Theorists Flashcards
Barthes - semiotics
Semiology : study of signs (words,images, sounds etc)
E.g Sun is a physical thing but can represent happiness or life.
The 5 codes of Barthes narraritive theory:
- Action : advance the narrative - what will happen next
- Enigma : is not fully explained and becomes a mystery
- Semantic : the connnotation within the text that gives additional meaning
- Symbolic : organise meanings into broader and deeper sets of meanings
- Cultural : point to our shared knowledge about way world works
Steve Neale - Genre theory
Audience expectations and common conventions met through repetition and a few differences.
Levi - Strauss : Binary Opposites
Opposing main characters or elements.
E.g Good vs Evil , Human vs Supernatural , Young vs Old
Stuart Hall - Representation
Media use stereotypes. Stereotypes are often created by those in power from dominant hegomonic groups in society (white males).
David Gauntlett - Identity
Audiences are not passive , and media products allow them to construct their own identities.
They can pick n mix which ideologies suit them and completely ignore the elements they do not agree with in a process of negotiation.
Van Zoonen - Feminist theory
Gender is constructed through codes and conventions of media products.
- Womens bodies often seen as spectacle for heterosexual males - reinforces patriarchal hegemony
Stuart Hall - Reception
encoding done by producers and decoding by audience
Preferred reading - dominant hegemonic position , audience understand and accept ideologies of producer
Negotiated reading - ideologies of producer are agreed with in general but message is picked apart by audience and may be disagreed upon
Oppositional reading - producers message is understood but the audience disagrees and neglects the ideological perspective
Livingstone and Lunt - Regulation
Needs of citizen are in conflict with need of consumer. Restriction/ protection can limit freedom. Regulating media to protect citizens from harmful content limits freedom of expression.
Hesmondhalgh - cultural industries
Minimise risk + maximise audience - media texts tend to be more generic and less creative
-vertical and horizontal integration
Curran and Seaton - Power and media industries
Media is controlled by only a small amount of companies (mostly conglomerates) driven by the logic of power and profit.
- limits creativity, variety and quality
Paul Gilroy - postcolonial theory
The impact that being under direct rule has had on former colonies.
- Ideas and attitudes continue to shape contemporary attitudes about race and ethnicity
Gauntlett - Representation
We used the internet and other media texts to help us create our own identity. We now have more of a variety of representations to identify with - pick n mix
Bell Hooks - Feminist
Feminism is a political struggle to end patriarchal domination other factors affect this domination (e.g race and class)
George Gerbner - Audience (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 (i.e. cultivating particular views and opinions)
The idea that cultivation reinforces mainstream values (dominant ideologies).
Judith Butler - Representation
Identity is performatively constructed by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results
- No gender identity behind the expressions of gender
- Gender is a social construct - ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ are created through repetition
Clay Shirky - Fan theory
We are now more likely to use the internet and other technologies to respond to texts, including creating our own. - consumers are no longer as passive with the ability to speak back to the producers
Albert Bandura
The idea that consumers imitate what they see in the media.
Blumer and Katz - Uses and Gratification
People interact with media for 4 reasons:
- Identify - Be able to recognise the product or person in front of you (role models)
- Educate - Learn something from the media
- Entertainnment - What you see should entertain you - it should offer some form of ‘escapism’
- Social interaction - form of media can create conversation and or offer a person a sense of being in a group
Baudrillard - post-modernism
In postmodern culture the boundaries between the ‘real’ world and the world of the media have collapsed and that it is no longer possible to distinguish between what is reality and what is simulation.
Todorov - Narratology
Todorov’s theory of narrative equilibrium is based around a three act structure.
Firstly, a state of balance or equilibrium is established.
This balance is disrupted or broken in some way, which leads to a liminal period or period of disruption. This second stage typically takes up the majority of a narrative.
Finally, a typical narrative will conclude with a partial restoration of the equilibrium or new equilibrium, which will see the world of the narrative return to some sense of normality.
Henry Jenkins - fandom
Fandom refers to a particularly organised and motivated audience of a certain media producer franchise
Rather than just play a videogame or watch a TV show, fans
construct their social and cultural identities through borrowing and utilising mass culture images, and may use this ‘subcultural capital’ to form social bonds.
