Keywords (Title - Definition) Flashcards
ACTION CODE
Something that happens in the narrative that tells the audience that some action will follow.
ACTIVE AUDIENCE
Audiences actively engage in selecting media products to
consume and interpreting their meanings.
ANCHORAGE
The words that accompany an image (still or moving) contribute to the meaning associated with that image.
APPEAL
The way in which products attract and interest an audience.
ARC OF
TRANSFORMATION
The emotional changes a character goes through in the
process of the narrative. The events in the story mean that they will ‘transform’ by the end of the story.
ASPIRATIONAL
One that encourages the audience to want more money, up-market consumer items and a higher
social position.
ATTRACT
How media producers create appeal to audiences to encourage them to consume the product.
AUDIENCE
CATEGORISATION
How media producers group audiences.
AUDIENCE
CONSUMPTION
The way in which audiences engage with media products.
AUDIENCE
INTERPRETATION
The way in which audiences ‘read’ the meanings in, and make sense of, media products.
AUDIENCE
POSITIONING
The way in which media products place audiences (literally or
metaphorically) in relation to a particular point of view.
AUDIENCE RESPONSE
How audiences react to media products.
AUDIENCE
SEGMENTATION
Where a target audience is divided up due to the diversity and range of programmes and channels. This makes it difficult for one programme to attract a large target audience.
AUDIO
How sound is used to communicate meaning.
AVATAR
A player’s representation of themselves within a game.
BACK STORY
A device that gives the audience
more information and makes the main story more credible.
Can be part of a narrative which may be the experiences of a character or the circumstances of an event that occur before the action or narrative of a media text.
BINARY OPPOSITES
Where texts incorporate examples of opposite values.
BRAND IDENTITY
The association the audience make with the brand.
BROADSHEET
A larger newspaper that publishes more serious news.
CAMERA ANGLES
The angle of the camera in relation to the subject.
CAMERA SHOTS
The type of shot and framing in relation to the subject.
CAPTION
Words that accompany an image that help to explain its meaning.
CHANNEL IDENTITY
That which makes the channel recognisable to audiences and
different from any other channel.
Can be presenters, stars, programme genres and specific programmes.
CIRCULATION
The dissemination of media products to audiences/users.
CONNOTATION
The suggested meanings attached to a sign.
CONVENTIONS
What the audience expects to see in a particular media text.
CONVERGENCE
The coming together of previously separate media industries
and/or platforms.
Often the result of advances in technology whereby one device or platform contains a range of different features.
COVER LINES
These suggest the content to the reader and often contain
teasers and rhetorical questions.
These relate to the genre of
the magazine.
CROSS-PLATFORM
MARKETING
A text that is distributed and exhibited across a range of media formats or platforms.
CULTURAL CAPITAL
The media tastes and preferences of an audience, traditionally linked to social class/background.
DEMOGRAPHIC
CATEGORY
A group in which consumers are placed according to their age,
sex, income, profession, etc.
DENOTATION
The literal meaning of a sign.
DIEGETIC SOUND
Sound that comes from the fictional world.
DISCOURSE
The topics, language and meanings or values behind them within a media text. The discourse of lifestyle magazines, for example, tends to revolve around body image and narcissism.
DISTRIBUTION
The methods by which media products are delivered to audiences, including the marketing campaign.
DIVERSIFICATION
Where media organisations who have specialised in producing
media products in one form move into producing content across
a range of forms.
EDITING
The way in which the shots move from one to the other
(transitions)
e.g. fade, cut, etc. Fast cutting may increase the pace and therefore the tension of the text, for example.
ENCODING AND
DECODING
Media producers encode messages and meanings in products
that are decoded, or interpreted, by audiences.
ENIGMA CODE
A narrative device which increases tension and audience
interest by only releasing bits of information.
EQUILIBRIUM
A state of balance or stability.
ETHNOCENTRIC
A belief in the superiority of one’s own ethnic group or culture.
ETHOS
The beliefs, values and customs of organisations / communities / businesses ETC.
FAN
An enthusiast or aficionado of a particular media form or product.
FEATURE
The main, or one of the main, stories in an edition. (In magazine terms)
FLEXI NARRATIVE
A more complex narrative structure with layers of interweaving storylines.
This challenges the audience and keeps them
watching.
FOUR Cs
A way of categorising consumers into groups through their
motivational needs.
Cross Cultural Consumer Characteristics.
FRANCHISE
An entire series of media products which all link together by being from the same story / acknowledgment.
GATE KEEPERS
The people responsible for deciding the most appropriate
stories to appear in newspapers.
They may be the owner, editor
or senior journalists.
GENRE
Media texts can often be grouped into genres that all share
similar conventions.
GLOBAL
Worldwide
E.g. A media product with global reach is a product that is distributed around the world.
HEGEMONY
Hegemony is the dominance of one group over another, often supported by legitimating norms and ideas.
This derives from the theory of cultural hegemony by Antonio
Gramsci.
HORIZONTAL
INTEGRATION
Where a media conglomerate is made up of different
companies that produce and sell similar products, often as a
result of mergers.
HOUSE STYLE
The aspects that make a magazine recognisable to its readers
every issue.
The house style is established through the choice
of colour, the layout and design, the font style, the content and
the general ‘look’ of the publication.
HYBRID GENRE
Media texts that incorporate elements of more than one genre.
HYPODERMIC NEEDLE
MODEL
The idea is that the media product
injects an idea into the mind of an audience who are assumed
to be passive and as a result will all respond in the same way.
- Generally acknowledged to be an out of date media effects
theory
ICONOGRAPHY
The props, costumes, objects and backgrounds associated with
a particular genre.
IDEOLOGY
A set of messages, values and beliefs that may be encoded
into media products.
INDEPENDENT FILM
A film made outside of the financial and artistic control of a
large mainstream film company.
INDEPENDENT
RECORD LABEL
A record label that operates without the funding of, and that is
not necessarily linked to, a major record label.
INTELLECTUAL
PROPERTY
A legal concept which refers to creations of the mind for which
the owner’s rights are recognised.
INTERACTIVE
AUDIENCE
The ways in which audiences can become actively involved
with a product.
INTERTEXTUAL
Where one media text makes reference to aspects of another
text within it.
INTERTEXTUALITY
Where one media product intertextually references another.
LAYOUT AND DESIGN
The way in which a page has been designed to attract the
target audience.
LINEAR NARRATIVE
Where the narrative unfolds in chronological order from
beginning to end.
LUDOLOGY
The study of games and those who play them.
- Relevant to video games.
MASCULINITY
The perceived characteristics generally considered to define
what it is to be a man.
- These can change according to
sociological and cultural variations.
MASS AUDIENCE
The traditional idea of the audience as one large, homogenous group.
MEDIA CONGLOMERATE
A company that owns other companies across a range of media
platforms.
- Increases their domination of the market and their ability to distribute and exhibit their product
MEDIA FORMS
Types of media products.
e.g. television, newspapers, advertising.
MEDIA LANGUAGE
The specific elements of a media product that communicate
meanings to audiences.
e.g. visual codes, audio codes,
technical codes, language.
MEDIA PLATFORM
The range of different ways of communicating with an
audience.
e.g. newspapers, the Internet, and television.
MEDIATION
The way in which a media text is constructed in order to represent a version of reality.
MISE-EN-SCENE
The arrangement of the props / visual codes in a scene or image.
MISREPRESENTATION
When certain social groups may be
represented in a way that is inappropriate and not based on
reality.
- Usually minority groups.
MMORPG
Massively multi-player online role-playing game.
MODE OF ADDRESS
The way in which a media text ‘speaks to’ its target audience.
NARRATIVE
The ‘story’ that is told by the media text.
NEWS AGENDA
The list of stories that may appear in a particular paper.
- The items on the news agenda will reflect the style and ethos of the paper.
NICHE AUDIENCE
A relatively small audience with specialised interests, tastes, and backgrounds.
NON-DIEGETIC SOUND
Sound that comes from outside the fictional world.
e.g. a voiceover, romantic mood music etc.
NON-LINEAR
NARRATIVE
When the narrative manipulates time and space.
- It may begin in
the middle and then include flashbacks and other narrative
devices.
OPEN WORLD
When the player can move freely through the virtual world and is not restricted by levels and other
barriers to free roaming.
OPINION LEADERS
People in society who may affect the way in which others
interpret a particular media text.
- Regards of advertising
- This may be a celebrity or other endorser recommending a product.
PASSIVE AUDIENCE
The idea that audiences do
not actively engage with media products, but passively
consume and accept the messages that producers
communicate.
PATRIARCHAL
CULTURE
A society or culture that is male dominated.
PICK AND MIX THEORY
Suggested by British sociologist and media theorist, David
Gauntlett. He asserted the autonomy of the audience and
challenged the notion that audiences are immediately affected
by what they read. He maintains that audiences are more
sophisticated than this and will select aspects of the media
texts that best suit their needs and ignore the rest.
PLURALITY
In a media context, this refers to a range of content to suit many people.
POLITICAL BIAS
Where a newspaper may show support for a political party
through its choice of stories, style of coverage, cartoons, etc.
PRIVILEGED
SPECTATOR POSITION
Where the camera places the audience in a superior position
within the narrative. The audience can then anticipate what will
follow.
PRODUCTION
The process by which media products are constructed.
PUBLIC SERVICE
BROADCASTER
A radio and television broadcaster that is financed by public
money (e.g. the license fee in the UK) and is seen to offer a
public service by catering for a range of audiences and
providing information, as well as entertainment.
REALISM
A style of presentation that claims to portray ‘real life’ accurately and authentically.
REGULATOR
A person or body that supervises a particular industry.
REPERTOIRE OF
ELEMENTS
Key features that distinguish one genre from another.
REPRESENTATION
The way in which key groups or aspects of society are presented by the media,
SELECTION AND
COMBINATION
Media producers actively choose elements of media language
and place them alongside others to create specific
representations or versions of reality.
SEXUAL
OBJECTIFICATION
The practice of regarding a person as an object to be viewed
only in terms of their sexual appeal and with no consideration of
any other aspect of their character or personality.
SIGN/CODE
Something which communicates meaning.
SIMULCAST
The streaming of live radio programmes from the website at the same time as they are broadcast on the radio.
SPECIALISED
AUDIENCE
A non-mass, or niche, audience that may be defined by a
particular social group or by a specific interest
SPLASH
The story that is given the most prominence on the front page of a newspaper.
STEREOTYPE
An exaggerated representation of someone or something.
STRIPPED
A technique used in radio and television whereby a certain
programme is broadcast at the same time every day.
SUB-GENRE
Where a genre is sub-divided into smaller categories each of
which has their own set of conventions.
e.g. teen drama,
hospital drama, costume drama, etc.
SUBJECT-SPECIFIC
LEXIS
The specific language and vocabulary used to engage the audience.
SYNERGY
The combination of elements to maximise profits within a media
organisation or product.
TABLOID
Refers to the dimensions of a newspaper; a tabloid is smaller and more compact in size.
It also tends to refer to a newspaper whose content focuses on lighter news.
TARGET AUDIENCE
The people at whom the media text is aimed.
TECHNICAL CODES
These are the way in which the text has been produced to
communicate meanings and are part of media language
TEXTUAL POACHING
The way in which audiences or fans may take particular texts
and interpret or reinvent them in different ways
UNDER REPRESENTATION
Certain social groups (usually minority groups) may be rarely
represented or be completely absent from media products.
USES AND
GRATIFICATIONS
THEORY
Suggests that active audiences seek out and use different
media texts in order to satisfy a need and experience different
pleasures.
VERTICAL
INTEGRATION
Vertically integrated companies own all or most of the chain of
production and distribution for the product.
VIEWPOINTS
Different perspectives in relation to values, attitudes, beliefs or ideologies.
VIRAL MARKETING
Where the awareness of the product or the advertising
campaign is spread through less conventional ways including
social networks and the Internet.
VISUAL CODES
The visual aspects of the product that construct meaning and
are part of media language, for example clothing, expression,
and gesture.
‘WINDOW ON THE
WORLD’
The idea that media texts, particularly those that present
aspects of reality, for example news programmes, are showing the audience the ‘real’ world as it happens.
