Media Theorists Flashcards
Roland Barthes (Media Language)
Semiotics: Signification, sign and signified. Media uses myths to communicate and which reinforces dominant ideologies in society.
Five codes:
1. Enigma code - unanswered questions
2. Action code - clues to suggest something will happen
3. Semantic code - signs and symbols
4. Symbolic code - opposite meanings
5. Referential code - anything that links to extra knowledge like science, history
Best for advertising, music videos, newspapers, magazines & online media
Tzvetan Todorov (Media Language)
Narratology: all share a basic structure of equilibrium>disequilibrium>new equilibrium
Old Town Road, Ghost Town (?),
television, music videos, radio
Steve Neale (Media Language)
Genre theory: dominated by repetition, variation and differentiation.
Genre is determined by repetition. ‘Genres are repeated instances of repetition and difference’ ‘difference is absolutely essential to the economy of the genre’
Music videos, television
Claude Lévi-Strauss (Media Language)
Binary Opposition: the conflict between binary opposites drives forward the narrative
Combining two opposites to create meaning
Advertising, music videos, newspapers, television, magazines and online media
Jean Baudrillard (Media Language)
Semiotics: hyperreality involves the lines between created texts and reality are becoming blurred
Hyperreality - media creates a hyper-reality based on the continuous process of mediation
Television, online media
Curran and Seaton (Media Institutions)
Power and Media Industries: media is controlled by a small number of companies driven by the logic of profit and power.
The media is controlled by an oligopoly and is driven by profit and power.
Livingstone and Lunt (Media Institutions)
Regulation: Who is the regulation for? Can regulation keep up with new technologies?
Believes there is a struggle in recent Uk regulation between protecting (through censoring) the public. The public needs a choice and ability to read/see what they want.
Digital tech places regulation at risk because people could access material that may have been censored in the past.
David Hesmondhalgh (Media Institutions)
Cultural industries: We should be concerned how only a few companies hold a lot of power and use tried and tested strategies that appeal to us
Minimise risk = maximise profit.
Stuart Hall (Representation)
Representation theories: media language is used to create representations. Stereotyping is often used to assert power
Theory of representation: audiences have different interpretations of the media:
Encoding - media contains ideologies of those who made it
Decoding - audience gain their own ideas on the media text
David Gauntlett (Representation)
Theories of identity: we use the internet and other media texts to help us create our identity.
Media gives us the tools to construct our own identities. ‘Pick and mix’
Liesbet van Zoonen (Representations)
Feminist theory: women are represented as objects and men are the spectacle
Media has the ability to change the outlook on women
bell hooks (Representation)
Feminist theory: feminism is a political commitment rather than a life choice through patriarchal domination
A white woman is shown to be more desirable than a black woman.
Judith Butler (Representation)
Gender perfomativity: gender is a social construct - ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ are created through repetition
Actions or the way people perform can suggest their gender
Paul Gilroy (Representation)
Ethnicity and Postcolonialism: representation of groups are still affected by ex-colonies. There are racial hierarchies
Theory of ethnicity - colonial theory: Blake people may face diasporic experiences in white capitalist culture. May feel unwanted in Britain.
Albert Bandura (Audience)
Effects Debate: if an audience sees aggressive behaviour, they are likely to mimic it
Bobo Doll Experiment: media implants ideas into the audience directly, audiences then acquire attitudes, styles etc