading?
An interpretation of a text by a reader whose social position puts them into direct conflict with its preferred reading.
What is a 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.
What is postmodernism?
Anything that challenges the traditional way of doing things.
What is negotiated reading?
The ‘compromise’ that is reached between the preferred reading offered by a text and the reader’s own assumptions and interpretations.
What is popular culture?
The study of cultural artifacts of the mass media such as cinema, TV, advertising.
What is patriarchy?
The structural, systematic and historical domination and exploitation of women.
