Media and collective identity
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A2 Media Studies (H540) Unit G325 Critical Perspectives in Media
Transcript of Media and collective identity
A2 Media Studies (H540)Unit G325 Critical Perspectives in Media
A collective identity refers to individuals' sense of belonging to a group (the collective).
From the perspective of the individual, the collective identity forms a part of his or her personal identity.
Communities formed from shared identity: age, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, cultural values, political ideas etc.
Not just representations by mainstream media but also self-construction by users of the media.
Collective identity: the individual’s sense of belonging to a group (part of personal identity)
Interactionist theorist Sheldon Stryker states that we interact with others to create an identity, this is called identity negotiation.
This develops a consistent set of behaviours that reinforce the identity of the person or group. Hence, these behaviours then become social expectations.
Representation: the way reality is ‘mediated’ or ‘re-presented’ to us.
Focus: women/gender representation.
Diverse representations including fiction, non-fiction and self-representation.
For the exam, your own examples and analysis of your case of study is what will gain you marks.
There are four areas you need to understand in preparing for the exam:
1. How do the contemporary media represent women?
2. How does contemporary representation compare to previous time periods?
3. What are the social implications of different media representations of groups of people?
4. To what extent is human identity increasingly ‘mediated’?
1. How do the contemporary media represent women? How are women represented? Discuss how the representations use
stereotypes Are the representations hegemonic/ reinforcing dominant ideologies? Do they
challenge hegemony? Are they represented as heterogeneous/ homogenous; How could terms and phrases like Female solidarity, Constructed certitude,
Consciously cultivated (fe)male bond, Socialisation, Binary, Plurality, Femininities/ masculinities be useful in discussing the representations?
Who are these representations aimed at, and how does this affect the way the women are represented? (Audience)
Who is creating these representations?(Institutions/Media organisations) How are women represented in the media industry, as well as by the media? What is the purpose of these representations? How does the media construct representations of groups of people? How is collective identity constructed?
2. How does contemporary representation compare to previous time periods?
Compare a recent case of study (Orange is the New Black, Girls) to another case of study from the past (1950’s-1990’s TV adverts)
What differences/similarities can you find?
Gone girl (David Fincher , 2014)
Feminism is a collection of movements and ideologies aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, cultural, and social rights for women.
Feminist theory, which emerged from feminist movements, aims to understand the nature of gender inequality by examining women's social roles and lived experience; it has developed theories in a variety of disciplines in order to respond to issues such as the social construction of sex and gender.
Women's Suffrage Parade in New York City, May 6, 1912.
After selling her home, Emmeline Pankhurst, pictured in New York City in 1913, travelled constantly, giving speeches throughout Britain and the United States.
Louise Weiss along with other Parisian suffragettes in 1935.The newspaper headline reads "The Frenchwoman Must Vote."
Photograph of American women replacing men fighting in Europe, 1945
International Women's Day rally in Dhaka, Bangladesh on 8 March 2005,organized by the National Women Workers Trade Union Centre.
Decontextualisation:
Consider (something) in isolation from its context.
Instrumentalisation:
The act of rendering something instrumental. The act of direct, organize or adapt something.
Beyonce performs onstage at the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards at The Forum on August 24, 2014 in Inglewood, California.
Singer Beyonce performs onstage during the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards at The Forum on August 24, 2014 in Inglewood, California.
The “This is how a feminist looks like” campaign
Apart from the obvious decontextualisation and political instrumentalisation of the concept feminism shown in the previous examples, some other debates which imply ideological confrontations have prompted from the media.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2827035/Scandal-62p-hour-T-shirts-Shame-feminists-betrayed-cause-writes-ROSIE-BOYCOTT.html
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/04/feminist-t-shirts-made-ethical-conditions-fawcett-society
http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/sustainable-fashion-blog/2014/nov/08/feminist-t-shirt-scandal-ethical-problem-economic
Miss Representation is a 2011 American documentary film written, directed, and produced by Jennifer Siebel Newsom.
It explores how mainstream media contribute to the under-representation of women in influential positions by circulating limited and often disparaging portrayals of women.
3. What are the social implications of different media representations of groups of people? What impact does the media have on audiences’ sense of
identity?
How do audiences respond to/ use media representations?
To what extent are audiences active in constructing their own sense of identity?
How useful are Uses and Gratification theory/ Hypodermic Needle Theory/ Cultivation theory in understanding audiences’ responses to media representations?
Does the media reflect or shape our sense of who we are?
Stereotyping: what is its impact?
What power does the audience have to ‘resist’?
How do we ‘measure’ the representations we encounter?
4. To what extent is human identity increasingly ‘mediated’?
Does the media reflect or shape our sense of who we are?
Is the media increasingly important in how we shape our identity?
How powerful is the media in shaping/ helping us to shape who we are?
Increasing media = increasing mediation?
Re-presentation by others/by selves
Thesis:
A statement or theory that is put forward as a premise to be maintained or proved
(In Hegelian philosophy) a proposition forming the first stage in the process of dialectical reasoning, being the other two: Antithesis: The negation of the thesis as the second
stage in the process of dialectical reasoning.
Synthesis: the final stage in the process of dialectical reasoning, in which a new idea resolves the conflict between thesis and antithesis.
Laura Mulvey (born August 15, 1941) is a British feminist and film theorist.
She is currently professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck, University of London.
She worked at the British Film Institute for many years.
As a filmmaker she co-wrote and co-directedwith her husband Peter Wollen:
Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons (1974) Riddles of the Sphinx (1977) Perhaps their most influential film) AMY! (1980) Crystal Gazing (1982) Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti (1982) The Bad Sister.
Other films Disgraced Monuments (1991), documentary film co-directed
with Mark Lewis.
Mulvey is best known for her essay, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, written in 1973 and published in 1975 in the influential British film theory journal Screen. It later appeared in a collection of her essays entitled Visual and Other Pleasures, as well as in numerous other anthologies.
Prior to Mulvey, film theorists such as Jean-Louis Baudry and Christian Metz used psychoanalytic ideas in their theoretical accounts of the cinema.
Her article is one of the first major essays that helped shift the orientation of film theory towards a psychoanalytic framework.
Mulvey's combative text, however, inaugurated the intersection of film theory, psychoanalysis and feminism.
This article is based on the theories of Sigmund Freud as formulated in his Three essays on Sexuality (1905) and Jacques Lacan in The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I (1966),
Use of semiotic analysis and psychoanalysis (Freud and Lacan) to elaborate a feminist thesis about traditional narrative fiction cinema (“Psychoanalysis as a political weapon”)
Proposes an alternative avant-garde cinema which will differ politically and aesthetically from the mainstream Hollywood film
Symbolic order of society is dominated by the heterosexual male gaze.
Dichotomy and sexual imbalance in that symbolic order: male-active/female-passive.
Objectification of woman as representation / signifier of male desires and fears.
Audience are forced to identify with the heterosexual male gaze of the male protagonist, even if they are homosexual males or women.
Here is an illustrated example of this theory:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUcvlJmCVcI
Scopophilia (Freud) Love to look at.From Greek Scopo (Mirror), scopein (to look at) and
philia/philein (love to/ to love)
Voyeurism (from French voyeur): A person who gains sexual pleasure from watching others
when they are naked or engaged in sexual activity. A person who enjoys seeing the pain or distress of others
Diegesis vs. Mimesis (Aristotle)
1975 – Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
Schopophilia (Freud) - pleasure in looking
‘The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure’. (1989: 19)
Cinema screen acts as distorting mirror (Lacan) for spectators who then (mis)recognise themselves
Stuart McPhail Hall (3 February 1932 –10 February 2014) was a Jamaican born cultural theorist and sociologistwho lived and worked in the United Kingdom from 1951.
Hall, along with Richard Hoggart andRaymond Williams, was one of the founding figures of the school of thought that is now known as British Cultural Studies or The Birmingham School of Cultural Studies.[1]
Role of a text according to its institution-audience relation:
Active institutional view: Message transmitted from institution (active emitter) to audience (passive receiver), which accepts the preferred reading (the one which the media producers want the audience to receive)
Negotiated view: The institution encodes a meaning into the text which the audience interprets in relation to other factors (i.e. knowledge of previous similar texts) Meaning is ‘negotiated’ between institution and audience.
Active audience view: The meaning is re-created by the audience (active receiver). The institution becomes passive since it has no control over how the audience re-creates the meaning of that text.
According to Stuart Hall, there are 3 main ways which audiences take about representation. They are called views.
The reflective view
The intentional view
The constructionist view
According to this view, when the media represents something, the audience are taking its true meaning and trying to create a replica of it in the mind of our audience, like a reflection.
This is the view that many people have of how news works: the news producers take the truth of news events and simply present it to us as accurately as possible.
This is the opposite of the Reflective view.
This time the most important thing in the process of representation is the person doing the representing-they are presenting their view of the thing they are representing and the words or images that they use mean what they intend them to mean.
According to this theory, if you see a picture of an attractive person drinking a can of Coke in an advert, it will have the same meaning to you as the advertiser intended- go away and buy some!
This is really a response to what have been seen a weakness in the other two theories- constructionists feel that a representation can never just be the truth or the version of the truth that someone wants you to hear since that is ignoring your ability as an individual to make up your own mind and the influences of the society that you live in on the way that you do so.
This emphasises the role of the audience and their readingsand the context they are in.
Any representation is a mixture of:
The thing itself.
The opinions of the people doing the representation.
The reaction of the individual to the representation.
The context of the society in which the representation is taking place.
Preferred Reading: The dominant view and what the creator wants you to see.
Oppositional Reading: The complete opposite reading to what the creator had intended.
Negotiated Reading: An understanding of the dominant reading but can also see it from other perspectives.
Aberrant Reading: Completely reject the product and have no view at all.
Angela McRobbie (born 1951), is a British cultural theorist, feminist and social commentator whose work combines the study of popular culture, contemporary media practices and feminism. She is a Professor of Communications at Goldsmiths College, University of London.
McRobbie has authored many books and scholarly articles on young women and popular culture, gender and sexuality, the British fashion industry, social and cultural theory, the changing world of work and the new creative economy, feminism and the rise of neoliberalism.
One of her main thesis is that “There has been a change in focus from the representations of the passive, dependent female to a more confident focus on the self”
Research on Angela McRobbie main thesis about female gender representation.
Use internet and PDF texts that you can find online.
David Buckingham is one of the leading international researchers in the field of media education, and in research on children and young people's interactions with electronic media.
He is the author, co-author or editor of 24 books, and around 200 articles and book chapters and his work has been translated into 15 languages.
Professor Buckingham has been a Visiting Scholar at the Annenberg School for Communications, University of Pennsylvania, a Visiting Professor at New York University, and a Visiting Professor at the Norwegian Centre for Child Research.
“A focus on identity requires us to pay close attention to the diverse ways in which media and technologies are used in everyday life, and their consequences both for individuals and social groups” (Buckingham, David. Youth, identity and digital media, Cambridge, 2008)
He classifies identity as an ‘ambiguous and slippery’ term:
Identity is something unique to each of us, but also implies a relationship with a broader group.
Identity can change according to our circumstances.
Identity is fluid and is affected by broader changes.
How can you relate this to GENDER representation?
Identity becomes more important to us if we feel it is threatened.
David Gauntlett (born 15 March 1971) is a British sociologist and media theorist. His earlier work concerned contemporary media audiences, and has moved towards a focus on the everyday making and sharing of digital media and social media, and the role of such media in self-identity and self-expression.
“Identity is complicated. Everyone thinks they’ve got one. Magazines and talk show hosts urge us to explore our ‘identity’. Religious and national identities are at the heart of the major international conflicts. Artists play with the idea of ‘identity’ in the modern society. Blockbuster movie superheroes have emotional conflicts about their ‘true’ identity. And the average teenager can create three online ‘identities’ before breakfast…Thinking about self-identity and individuality can cause some anxiety – at least in cultures where individuals are encouraged to value their personal uniqueness. Each of us would like to think – to some extent – that we have special, personal qualities, which make us distinctive and valuable to the other people in our lives (or potential future friends). But does this mean anything? Is individuality an illusion? Maybe we are all incredibly similar, but are programmed to value minuscule bits of differentiation.”
(Gaunlett, David. Creative explorations: New approaches to identities and audiences. Routledge, London. 2007)
“ I have argued against the view that men’s lifestyle magazines represent a reassertion of old-fashioned masculine values, or a ‘back-lash’ against feminism. Whilst certain pieces in the magazines might support such an argument, this is not their primary purpose or selling point. Instead, their existence and popularity shows men rather insecurely trying to find their place in the modern world, seeking help regarding how to behave in their relationships and advice on how to earn the attention, love and respect of of women and the friendship of other men. In post-traditional cultures, where identities are not ‘given’ but need to be constructed and negotiated, and where an individual has to stablish their personal ethics and mode of living, the magazines offer some reassurance to men who are wondering ‘Is this right?’ and ‘Am I doing this OK?’, enabling a more confident management of the narrative of the self”
(Gaunlett, David. Media, Gender, Identity. Routledge. London. 2002)
The concept of identity is complicated, however, everybody feels/thinks that they have an individual one .
Religious and national identities are at the heart of major international conflicts.
We create numerous identities in a short space of time depending of the circumstances (specially evident in the use of the social networking sites
We like to think we are unique, but Gauntlett questions whether this is an illusion, and we are all much more similar than we think.
Judith Butler (born February 24, 1956) is an American continental philosopher and gender theorist whose work has influenced political philosophy, ethics and the fields of feminist, queer and literary theory.
In her most influential book Gender Trouble (1990), Butler argued that feminism had made a mistake by trying to assert that 'women' were a group with common characteristics and interests.
That approach, Butler said, performed 'an unwitting regulation and reification of gender relations' -reinforcing a binary view of gender relations in which human beings are divided into two clear-cut groups, women and men.
Rather than opening up possibilities for a person to form and choose their own individual identity, therefore, feminism had closed the options down.
Butler notes that feminists rejected the idea that biology is destiny, but then developed an account of patriarchal culture which assumed that masculine and feminine genders would inevitably be built, by culture, upon 'male' and 'female' bodies, making the same destiny just as inescapable. That argument allows no room for choice, difference or resistance.
Butler prefers 'those historical and anthropological positions that understand gender as a relation among socially constituted subjects in specifiable contexts'. In other words, rather than being a fixed attribute in a person, gender should be seen as a fluid variable which shifts and changes in different contexts and at different times.
Butler says: 'There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; ... identity is performatively constituted by the very "expressions" that are said to be its results.' (Gender Trouble, p. 25).
In other words, gender is a performance; it's what you do at particular times, rather than a universal who you are.
“Gender is a performance and gender lifestyle magazines provide the script for this performance”
To what extent do you agree with this statement?
Research on representation of collective identity in Media. Visit the following resources and take notes on contents:
http://petesmediablog.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/collective-identity-exam-questions.html
http://www.slideshare.net/jphibbert1979/media-and-collective-identity-theory-revision
http://www.slideshare.net/jphibbert1979/media-and-collective-young-people
http://mediastudiesnwcc.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/representation-of-youth.htmlhttp://mediastudiesnwcc.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/representation-of-youth.html
Make a PowerPoint presentation including the theoretical aspects that you find most significant/relevant in order to start producing resources for your mock exam. You will be asked to present your research on Tuesday's lesson and share your work with your classmates.
Other recommended resources that you should consult:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDE4VX_9Kk
Michel Foucault Simone de Beauvoir bell hooks Donna Haraway
http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-butl.htm Mulvey, Laura. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Buckingham, David. Youth, identity and digital media,
Cambridge, 2008 Gaunlett, David. Creative explorations: New approaches to
identities and audiences. Routledge, London. 2007 Gaunlett, David. Media, Gender, Identity. Routledge. London.
2002
Almost every mass media text has a commercial purposeand, therefore, is a commercial product itself (perhaps with the exception of a PBS or very particular cases in independent filmmaking or publishing)
A mass media text is made by a media organisation (institution) within a particular context to appeal a particular target audience. Knowledge of this target audience defines the ideology and thus the representation.
The key concept AUDIENCE is closely related to the key concepts REPRESENTATION, INSTITUTION and IDEOLOGY.
All mass media texts have two contexts that you need
to think about when analysing them:
context of production: the context in which they
were made.
context of consumption: the context in which they
are consumed by the audience or market.
Conditions of reception:The contexts of production and consumption
So, when studying a text, it is important to think about:
The historical context for the text: economic, social and political factors
that influenced the way it was made.
The cultural context of construction: conventions, attitudes, ideologies
and expectations exposed in the text.
The institutional context of the text:
Who made it
Why they made it
When/where was distributed
Assumptions made about the target audience
Other texts created by the same institution or within the same genre
that are known by the audience (intertextuality)
Conditions of reception:The contexts of production and consumption
Example of context of consumption:
Towards the end of the Iraq war, the Iraqi authorities ordered Reuters (the famous international news agency) to stop distributing video material to CNN at risk of losing all permission to gather news in Iraq.
Reuters was allowed to continue to send live video material to other news organisations, but not to CNN because the Iraqi authorities felt that it was not being shown in context and was being used as US propaganda about the war rather than as news reporting.
http://media.guardian.co.uk/iraqandthemedia
Conditions of reception:The contexts of production and consumption
Abraham Harold Maslow (April 1, 1908 – June 8, 1970) was an American psychologist who was best known for creating Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a theory of psychological motivation.
Maslow wanted to understand what motivates people. He believed that individuals are motivated to achieve certain needs. When one need is fulfilled a person seeks to fulfill the next one, and so on.
The earliest and most widespread version of Maslow's (1943, 1954) hierarchy of needsincludes five motivational needs, often depicted as hierarchical levels within a pyramid.
Physiological needs: food, water, sleep and sex/procreation.
Safety Needs: security and stability, needed for the physical survival of the person, shelter and safety.
Love and Belonging: which are psychological needs: family and friends.
Esteem needs: the need to be competent and recognized, such as through status and level of success.
Cognitive level: the need to know and understand the world around us, intellectually stimulate ourselves and explore.
Aesthetic needs: which is the need for harmony, order and beauty.
Need for Self-actualization: occurs when individuals reach a state of harmony and understanding because they are engaged in achieving their full potential, self-fulfilment and seeking personal growth and peak experiences.
Transcendence: help others to achieve self-actualization.
http://youtu.be/yM8SwZkvCIY
Effects theory (Frankfurt School, 1930’s)(Passive audience)
Uses and gratifications theory (Blulmer and Katz, 1974) (Active audience)
Reception theory (David Morley, 1980)(Active audience)
Effects theory (Frankfurt School)
The Frankfurt School (Frankfurter Schule) refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main, in the years between the two World Wars, and who were exiled to New York during the Second World War.
The philosophical tradition now referred to as the ‘Frankfurt School’ is perhaps particularly associated with Max Horkheimer(philosopher, sociologist and social psychologist), who took over as the institute's director in 1930 and recruited many of the school's most talented theorists, including Theodor W. Adorno(philosopher, sociologist, musicologist), Erich Fromm (psychoanalyst), and Herbert Marcuse (philosopher).
Effects theory (Frankfurt School)
The hypodermic needle model
The original model proposed to explain how this worked was the hypodermic needle model, which demonstrates the effects of the power of the mass media to inject ideologies in their passive audiences.
This theory owes much to this supposed power of the mass media to the mechanisms of propaganda of the Nazi regime, commonly seen in Nazi propaganda films such as Leni Riefenstahl’s ‘Triumph of the Will’.
Effects theory (Frankfurt School)
The Frankfurt School was concerned with the impact of the rise of the media industries on totalitarian and capitalist societies.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHs2coAzLJ8
The mass audience (which is seen as a passive audience, not as active consumers) is thus manipulated and indoctrinated by the hegemonic ruling classes, and progressively less able to criticise it.
Mass media are seen as a way of entertaining the workers while drip feeding them ideologies and beliefs.
The ‘culture industries’ (as Theodor W. Adorno described them) constantly seek greater audiences, in search of the economical profit and therefore sustainability of the media product. Thus, they will construct texts intended to generate mass audiences, hence dumbing down the product.
Their argument was that the rise of the ‘culture industry’ resulted in increased standardisation within society. Under capitalism, culture is processed through the mass media as something which is bought and sold. Culture is commodified by the mass media in order to fit the capitalist system.
Other Marxist theorists related to Media:
Antonio Gramsci (22 Jan. 1891 – 27 April 1937)
Walter Benjamin (15 July 1892 – 26 Sept. 1940)
Louise Althusser (16 Oct. 1918 – 22 Oct. 1990)
Uses and gratifications theory (Katz, Blulmer and Gurevitch, 1974)
This theory is opposed to the Effects Theory as it considers an active audience, which chooses the texts it consumes and where individuals have different reasons for consuming those texts.
In 1974, Blulmer and Katz suggested a series of possible reasons why audience members might consume a media text:
Diversion: Escape from everyday routine. Personal relationships: Using media for emotional interaction. Personal identity: Learning behaviour and values and constructing their
own identity from media texts. Surveillance: Information gathering (i.e. Educational programmes,
financial news, weather reports,...)
Uses and gratifications theory
Denis McQuail suggests a more detailed breakdown of audience motivation:
Information: Satisfying curiosity and general interest.Learning: Self-education.Personal identity: Finding models of behaviour or reinforcement for personal values. Identifying with celebrities.Integration and social interaction: Finding basis for conversation and social interaction. Identifying with others (sense of belonging)Entertainment: Escaping, relaxing, emotional release.
Information: finding out about the world; seeking advice; satisfying curiosity; education; gaining security through knowledge.
Personal identity: reinforcement of personal values; models of behaviour; identifying with valued other; gaining insight into oneself.
Integration and social interaction: gaining insight into circumstances of others; identifying with others; basis for conversation with others; substitute for real life companionship; helping to carry out social roles; enabling connection with family friends and society.
Entertainment: escapism; diversion; relaxation; cultural or aesthetic enjoyment; filling time; emotional release; sexual arousal.
Reception theory (David Morley, 1980)
In a sense, this is an extension of the uses and gratifications theory.
Reception analysis is based on the idea that no media text has one single meaning.
Instead, the individual members of the audience themselves help to create the meaning of the text. They decode the text, creating different meanings for it.
Factors such as gender, social status, social context, cultural background can be enormously important when we construct the meaning of a text.
Reception theory (David Morley, 1980)
David Morley has exploded the ‘politics of the living room’ and how our understanding of one text may be affected by our knowledge of another and our expectations, based in our previous experience with similar texts.
In 1980, David Morley conducted a very detailed audience study, observing how many different social groups read the same media text. He discovered that there are three main types of reading:Dominant (or hegemonic)NegotiatedOppositional (or counter-hegemonic)
How a message is decoded and its meaning interpreted by the audience?
David Morley (UK.1980) The Nationwide audience and the politics of the living room.
Dominant (or hegemonic) reading: The reader shares the institution’s codes and ideology, and accepts the preferred reading.
Negotiated reading: The reader partly shares the programme’s code but modifies it in a way which reflects their position and interests.
Oppositional (or counter-hegemonic) reading: The reader does not share the programme’s code and rejects the preferred reading, bringing to bear an alternative frame of interpretation (i.e. a feminist reading of a ‘lads’ magazine)
Useful questions we can ask ourselves in order to identify an active institutional view:
Who constructed this text?What context did they construct it for?What other texts have they constructed?What codes and conventions can I recognise from other texts they have constructed?
Useful questions we can ask ourselves in order to identify the negotiated view:
What genre codes and conventions are being used in the text?What do I know about the time and place where this text was constructed?Is this typical of its genre or time and place?What representations are being used in this text to create meaning?What meaning has been encoded into the text?
Useful questions we can ask ourselves in order to identify an active audience view:
How does this text conform to audienceexpectations?
What previous experience does the audience use when consuming this text?
How does the audience create meaning from this text?
How and where might an audience receive this text? How might this influence the meaning they receive?
Useful questions we can ask ourselves when deconstructing a media text:
Who is this text aimed at? What assumptions are made about the audience which
are revealed in the text’s scheduling or positioning? Where and when is the audience likely to receive the
text? How does this influence the form and structure of the
text? How will this audience ‘read’ this text?
In the exam you: have a choice of two questions.
have 60 minutes to answer the ‘Collective identity’ question.
MUST write about two media (e.g. film and magazines. It doesn’t need to be even between the two media, so could be 90% on one and 10% on the other)
MUST apply theory (and name theorists) to your case studies.
Should be able to discuss past, present and future.
We have looked at collective identity in terms gender. Other schools will have looked at different sorts (e.g. youth, representation of Britishness in contemporary cinema, representation of Islam post 9-11 etc.)
The exam question will be broad enough so that you can write about whatever area you have studied.
These are the kind of questions you will be asked:
Discuss the contemporary representation of a nation, region or social group in the media, using specific textual examples from at least two media to support your answer. (Exam Board Sample)
How far does the representation of a particular social group change over time? Refer to at least two media in your answer. (Exam Board Sample)
Looking at two media, describe the ways in which a particular group of people are collectively represented or provided for, using specific examples to support your response. (Textbook)
Analyse the ways in which the media represent one group of people that you have studied. (Jan 2010)
“The media do not construct collective identity; they merely reflect it”. Discuss. (Jan 2010)
A couple of bonus ideas:
To what extent do audiences use media to construct their own sense of collective identity?
“The media has replaced family, society and religion as the main source of collective identity.” Discuss.
Explanation/Analysis/Argument (20 marks) Use of examples (20 marks) Use of terminology (10 marks)
Structure your answer following the PEAT model: Introduction: Definition Different theoretical approaches (Point) Use examples to illustrate your point (Example) Analyse the example to support your point
(Analysis) Use subject terminology in your analysis
(Terminology)
