KEY CONCEPTS
To be able to study Media Studies effectively, there are five key areas or concepts that is fundamental to understand to apprehend how the Media works.
"It's not about looking at the media, but about how the media works."
The first letters spell LIIAR, they are Language, Institution, Ideology, Audience and Representation, and they are the base of Medias.It's important to do not see the Key Concepts as separate and stand alone: instead they work in unison, the concepts flow one into each other as the text is being analysed.
Language
In Media Studies, the word "text" is used to describe any media product (such as adverts, radio programs, web pages, but also films and photographs)."Texts" are the main point in understanding how media languages create meaning, and every text has been deliberately constructed (analysed); every choice (color, clothing, layout) has been thought about in detail as to how it will appeal to it's target audience.Media language is the way in which the meaning of a media text is conveyed to the audience through words, sounds, signs and symbols and the forms and conventions by which it does so (semiotics.)
Every text is encoded by the creator and decoded by the audience.
When deconstructing a text, we use a process which looks at denotation (signifier), what you see, and connotation (signified), the meaning behind the denotation.
Denotation
Connotation
Any media text is polysemic, which means that any media text can assume multiple meanings and is open to interpretation, we have learnt how to do it though constant exposure to them, from a range of codes we have learned to read, and this is culturally determined, that's why it's different from one to another.
An audiences' understanding of media come from their knowledge.
Institution
A media institution is a company or organisation, public or privately owned, that produces, distributes or is accountable for a media text.
This could be through Marketing, Production, Distribution or Regulation, basically who controls the production process.
Production - Distribution - Exhibition
Production - Distribution - Exhibition
For Media organizations, marketing accomplishes three important and interrelated functions: (1) to identify and create, distribute, and promote their products and services to answer to the informational, educational, and entertainment needs of their audiences;
(2) to market their products and services to advertisers and third parties; and
(3) to increase brand awareness and develop strategies to promote organizational growth.
Both journalists and marketing practitioners use media channels to deliver information to their audiences.
The term institution refers to assemblages of people and resources under socially recognized affiliation in private an public sectors, Institutions are widely recognized as important analytic objects in geography and the social sciences because of their production
and control of resources.
The institution can affect the final product; by having my product (ex. record) distributed by a determinate company I believe it would be successful as they have a lot of experience with rock music magazines and this is seen throughout some of the most popular music magazines of our time.
A positive aspect of having my media product accounted for by a small published is that more time and focus may occur meaning more interest and control of my magazine. However it would have competition against popular existing rock magazines with a much more influential institutor.
Ideolology
Simply put, ideology is the idea(s) behind the media text, and the secrete (sometimes not secret) agenda of it's producers.
It's important to identify different ideological discourses that are present in an apparently simple photograph.
So, media is a set of beliefs (the prevalent ones are those held by the ruling/dominant groups), that underpins an institution and leads to social relations.
Ideology generally refers to the promoted "ideals" for which society feels the need to conform.
These ideals are influenced by a number of different social institutions; one of these is the mass media (media technologies that are intended to reach a large audience by mass communication).
Football currently has an hegemonic status in the UK: glance through the sports pages and see what coverage other sports get?
everyone is expected to understand and accept his national importance.
Hegemony is not a forced political movement.
(No one is forced to watch/listen to/read about football.)
It just seems like sometimes there are few alternatives.
This is how hegemonies take hold:
A majority to "fit in" with the cultural values and ideas of their time, and the minority keep their objections quiet.
Producers of media text design it with a certain meaning in mind, they hope that audiences will decode their text in a certain way and preferred reading are those which tie in with hegemonic beliefs.
For example, the idea of beauty and the "ideal" female shape propounded in western magazines; it's accepted as natural that models in magazines should be young and drastically underweight.
Since the 1960's the preferred reader has been that these women are beautiful.
However, recently there are signs that the hegemonic belief has adapted to the concerns that this body shape is actually unhealthy (A new bill approved by the French legislature has made it illegal for modeling agencies and fashion houses to employ models who are too thin.)
But preferred reading start to shift.
Ideological analysis is not simply reduced to political criticism, whereby the critic loudly denounces the "bad" idea in the media, at its best, ideological analysis provides a window onto the broader ideological debates going on in society. It allows us to see what kind of ideas circulates through media texts, how they are constructed, how they change every time, and when they are being challenged.
1950
It's important to identify different ideological discourses that are present in an apparently simple photograph.
So, media is a set of beliefs (the prevalent ones are those held by the ruling/dominant groups), that underpins an institution and leads to social relations.
Ideology generally refers to the promoted "ideals" for which society feels the need to conform.
These ideals are influenced by a number of different social institutions; one of these is the mass media (media technologies that are intended to reach a large audience by mass communication).
Football currently has an hegemonic status in the UK: glance through the sports pages and see what coverage other sports get?
everyone is expected to understand and accept his national importance.
Hegemony is not a forced political movement.
(No one is forced to watch/listen to/read about football.)
It just seems like sometimes there are few alternatives.
This is how hegemonies take hold:
A majority to "fit in" with the cultural values and ideas of their time, and the minority keep their objections quiet.
Producers of media text design it with a certain meaning in mind, they hope that audiences will decode their text in a certain way and preferred reading are those which tie in with hegemonic beliefs.
For example, the idea of beauty and the "ideal" female shape propounded in western magazines; it's accepted as natural that models in magazines should be young and drastically underweight.
Since the 1960's the preferred reader has been that these women are beautiful.
However, recently there are signs that the hegemonic belief has adapted to the concerns that this body shape is actually unhealthy (A new bill approved by the French legislature has made it illegal for modeling agencies and fashion houses to employ models who are too thin.)
But preferred reading start to shift.
Ideological analysis is not simply reduced to political criticism, whereby the critic loudly denounces the "bad" idea in the media, at its best, ideological analysis provides a window onto the broader ideological debates going on in society. It allows us to see what kind of ideas circulates through media texts, how they are constructed, how they change every time, and when they are being challenged.
1950
2015
Audience
Audiences are often treated as homogenous and so are constructions of the imagination of the message sender only.
Without audiences there would be no media.
media organisations produce media texts to make profit:
NO AUDIENCE = NO PROFIT
A particular group at which a product such as a film or advertisement is aimed, is called target audience.
The target audience is given by several information such as Gender, Age, Social Class, Ethnicity, Demographics and Location.
Representation
Representation is the way the media re-present individuals, groups, events and issues.Media don't just provide information in a raw form, the messages that all these media purvey are already shaped by the human beings who control and work in the media and they are products of social complexes.
Media institutions use stereotypes because the audience will instantly understand them.
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