Key Concepts

There are a number of key concepts which the exam board have specified.

 These are ideally used as frameworks with which to address questions set.

It is up to you to select the frameworks, the ways of thinking, which are best suited to the question set.

Codes: meaning systems consisting of signs. Signs are anything that has the potential to generate meaning, to signify. When a sign has generated meaning, it is said to have achieved signification. This is fundamental to the semiotic approach to the study of communication.

Communication: a process through which meanings are exchanged.

Context: the situation within which communication takes place.

Culture: a particular way of life which expresses certain meanings and values.

Identity: the sense we have of ourselves, which we then ‘represent’ ‘elsewhere’: a person’s social meaning.

Power: control and influence over other people and their actions.

Representation: refers to the construction in any medium (especially the mass media) of aspects of ‘reality’ such as people, places, objects, events, cultural identities and other abstract concepts. Such representations may be in speech or writing as well as still or moving pictures.

Value: the worth, importance, or usefulness of something to somebody.

Cultural Theory

 

Hypodermic Needle Theory

 

• Created by E.D Martin
• The idea that media has a powerful, direct impact on the audience.
• We can't help but be effected by the media that we are exposed to and it shaping our outlook on different situations.
• It has links to propaganda which is the media loaded with a certain ideology.
• It has a negative outlook on the people it effects, it assumes that people aren't clever meaning they don't like to think for themselves.
• An example of this theory is using the same slang as someone from a TV show because you aspire to them.

Uses and Gratifications

• Created by Blumer and Katz
• It gives reasons as to why people buy and watch certain things.
• Includes popular culture and higher culture books, films and clothes.
• Uses for which people have for media artifacts, there are 4 uses:

1. Escapism-You watch and buy things to take or divert attention from the mundane everyday stuff as well as the important things.
2. Personal Relationships-You buy and watch things to develop a relationship with something such as a characters, book or trilogy.
3. Personal Identity-The taking of aspects of their identity from the media and the people from it. It can come from a variety of things.
4. Surveillance-That people gain an understanding of the world around them from the media artifacts around them.