CSP’s

CSP 1 – Tomb Raider All Four Areas

• gender representation therefore a radical text
• dominant signifier = Lara Croft
• has an unrealistic shape – female features are easily visible, catches the male gaze
• sexualises and dehumanizes
• Lara in a stereotypical male position, roles reversed, plays hero instead of victim – gun connotations of death
• women are not usually perceived to be dangerous – radical
• pointed nose and sharp nails – emphasized femininity, character is piercing and fierce MALE GAZE
• could be reactionary – w/ rise of the internet, females showing bodies is less taboo
• so there is a positive view of the character that could empower a generation of women
• “avoided hypersexualized… character traits” with the goal to “keep her realistic” –
• which serves a sense of irony
• her abnormally large female features anchor the idea of all women looking, or wanting to look like her which is a myth

CSP 3 – Maybeline – That Boss Life Language & Representation

• elements of advert:
• music = hip-hop style, adds a visual effect
• clothing = gold clothing, implies a lot of money, suggests if audience buys
• dialogue = they are the face of the product, short dialogue & catchphrase focuses on product 
• the advert is different as men are being shown they can wear makeup too
• stereotypes of masculinity
• portrayed a positive brand message – Maybelline is inclusive to all, no matter the skin color & gender
• modern audiences have changed, now they have more diverse ideas, using the same looking people is not as appealing to the audience therefore appeals to a wider audience
• they may expect the brand to represent themselves as inclusive and broad
• setting – New York hotel room = metropolitan, busy, wealthy
• clothes – begin in casual, plain clothes which turn into gold, as if they are saying that this mascara will make you rich and wealthy
• music – hip-hop style, upbeat. Relates to younger audiences, captures attention
• zooms in and out – creates a focus on the product
• dialogue – “bossed up” ‘bosses’ are considered powerful and in charge

CSP 6 – Letter To The free Language & Representation

• the artist = common
• there’s no color – all in black & white
• makes a comment on black lives
• in an abandoned building
• rap / hip hop genre
• there are 4 people in the video – 2 men & 2 women
• Letter to the free explore something that didn’t exist in the past – 
• representation of age, class, gender, race etc.

CSP 8 – The I Audience & Institution

• was introduced in 2010, less traditional
• is owned by The Daily Mail & General Trust
• has shown perspectives from both left (socialist) & right (conservative(traditional)) wing
• on the website ‘The Independent‘, the launch was announced on 19th October 2010
• the first issue went on sale for 20p on 26 October 2010
• claims to be politically balanced and aims to publish from both left and right views as well as take a political stance on the centre the political spectrum
• target audience: left centered, male, university educated, older (25 – 60)
• circulation: 221,083 (October 2019)
• profit: £1 million (December 2017)
• The Daily Mail bought it for £49.6 million in November of 2019.
• example: 5th of November 2020
• featured presidential candidate Joe Biden on the cover in which clearly encouraged him, stating that “Biden edges closer to power.”
• it is as if they collected data from this election to see which side the masses are on as an ominous online media presence
• the fact that is it possible for a newspaper to publish information taken from online sources shows that their political stance can dominate the public’s knowledge, permitting right and left wing views to become less distinguishable

CSP 9 – War of the worlds Audience & Institution

• it tricked people into believing aliens were invading new Jersey due to the “breaking news” style of the broadcast
• People in the 1900’s had less knowledge and were more naive when it came to media/news
• Passive audience – Lasswell
• The science fiction drama was broadcasted from CBS
• It is a radio podcast of a science fiction novel that was written by H.G Wells
• CBS radio’s ultimate goal was to create publicity
• estimated that around 30 million people were tuned in
• ‘risky business’ (Hesmondhalgh)
• Influence of new technology – New media reaches a different and wider network of people/viewers

CSP 10 – Ghost Town Language & Representation

• British band named the specials
• 12th June 1981
• it spent 3 weeks at number 1 and 10 weeks in the top 40
• it addresses themes of urban decay, industrialization and unemployment
• At the time, this was prominent in inner city areas like London due to the steel and textiles industries being carried overseas due to cheaper labor costs
• also, racial tension was growing higher, resulting in large riots across Britain
• Car = could be a symbolic sign relating to how close the band members are to each other, or how the only have each other in a town with limited people
• The throwing of stones could be a symbol of throwing away or letting go of the past
• Ghost town = eclectic mix + double consciousness

CSP 12 – The daily mail Audience & Institution

• introduced in 1896
• owned by Daily Mail and General Trust plc
• clearly supports the conservative party
• racism – 2012 a former Daily Mail reporter stated that “there’s institutional racism” at the Daily Mail, meaning that there is racism embedded as normal practice within this organization
• sexism – scolds any female celebrity trying to empower women for ‘trying to have it all’ and any one who ‘dares to bare’ at the beach is criticized and shamed about her body
• “immigrant-bashing, woman-hating, Muslim-smearing, NHS-undermining, gay-baiting” is how a critic described the daily mail on intelligence2.com who are partners with New York Times
• example:
• 2013 article on Ralph Milliband, father of Ed Milliband the then labor leader, titled “The Man Who Hated Britain”
• Ed Miliband said that the article was “ludicrously untrue”
• Ralph is a Jewish refugee from the Holocaust which the article commented on saying “Jews can’t be trusted because of their divided loyalties’
• A Jewish newspaper described the article as a “genre of antisemitism.”

CSP 13 – Score hair liquid Language & Representation

• 1970’S – it shows the personality and the sexism typical of American society and culture at the time
• “Sexy Women Carrying Big Game Hunter” – 1967 Playboy Magazine
• it uses females to create the idea that if men use the hair cream they will get girls
• “get what you’ve always wanted”
• male gaze – 2nd wave feminism, hyper masculinity
• jungle = dangerous so there needs to be strong male character
• alliteration of ‘gr’ sound makes an animistic tone, relates to leopard print on the throne
• Score creates a narrative that females will ‘worship’ the man who wears this hair cream and that they will be irresistible. 
• Mise en Scene (setting the scene) – by the way the people have been positioned, where the male is being lifted by the women to show that he is above them as they ‘worship’ how good he is, the man is the one who appears to be smiling the most. We see that his masculine features are put in the frame clearly e.g his arms
• underlying message of empowering women? they are carrying a man implying that they are strong enough to do so, a task that would typically would be man’s job
• The narrative in this advert audiences’ may respond has changed over time because there has been an increase in equality towards women. This would have been seen as sexist in earlier years as women are underneath men and their power, however, now there are more rights

CSP 14 – Chicken Audience & Institution

• stock characters
• protagonist/hero – Richard, Annabelle
• antagonist/villain – Polly
• victim/donor – Chicken
• loner – Polly
• false hero – Polly
• dispatcher – Polly
• father figure – guy from scrap yard & guy from fair
• binary oppositions
• rich vs poor
• educated vs uneducated
• public vs private
• old vs young
• incest vs being normal

CSP 16 – life hacks

• A podcast type programme from BBC Radio 1
• It is hosted by Katie Thistleton and Vick Hope
• This encourages digital consumption and interaction
• Target audience: 15 – 29, however only 41% are in the target audience age range and their median age is 32
• Title – associated with the youth demographic, suggesting that the show is targeting youth/millennials

• The content discussed is mainly focused on topics that concern the younger generation, for example, issues surrounding mental health, anxiety, stress & relationships etc
• The presenters give the audience some insight into their personal life which helps the listeners to feel more connected and supported by them
• This forms a relationship as audiences feel relief in the fact that other young adults are going through similar things
• The music is usually upbeat and pop which matches the pace of the show and appeals to the mainstream audience
• in terms of uses and gratifications (Blumler and Katz):
• Audience pleasures:
• Personal identity – being able to relate to the stories being told and seeing yourself in the different topics mentioned
• Personal relationships – feeling of support as a result of knowing that there is an area for advice and help e.g. knowing that people are going through similar experiences
• Education – learning about different ways of handling problems ect
• Diversion – listening to different podcasts meaning you are able to escape from what you are going through by seeking help and allowing yourself to listen to other people’s stories
• branding/advert??? idek:
• Colour scheme – bright and uses quite cartoonish colors which would appeal more to a younger audience 
• Emojis – the emojis suggest that this ad is aimed at more of a youth audience; stereo typically the younger generation is more accustomed to social media and would be more likely to be attracted to social media linked content
• “How does social media make you feel?” – this question directly links to social media thus creating a discussion about its influence

Media Language:

1. Semiotics:

• the study of signs
• sign – something that represents or signifies something else
• signifier – a thing or object
• signified – the meaning of something
• iconic sign – something that is directly connected to an object
• indexical sign – something that is indirectly linked to an object
• symbolic sign – something that has relation link based on an agreement
• code – signs or symbols that mean a specific thing
• dominant signifier – the main accepted meaning of a sign
• anchorage – some signs hold down and fix meaning
• ideology – a set of beliefs and values that a person has
• signification – an exact meaning
• denotation – the most basic meaning
• myth – something that has been altered to make it seem different or better than it actually is
• radical text – a text that challenges a dominant ideology
• reactionary text – a text that supports the dominant ideology
• Roland Barthes
• he was interested in the ways in which dominant structures created dominant ideologies
• He suggested texts may be ‘open’ or ‘closed’. Closed texts are those that are produced with a single, definitive meaning in mind making any interpretation from the audience inaccurate
• Ferdinand de Saussure
• he was interested in language and the connection between a thing the meanings attached to it
• C. S. Pierce
• created the idea of iconic, indexical and symbolic signs

2. Genre

• A repertoire of elements – a collection of static groups which consistently have similar elements
• corpus – when genres evolve as new texts are added to the body of similar texts
• hybridisation – the combination of genre or subgenre
• historic specificity – genres that are associated with certain time periods
• narrative image – telling a story in the moment or how its going or sequence of events unfolding over time
• suspend disbelief – to immerse yourself in a fictional narrative
• generic regime of verisimilitude – refers to what is likely to happen in in a genre
• Can have stock characters within texts
• Stephen Neale
• Invented the the idea of genre theory
• Jenkins
• Media is created through audience feedback – a shift in the public’s role in the political process
• Genre constantly ‘Breaks Rules’ e.g. evolving hybridization
• Todorov
• Equilibrium
• Disruption
• New equilibrium
• Propp
• Stock characters: Hero, villain, false hero, princess, dispatcher, helper ect
• Claude Levi-Strauss
• Binary Oppositions
• it helps to create the dominant message (ideology) of a text 
• the way in which individuals decode specific texts is also contingent on their own individual ideas, attitudes and beliefs
• So decoding a text is not necessarily the same thing as agreeing on its’ fixed meaning
• This way they can discuss ideological stances on gender, race, class, age
• Seymour Chatman
• Satellites & kernels 
• Kernels:key moments in the plot / narrative structure
• Satellites:embellishments, developments, aesthetics, not essential to the story
• Freytag
• Freytag’s pyramid 
• Exposition -> rising action -> climax -> falling action -> resolution

Representation:

1. Femist critical thinking

• gender representation
• Misogyny, patriarchy, sexism
• happens in s structural level (companies, organisations)
• happens at a textual level (individual images, film)
• the male gaze, the signs of visual pleasure
• ‘woman as image, man as bearer of the look,’ 
• looking has been split between active/male and passive/female
• constructs a male fantasy – no truth in female representation, they are coded for strong visual & erotic impact
• scopophilia – pleasure in looking
• voyeurism – the sexual pleasure gained in looking
• fetishism – cutting out certain parts to draw focus to something
• first wave of feminism – suffragettes
• second wave of feminism – 60s & 70s, society is made around male desire
• third wave of feminism – women who are younger who believes in plurality, alert
• fourth wave of feminism – defined by technology
• use bodies as a way of liberation
• Intersectionality
• masculinity and femininity are constructions
• accepting normative values is problematic
• deconstruction of music video can reveal sexism, racism etc
• Bell Hooks
• multiple identities including racism, gender (fluidity), sexuality 
• politics of difference
• Judith Butler
• female behaviour as a performance
• multiple identity is performed to different people in different situations
• gender is socially constructed
• prioritise your individual agency
• Van Zoonen
• gender stereotypes
• women are not fixed as one thing but are intersected with other things such as race
• they are permanently being reconstructed

2. Postcolonialism:

• operates a series of signs maintaining the European-Atlantic power over the Orient (‘The other’)
• The west has duality as it has the power to create itself and others, therefore the media is not neutral – Europe is made to seem better
• Orientalism makes the middle east seem anything from erotic to dangerous
• The production of culture affects worldviews
• Society is structured to keep you in your place – socially constructed
• The ruling ideology constructs us (the ideas of the ruling class)
• identity as doubled or hybrid or unstable
• For example, blackface, they are scared of black people rising up & taking power
• About fighting the power
• How certain cultural forms predominate over others, which means that certain ideas are more influential than others
• But the power can change, it can change through culture
• Post colonialism articulates a desire to reclaim, re-write and re-establish cultural identity and thus maintain power of The Empire 
• Althusser
• ideological state apparatus (ISA) describes all the things which have an impact on us & makes us who we are
• the way society encodes you is called interpellation, it shapes us, forced to look & think
• the notion of ‘Interpellation’
• “All ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects, through the functioning of the category of the subject.” – Althusser – 1971
• Althusser says we cant escape, we are interpellated in this system
• Jacques Lacan 
• says we need a mirror to understand who we are
• “We cannot actually see ourselves as whole, we use a reflection to understand who we are / who we are not” – Jacque Lacan
• The mirror stage – our first recognition, we use our reflection to understand who we are
• We are exploring ourselves as ‘the other’
• child development – when a child understands they are a person, a moment of consciousness
• Edward Siedd
• Orientalism
• “an accepted grid for filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness” – 1978
• the orient cannot represent itself, there is a dominant culture, they don’t have the power to the west represents it
• He linked culture, imperial power & colonialism
• “The power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming or emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism.” Edward Said – Culture and Imperialism, 1993
• Paul Gilroy
• double consciousness, involves black Atlantic, duality, hybridization e.g. black British, not just British
• hybridity, identify as two cultures, American and black, English and Asian
• identify as two nationalities and race
• Frantz Fanon 
• wrote about how white men pointed out his blackness, he articulated how a black man living in france was constructed as ‘The Other’
• He said we need recolonisation – colonised people need to take back their past
• presents 3 phases of action ‘which traces the work of native writers’
• stereotypes become damaging and can lead to derogatory abuse

3. Identity and self

• Giddens & Gauntlett
• it remains the case that most women and men remain somewhat constricted within particular gender roles.”
• Gauntlett focuses on the ways in which people are constructed by new technology around them.
• “Making is Connecting is all about how people build a stronger sense of self-identity through creative practices – in other words, through creating their own representations.”
• “identities are not ‘given’ but are constructed and negotiated”

Audience:

1. Audience theories:

• Clay Shirley
• End of audience = There is no such thing as an audience, there is only individuals
•  We are not one, we are many, the idea of intersectionality, a mass of individuals, not just one mass
• Paul Lazarfeld
• 2 step flow theory
• Active and passive audience
• Step 1 – from media to opinion leader
• Step 2 – from opinion leaders communication to the masses
•  This theory suggests that the audience are active, not passive
•  active audience, we choose information based on what we want – information / education, empathy and identity, social interaction, entertainment & escapism 
• Stuart Hall
• Reception theory / theory of preferred reading
• preferred reading = Idea that we can take an opposite stance, we don’t have to believe these things. He says there are 3 ways to read a text: a dominant position, a negotiated position or an opposition position
• A dominant position accepts the dominant message
• A negotiated position both accepts and rejects the dominant reading
• An oppositional position rejects the dominant reading
• gerbner 
• Cultivation Theory
• Relationship between violence on television and violence in society
• Suggests that we an use the media to change people’s behavior & what they think/believe in over time
•  media shapes the way people think

Institutions:

• James Curren
• Liberal free press
• liberal theory as it discusses the freedom to publish in the free market to “ensure that the press reflects a wide range of option
• “The assumption that ‘anyone’ is free to start a new paper has been an illusion ever since the industrialization of the press.”
• “Newspapers have poured money into developing news sites, thereby pre-empting the rise of rivals.”
• “The voices calling for change were thus marginalized.”
• Curran wrote ‘Mass Media and Democracy’ 
• He argued that the developments in education and the mass media made it simpler to access information related to the government, authority & control
• “This watchdog role is said to override in importance all other functions of the media…”
• Habermas
• The public sphere 
• which is an area in social life where people can come together to freely discuss and identify problems
• came up with the idea of the media as ‘watchdog’
• meaning that the media acts in the public sphere in the public interest
• He believed democracy depended on the public 
• He argued that the developments in education and the mass media made it simpler to access information related to the government, authority & control
• He believed democracy depended on the public
• The media acts in the public sphere in the public interest
• Suggests the public sphere is an area in social life where people discuss and identify societal problems and influence political action
• Livingston and Lunt
• consumer based – audiences can chose the content they want to watch & gives producers freedom that audiences chose to watch (giving people what they want)
• citizen based – media shapes society which educates and inform & defines the type of content that the media broadcasts (thinking about what would be better for society & culture)
• gives little accountability for citizens, they say this is negative
• self regulation – media producers are left independently to decide their content.
• This is a drawback as regulation is too ‘light touch’, consumers are happy but citizens may not be
• Noam Chomsky
•  the 5 filters that manufacture consent
• Chomsky came up with the idea of manufacturing consent which states the mass media has the power to use propaganda to persuade the public.
• He would say all news is fake
• This relates to the idea of media setting an agenda.
• Agenda setting is the creation of the public awareness & concerns the big issues by the news media which links to conditions of consumption which means the media actually decides how the mass audiences interpret it
• “A political economy perspective has sometimes tended towards ‘conspiracy theory’
• Hesmondhalgh
• Media as a Risky Business