Section B key terms Flashcards
Active Audience
Audiences who actively engage in selecting media products to consume and interpret their meanings
Audience Categorisation
How media producers group audiences (e.g. by age, gender, ethnicity) to target their products
BBFC
British Board of Film Classification - the company who are responsible for deciding an age rating and classification for every video work released in the UK.
Broadsheet
A larger newspaper that publishes more serious news, for example The Daily Telegraph has maintained its broadsheet format.
Censorship
The name for keeping material from an audience. Such material will include graphic images, speech or ideas which may be considered harmful, sensitive or offensive to audience members. Such material and levels of censorship are determined by governments, media outlets and regulatory bodies.
Circulation
The dissemination of media products - the method will depend on the media form, e.g. circulation of print magazines, broadcast of television programmes etc.
Conglomerate
One large company that owns smaller companies in different sectors
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.
Cultural industries
The idea that cultural industry companies try to minimise risk and maximise audiences through vertical and horizontal integration, and by formatting their cultural products and working across a number of industries.
Cultivation Theory
The idea that exposure to repeated patterns of representation over long periods of time can shape and influence the way in which people perceive the world around them.
Demographic category
A group in which consumers are placed according to their age, sex, income, profession, etc. The categories range from A to E where categories A and B are the wealthiest and most influential members of society.
Deregulation
The freeing of media from strict/ state controlled regulation. It is the relaxing of regulation laws.
Desensitisation
The idea that prolonged exposure to violent images numb the effects of them. The more you become accustomed to violent images, the less likely they are to have an impact on the audience. Arguably this had influenced more liberal regulation.
Distribution
The process which ensures a films’ release is done in such a way that the product will reach the widest and largest audience possible.
Diversification
Where media organisations who have specialised in producing media products in one form move into producing content across a range of forms.
‘End of Audience’ Theory
Clay Shirky’s belief that the idea of audience members as passive consumers of mass media content is no longer tenable in the age of the Internet, as media consumers have now become producers who ‘speak back to’ the media.
Exhibition
The methods used to show a media product (such as in a cinema or online streaming).
Fandom
Henry Jenkins belief that fans are active participants in the construction and circulation of textual meanings and construct their social and cultural identities through borrowing and
inflecting mass culture images.
Four Cs
This stands for Cross Cultural Consumer Characteristics and was a way of categorising consumers into groups through their motivational needs. The main groups were Mainstreamers, Aspirers, Explorers, Succeeders and Reformers.
Franchise
An entire series of, for example, a film including the original film and all those that follow.
Free speech
The right for individuals and groups to hold opinions and speak without censorship or restraint.
Gatekeeper
The term for who allows and decides which content will go forward and be published or broadcast. Changing technologies have drastically altered the traditional gatekeeping process.
Globalisation.
We now communicate and share each other’s cultures through travel and trade, transporting products around the world in hours or days. We are also able to send information instantly through new technologies, culture to culture.
Independent Film
A film made outside of the financial and artistic control of a large film company. A truly independent film should be privately conceived and funded. This more commonly refers to a film that is made by a smaller film company on a low budget.
Interactive Audience
The ways in which audiences can become actively involved with a product, for example by posting a response to a blog or live tweeting during a television programme.
Intertextual
Where one media text makes reference to aspects of another text within it. For example, referencing a scene from a film in a television advertisement. Audiences enjoy recognising intertextual references.
IPSO
Independent Press Standards Organisation - the company responsible for regulating the British press (magazines and newspapers).
Mainstream
These are media products that are the most popular at the time and tend to be the most conventional.
Mass Audience
Traditional idea of the audience as one large, homogenous group.
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.
Media monopoly
When one media institution controls or owns a substantial amount of output across press, TV, radio and online media. It can be argued this occurs when deregulation of media occurs as many monopolies aim to eliminate competition.
Media regulation
The control or guidance of media content by governments and other bodies.
Moral Panic
A concept that demonstrates a particular type of overreaction to a perceived social problem/group of people/new technology. The problem is exaggerated and sensationalised in the wider press. Developed in the late 1960s, researchers wanted to expose the media processes involved in creating concern about a social problem.
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.
Oligopoly
A few companies with domination in one sector
Opinion Leaders
People in society who may affect the way in which others interpret a particular media text. With regard to advertising, this may be a celebrity or other endorser recommending a product.
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.
Self-regulation
When individuals make choices about what media to access, or publish as a prosumer. It is also the display of control by established media outlets who can choose what content to distribute based on moral and ethical guidelines.
Stripped Schedule
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, for example driving home from work.
Synergy
The combination of elements to maximise profits within a media organisation or product. For example, where a film soundtrack sells the film and the film sells the soundtrack.
Technological Convergence
The coming together of media technologies. A ‘black box’ is device that combines the function of a number of standalone devices. This means that a mobile phones now acts as a means to consume content anywhere, anytime but also produce content and upload it on the move.
Uses & Gratification
Suggests that active audiences seek out and use different media texts in order to satisfy a need and experience different pleasures.
Vertical Integration
When the production company has the ownership of the means of production, distribution and exhibition.
