Media Revsion

> Semiotics

Roland Barthes – Connotation, Denotation and Myth

De Saussure – Signifier and Signified

C S Pierce – Iconic, indexical and symbolic

Syntagm – Combination of images and words

Paradigm – how we can create differentiation in meaning via small changes.


> Narrative

Todorov – Equilibrium, disequilibrium, back to equilibrium

Propp – Character types such as hero, dispatcher, princess

Levi-Strauss – Binary oppositions

Freytag – Inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action – 3 acts

Chatman – Satellites and Kernels


> Genre

Steve Neale – Repetition of similarity and differences. Verisimilitude and diegesis.


> Postcolonialism

Edward Said – Orientalism – they cant represent themselves, they are viewed as stereotypes by the West.

Jaques Lacan – The ‘other’, mirror stage at 3.

Franz Fanon – Wretch of the Earth –  ‘mechanics of colonialism and its effects of those it ensnared‘ – racial stereotyping, derogatory abuse – as acceptable social interaction due to society ideas

Gilroy – Double Consciousness – multiple identity such as black and French. Hybridity – being a part of multiple identities. Syncretism – hybrid of multiple cultures.

Althusser – ISA

Gramsci – Cultural hegemony and hegemonic struggle

Ghost Town – British yet represents multiple music genres such as ska, pop – multicultural. United protest against Thatcher.


> Representation


> Feminist Critical thinking

Laura Mulvey male gaze and female gaze. Idea of scopophilia (pleasure of looking) and fetishism (cuts of different parts) – 1st Wave

Judith Butler – gender as a performance – multiple identities that are performed to different people, in different social settings, under different social conditions

bel Hook’s – multicultural – multiple identities including racism, gender, sexuality such as female and gay

Van zoonen – also that woman are not fixed as one thing but are intersected with other thing such as race. They are permanently being reconstructed.


> Liberal Free Press

> Transformation of Public Sphere

Habermas – Transformation of Public Sphere


> PSB

Curran ~ Seaton – Diverse landscapes – PSB such as BBC

Livingston & Lunt ~ Regulation – cultural health vs consumer

Hesmondhalgh – Risky Business –


> Ideology


> Audience theories

Gerbner ~ Cultivation Theory – ‘television cultivates from infancy the very predispositions and preferences that used to be acquired from other primary sources‘ – media (mainly tv) shapes the way people think

Hall ~ Reception/Preferred Reading Theory – different views such as hegemonic/negotiated/oppositional depending on different people – audiences are active in making opinions

Lasswell ~ Hypodermic – passive

Lazarfeld ~ 2 Step Flow – active

Shirky ~ End of Audience – the more ideas there are in circulation, the more ideas there are for any individual to disagree with.

Zuboff- Servaince Capitalism as the meida moinotrs us

Jenkins – Media is created through audience feedback – a shift in the public’s role in the political process

> reception theory / theory of preferred reading


> Cultivation theory


> Culture, politics, history


> (Fandom / Moral Panic)