Media Studies key terms Flashcards
Define Action Codes
Something that happens in the narrative that tells the audience that some action will follow.
Define Active Audience
Audiences who actively engage in selecting media products to consume and interpret their meanings.
Define Anchorage
The words that accompany an image (still or moving) give the meaning associated with that image.
Define Audience Consumption
The way in which audiences engage with media products
Define Brand Identity
The association the audience make with the brand, built up over time and reinforced by the advertising campaigns and their placement.
Define Broadsheet
A larger newspaper that publishes more serious news, for
example The Guardian
Define Caption
Words that accompany an image that explain its meaning.
Define Channel Identity
The aspects which make the channel recognisable to
audiences and different from any other channel.
Define Circulation
The dissemination (Spreading of information widely) of media products
Define Colloquial Language
This is conversational language where the words used are
different from and less formal than those in written speech.
Define Commercial Channels
These are channels like ITV and Channel 4 that raise their
money through advertising, unlike the BBC which currently
gets its money from the licence fee.
Define Connotations
The suggested meanings attached to a sign.
Define Conventions
What the audience expects to see in a particular media text.
Define 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.
Define Cover Lines
These suggest the content to the reader and often contain
teasers and rhetorical questions. These relate to the genre of the magazine.
Define Cross-Platform Marketing
In media terms, a text that is distributed and exhibited across a range of media formats or platforms. This may include film, television, print, radio and the Internet.
Define Demographic Category
A group in which consumers are placed according to their age, sex, income, profession.
Define Denotation
The description of what you can see/hear in a media text.
Define Diegetic Sound
Sound that comes from the fictional world and can be heard by the characters.
Define Diversification
Where media organisations who have specialised in producing media products in one form move into producing content across a range of forms.
Define Encoding and Decoding
Media producers encode messages and meanings in products that are decoded, or interpreted, by audiences.
Define Enigma Code
A narrative device which increases tension and audience
interest by only releasing bits of information.
Define Equilibrium
In relation to narrative, a state of balance or stability (in
Todorov’s theory the equilibrium is disrupted and restored).
Define Franchise
An entire series of, for example, a film including the original
film and all those that follow.
Define Gatekeepers
The people responsible for deciding the most appropriate
stories to appear in newspapers.
Define Genre
Media texts can be grouped into genres that all share similar conventions.
Define House Style
What makes the magazine recognisable to its readers every
issue.
Define Hybrid-Genre
Media texts that incorporate elements of more than one genre and are therefore more difficult to classify.
Define Iconography
The props, costumes, objects and backgrounds associated
with a particular genre.
Define Intertextual
Where one media text makes reference to aspects of another text within it.
Define Linear Narrative
Where the narrative unfolds in chronological order from
beginning to end.
Define Mainstream
These are media products that are the most popular at the
time and tend to be the most conventional.
Define Marketing
This is the way in which an organisation tells its audience
about a product.
Define Masculinity
The perceived characteristics generally considered to define what it is to be a man.
Define Mass Audience
Traditional idea of the audience as one large, homogenous
group.
Define Media Conglomerate
A company that owns other companies across a range of
media platforms. This increases their domination of the
market and their ability to distribute and exhibit their product.
Define Media Language
The specific elements of a media product that communicate meanings to audiences, e.g. visual codes, audio codes, technical codes, language.
Define Media Platform
The range of different ways of communicating with an
audience, for example newspapers, the Internet, and
television.
Define Mediation
The way in which a media text is constructed in order to
represent the producer of the text’s version of reality;
constructed through selection, organisation and focus.
Define Mise-En-Scene
How the combination of images in the frame creates meaning; how individual shots in a film or photograph have been composed.
Define Narrative
The ‘story’ that is told by the media text.
Define Non-Deiegetic Sound
Sound that is out of the shot so characters cannot hear it, for example a voiceover or romantic mood music.
Define Non-Linear Narrative
Here the narrative manipulates time and space. It may begin in the middle and then include flashbacks and other narrative devices.
Define Passive Audience
The idea (now widely regarded as outdated) that audiences
do not actively engage with media products, but consume
and accept the messages that producers communicate.
Define Personal Identity
This means your ability to relate to something that happens in a text because it has happened to you.
Define Privileged Spectator Position
Where the camera places the audience in a superior position within the narrative. The audience can then anticipate what will follow.
Define Public Service Broadcast
A radio and television broadcaster that is independent of
government financed by public money and is seen to offer a public service by catering for a range of tastes.
Define Realism
A style of presentation that claims to portray ‘real life’
accurately and authentically.
Define Red Top
A British newspaper that has its name in red at the top of the front page. Red-tops have a lot of readers, but are not
considered to be as serious as other newspapers.
Define Repertoire Of Elements
Key features that distinguish one genre from another.
Define Representation
The way in which key sections of society are presented by
the media.
Define Selection And Combination
Media producers actively choose elements of media
language and place them alongside others to create specific representations or versions of reality.
Define 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.
Define Sign/Code
Something which communicates meaning, e.g., colours,
sounds.
Define Specialised Audience
A non-mass, or niche, audience that may be defined by a
particular social group or by a specific interest.
Define Splash
The story that is given the most prominence on the front page of a newspaper.
Define Stereotype
An exaggerated representation of someone or something. It is also where a certain group are associated with a certain set of characteristics, Stereotypes can be quick ways of communicating information in adverts and dramas.
Define Stripped
A technique used in radio and television whereby a certain
programme is broadcast at the same time every day. In radio this attracts an audience who associate a particular
programme with their daily routine.
Define Sub-Genre
Where a large genre is sub-divided into smaller genres, each of which has their own set of conventions.
Define Subject-Specific Lexis
The specific language and vocabulary used to engage the
audience. Subject-specific lexis used on the front cover of a
magazine will make the reader feel part of the group who
belong to the world of that magazine.
Define Synergy
The combination of elements to maximise profits within a
media organisation or product.
Define Tabloid
Refers to the dimensions of a newspaper; a tabloid is smaller and more compact in size. However, there are further connotations attached to the term and it also tends to refer to a newspaper whose content focuses on lighter news, for example celebrity gossip, sport and television.
Define Tagline
This is the short phrase or slogan that appears in trailers and on posters. It gives a clue to the genre and storyline of the film and often includes an enigma.
Define Technical Codes
These are the way in which the text has been produced to
communicate meanings and are part of media language
Define Under representation
Certain social groups (usually minority groups) may be rarely represented or be completely absent from media products.
Define 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.
Define Vertical Integration
Vertically integrated companies own all or most of the chain of production for the product. For example a film company that also owns a chain of multiplex cinemas to exhibit the film and merchandise outlets.
Define Viral Marketing
Where the awareness of the product or the advertising
campaign is spread through less conventional ways including social networks and the Internet. Viral marketing is so named because many of the messages use ‘hosts’ to spread themselves rapidly, like a biological virus.
Define Visual Codes
The visual aspects of the product that construct meaning and are part of media language, for example clothing, expression, and gesture
