COM1010 Exam revision lecture

: Exam format

• Part A• Multiple choice• 10 questions• Part B• Short answer (5-600 words approx)• 3 questions – you choose two from the three• Look at old exams: on the library homepage,

click on the ‘past exams’ link and enter the unit code

Topic 1

• Media as industry• Media as texts• Media Audiences• Critical/ European Approach• Pragmatic/American Approach• Media texts as commodities• Media as consciousness industries

• “Media” refers to the relationship between industries, texts and audiences and it is this relationship, and these three components, which are the focus of discussion in media studies.

Critical / European approach examines media and its relationship to class and power in society. It seeks to understand how media is used to maintain unequal relationships in society and how media could be changed to improve society. This approach most often uses the methods of textual analysis to study the media.

The Pragmatic / American approach is focussed on gathering information on how the media is used in society using models of study adapted from science. It takes a ‘materialist’ approach in that it does not seek to use the media as a way of discussing how society can be improved, but is interested in how media can more effectively do what it already does.

• Media texts as commodities: they circulate in a market where they must make a profit. They also ‘sell’ the audience to advertisers.

Media as consciousness industries: media texts influence and reflect the way a society, and the individuals within it, think about themselves and what is right and wrong, what is normal and abnormal and so on.

: Topic 2

• Methods of text analysis• Semiotics• Content Analysis• Intertextuality• Hybrid nature of media texts• ‘Closing’ meaning• Ideology: Media’s role in reproducing

common sense ways of seeing the world

• Text analysis: how texts make meaning. Taking a close look at the way media texts present themselves and attempt to produce ‘preferred readings’ in their audiences.

Semiotics: is a way of analysing how texts make meaning which breaks the text down into ‘signs’. A sign is made up of a signifier and signified and it is the relationships between the signifier and signified that produces meaning.

Content analysis: takes the meaning of a text as ‘given’ and quantifies instances of particular meanings to look at the diversity of representation across a collection of media texts.

• Intertextuality: a term from semiotics which refers to the way signs within one text refer to other texts to make meaning. (eg: a quotation is a simple example of intertextuality, the name of a film star on a film advertisement is another). Knowledge of these other texts is often needed for the reader to make sense of the text.

• Hybrid nature of media texts: refers to the mixing of genres in a particular text and how this mixing relies on multiple intertextual references for the text to make sense.

‘Closing’ meaning: producers of media texts try to produce a preferred interpretation of the text by limiting the potential of the signs in the text. Anchorage is the most common example of this: the caption accompanying the picture points to the interpretation we should make of it.

Ideology: refers to media’s role in reproducing common sense ways of seeing the world ie: “winning is good”, “the endpoint of every successful heterosexual relationship is always marriage” etc.

Topic 3

• Regulation of the media

• Ownership of the media

• Production issues

• Political economy approach: ‘the public good’, access to hardware and media texts

• Intro to public sphere

• CPE looks at how the financial and industrial organisation of media industries shape and determine the kinds of texts produced.

Therefore it considers issues such as diversity of textual representations and how this is effected by the diversity (or lack thereof) of ownership of media companies.

It also looks at how the industrial modes of production in particular media industries influence the kinds of texts produced.

CPE is interested in the role of government regulation in the production and access to media texts.

CPE takes the critical / European approach to the media by examining how media influences the public sphere and impacts on upon the public good. This includes an interest in how socio-economic factors impact on audiences’ access to media texts

• Public sphere• “A metaphorical term that’s used to describe the virtual space where people

can interact” (McKee 2005:4).

• “It’s where each of us finds out what’s happening in our community, and what social, cultural and political issues are facing us. It’s where we engage with these issues and add our voices to discussions about them, playing our part in the process of a society reaching a consensus or compromise about what we think about issues, and what should be done about them” (McKee 2005: 4-5).

• Characteristics of the public sphere in the critical political economy approach are: openness, diversity, accessibility

• The interest in the public good and the public sphere underpin the interest in ‘democracy’ in the CPE approach to media. This results in an interest in “how the economic dynamics of production structure public discourse by promoting certain cultural forms over others” (Golding & Murdock 1991: 27).

Topic 4

• Liberal view of media

• the liberal theory of the media which sees the media as an important element of democracy which ‘serves’ it audiences best when it is allowed to be conducted in a free, unregulated market.

• Criticisms: contraction, monopolies etc

Political economy & textual analysis of the news

• News values (journalist practices; audience expectations) News and its relationship to reality

• Ideological frameworks within the news

• News values refer to the professional judgements that journalists make when deciding what will count as news. These values are both ideological and structural: they impact on the content and the ways it is presented: see Watson’s list of news values.

The analysis of news values reminds us that the presentation of ‘news’ is never simply a presentation of ‘the reality’ of an event: it is a text which is produced through the use of values and textual strategies.

Like all media, news is often organised around the deep structures of ideology: the things people know so well they do not even notice them.

Screen genres & audiences

• Classical Hollywood Cinema Elements that shape the meaning of a film:

• mise-en-scene (the setting, costumes, props, actors and extras, etc.)

• camera movement• camera angles• sound / music• Lighting• editing

• Genre functions as both a way of making meaning in a text but also needs to be different each time to maintain an audiences interest: if every instance of a genre was identical people would no longer want to consume it as it would be entirely predictable.

Classical Hollywood Cinema developed many of the structures still used in cinema today such as the emphasis on character; linear narrative; the ‘omnipotent’ narrator which sees through the camera; the use of continuity in editing to give the representation of a ‘seamless’ reality (shot / reverse shot structure)

Truman Show• Intertextuality /hybrid text• Reflecting upon the increased role of media in society?• Is the film a critical comment of media society or mere product of it• Spectatorship• Media technologies and the perception of ‘reality’• The Truman Show gave us the opportunity to apply some of the

approaches we have looked at in the unit to a film text.• We discussed intertextuality and the star system; the status of the

film as a hybrid text; and we discussed the arguments for and against interpreting it as critique of media society or merely just another product of it.

Topic 6: Participatory Media and Cultural Difference

• Return to notion of public sphere

• Public sphere in the age of digital media

• Fragmentation or emancipation of marginalised voices

• Dissemination vs. dialogue

• Public service media

• Postmodern public sphere

Topic 7: Media Sport & Power

• The sociology of sport:• Historical organization and production of sport• Social organization and production of sport• Cultural organization and production of sport:• Economic organization and production of sport• Sport and discourse• Sport class & gender• Relationship between sport and national identity

• Last week we looked at sport as a product of particular historical developments, such as the increased leisure time of the working class. We also considered how sport can be thought of as presenting bodies on display and bodies at work, and how these distinctions revolve around class distinctions.

We also considered how sport is effected by its involvement with media – the mediation of sport brings our attention to the effects of media demands on how sport is played (eg: 20/20 cricket); how the presentation of sport in the media is organized by particular textual structures such as voice-over; replay; close-ups; and framing texts such as pre- and post-match commentaries.

Exam: good answers

• Will refer to the readings

• (you don’t need to cite page numbers)

• Refer to variety of approaches ie: political economy and text analysis

• Use the terms of the subject as much as possible eg. genre, ideology, regulation, sign = signifier + signified

• Support statements with examples