Homework- 11/3/25 Flashcards
What is meant by an institution?
Institutions are the organisations and people whose operational processes and practices enable or constrain media production and use.
What is an audience?
A large group of people that are not individualised.
What is meant by media ownership?
the legal control or possession of media organizations, influencing the information and narratives presented to the public.
What are the different types of contexts?
Historical, social and cultural, economic, political
Who are the Industry theorists?
Curran + Seaton, Livingstone + Lunt, Hesmondhalgh
Who are the audience theorists?
Bandura, Gerbner, Hall, Jenkins, Shirky
What theory did Curran + Seaton come up with and what is it?
Power and media industries theory- media is controlled by a small number of companies primarily concerned with gaining profit and power. Media concentration typically inhibits or limits, creativity and quality.
What theory did Livingstone + Lunt come up with and what does it say?
Regulation theory- There is an underlying struggle between the need to further interests of citizens and the interests of consumers. The rise of media conglomerations and the emerging production, distribution and marketing of digital media have placed traditional approaches to media regulation at risk.
What theory did Hesmondhalgh come up with and what is it?
Cultural industries theory- Media companies try to minimise risk and maximise profit through horizontal and vertical integration.
What theory did Bandura come up with and what does it outline?
Media effects theory- Media is capable of implanting ideas directly into the minds of its audiences. Audiences respond to the modelling in the media and thereby, acquire new attitudes, styles of conduct and emotional responses.
What theory did Gerbner come up with and what does it say?
Cultivation theory- Repeated patterns of representation over long periods of time can shape and influence the way the audience perceives the world around them. Cultivation reinforces mainstream, or dominant, values and ideologies.
What Audience theory did Hall come up with and what does it outline?
Reception theory- Communication is a process involving encoding by producers and decoding by the audience. There are 3 positions from which meanings can be decoded:
1. Dominant reading- encoders message is full understood and accepted.
2. Negotiated reading- the message is adapted to fit the encoders experience/context.
3. Oppositional reading- encoders message is understood by decoder disagrees.
What Audience theory did Jenkins come up with and what does it say?
Fandom theory- Fans are active participants in the construction and circulation of textual meanings. Fans construct their social and cultural identities by borrowing and inflecting mass culture images and participate in a culture that offers a vital social dimension.
What Audience theory did Shirky come up with and what does it say?
‘End of audience’ theory- In the age of the internet, audience members are no longer passive consumers of mass media content: consumers now have the ability to “speak back to media in various ways. Media consumers engage in the creating and sharing of content with one another.
What Media language theory did Barthes come up with and what does it explain?
Semiotics- Texts communicate their ideas through signification. Signs function at a literal level as well as a figurative level. Exposure to certain symbolic constructions can become self-evident, as the sign becomes myth through naturalisation.
What Media language theory did Todorov come up with and what does it explain?
Narratology- All narratives share a basic structure, moving from one equilibrium to another.
These two states of equilibrium are separated by disruption or imbalance.
The way that narratives resolve can have ideological significance.
What Media language theory did Neale come up with and what does it explain?
Genre theory- genres are dominated by repetition of codes and conventions but must also incorporate difference, variation and change.
Genres change as they borrow from and overlap with each other.
Genres exist within specific economic, institutional and industrial contexts.
What Media language theory did Levi-Strauss come up with and what does it explain?
Structuralism- texts can be understood through an analysis of their underlying structure.
Meaning is often produced through oppositional pairs. The resolution of these binary opposites can have ideological significance
What media language theory did Baudrillard come up with and what does it explain?
Postmodernism- The boundaries between the “real” and “mediated” worlds have collapsed.
Signs are a process of signification with no signifier underlying them; they no longer refer to anything “real” or “literal”.
Mediated images now seem more “real” than the reality they supposedly represent (hyperreality).
What Representation theory did Hall come up with and what does it explain?
Theories of representation- Representation is the production of meaning through language.
Stereotyping reduces people and things to a few simple characteristics or traits.
Stereotyping tends to occur where there is disparity of power, with subordinated/excluded groups being different or “other”.
What Representation theory did Gauntlett come up with and what does it explain?
Theories of identity- Media provides us with ‘tools’ and resources that we use to shape our identities. In the past, these media toolboxes were simple; as the mediated world has become more complicated, we now have a wide range of media models — a pick-and-mix of different ideas that we can choose from.
What did Van Zoonen’s feminist theory outline?
Gender, as a product of discourse, changes depending on cultural and historical context.
The objectification of women’s bodies is core to Western patriarchal culture.
The codes used in mainstream media to construct the male body are different from the mediated/objectified female body.
What does bell hooks feminist theory outline?
Feminism is a political commitment rather than a lifestyle choice.
The intersection of race and class (as well as sex) determine the extent to which individuals are exploited or oppressed.
What Representation theory did Butler come up with and what does it explain?
Theories of gender performativity- Identity is performatively constructed by the very “acts” or “expressions” that are thought to be its results.
There is no inherent gender identity behind the expressions of gender.
Performativity is not a singular act, but a repetition or ritual.
What Representation theory did Gilroy come up with and what does it explain?
Post-colonialism and ethnicity- Colonial discourses continue to inform contemporary attitudes to race and ethnicity. “Civilisationism” constructs racial hierarchies and sets up binary oppositions based on notions of “other”ness.
