“Gender as an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts” means that the actions deemed appropriate for men and women have been released and presented to produce a social impression that keeps and authenticates a “natural” gender binary. Butler is basically saying we associate these different themes with the genders, such as girls wearing pink, only exist because as humans, we collectively agree it exists; it is a social construct. Butler’s theory is interesting to take into consideration when looking at print media products as it allows us to pick up on common themes such as women being shown as objects and men being shown as the alpha gender. This is strictly not a representation of gender identities but rather simulations of them that we all choose to accept and conform by: they are signifiers without a stable signified: these are essentially hyper-realities: images that refer only to other images as gender functions as a simulacrum, an image without an original.“Oh..” is a magazine that celebrates authenticity and empowerment within feminism shown by its front covers that solely present women and only women and their articles that celebrate women for being the modern day feminists they are, for example, in issue 35 of “Oh..” magazine (Oh Comely at the time), they did an interview with Amali De Alwis, the CEO of Girls Code First and celebrating her as a woman of colour who is encouraging other females to start coding and join the male dominated technology industry. Set up by three women who used to work for a popular publishing conglomerate, they felt that they could set up a magazine that constructs a representation of femininity with its focus on creativity and quirkiness.“Oh..” uses a, what some may consider, feminine colour palette with pink pastels contrasted with deep navy and crimson hues which is used to attract females, due to the stereotype contraptions with pinks tones as a feminine colour and therefore reflects their target audience of women. The magazine also has a large title written in a handwritten style giving the maize a more homely and do it yourself feel and making it have a unique element to it, again reflecting it target audience of unique, quirky feminists. Some people may like to view themselves with this interpellated opinion and aesthetic if they don’t feel the same in real life as they may tend to feel too shy to speak up about these feminist issues due to toxic masculinity considering the idea of talking about issues that happen with other females as “bad” and “repetitive”, and these experiences are evident through how little these common issues amongst other females are spoken about in schools or offices, therefore finding these niche magazines as a interpelleted reflection of themselves and a safe haven for them to rant these issues and celebrate how they aren’t alone.As “Oh..” is a magazine focused on feminism, the absence of men throughout the magazine’s issues are a very prominent thing showing the radicalism of the magazine and acts as a stand up towards these patriarchal publishing conglomerates. A third wave feminist theorist that can really feel for this “standing up to the patriarchy” is bell hooks. Bell hooks talks about multicultural intersectionality where how general political concepts are always intertwined and intersect with feminist concepts, these general concepts can be topics such as sex, identity, age etc. “Black feminists have pointed out the differences between black and white womens experiences, cultural representations and interests” (2016:346), a.k.a. Arguments around gender also intersect with postcolonial arguments around power relationships between black and white women. Feminism will always be somehow linked to these topics. Van Zoonen, another third wave feminist theorist, also talks about a similar theory on how cultural hegemony and interpellation are also heavily related to feminism, with the oppresion of women whether it be their right to vote, the gender pay gap around the world, or even sexual harrassment towards women in the work place. In a post-colonial context, women have always carried the double burden of being colonised by imperial powers and dominated by colonial men.In contrast to “Oh..” magazine, “Men’s Health” magazine gives off a completely different feel with its big blocky blue, gray and black text and typeface that conforms to the dominant male ideology of how we as a society associate these strong, bold colours with men. “Men’s Health” is very different in comparison with “Oh..” in not only terms of topic theme throughout the magazines, but also in terms of publishing companies, “Oh..” is owned by an independent press company in London called “Iceberg Press” who publish only one other magazine as well as “Oh..”, “The Simple Things”, whereas “Men’s Health” is published by Hearst Magazines, a subsidiary owned by the very popular and patriarchal based media conglomerate named Hearst Corporation. Hearst Corporation owns cable companies across the US such as ESPN, History, and other big branded magazines such as ELLE, COSMOPOLITAN, BAZAAR, so therefore they can reach their targeted male audience with ease, actually reaching a circulation of 1.5 million people a year. This can be heavily linked to Noam Chomsky’s ‘Manufacturing Consent’ theory as Chomsky proposed that the mass communication media of the U.S. “are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion”, this means that the more power a company has, the more prone other institutions such as government organisations are to falling under the control of the said company due to them being able to control most mass media communications. With Hearst Corporations owning a majority of popular US media outlets, this makes them viable and able to use manipulatory consent techniques. An example can be how Hearst Corporations have links with ‘The Establishment’, William Randolph Hearst III is the chairperson of Hearst Corporations and inheritor of the Hearst family fortune being estimated at $24.5 billion net worth. With that amount of money, this means that William is bound to have other connections to the establishment as he is an inheritor to a big percentage of the world’s wealth. As Iceberg Press are an independent company, they don’t get as big of a reach to their targeted audience as Hearst Magazines has been able to, especially with having “Oh..”’s targeted demographic as a very niche audience (modern day feminists) and it’s circulation reach is estimated at 25,000 physical issue readers. Even though niche audiences tend to be a small minority of society, they can hold great value for indie brands and their success because the audience members are often more engaged, active and responsive and shows how development in new technology means indie companies such as Iceberg Press can also use the internet to communicate and target audiences.

Antonio Gramsci talks about the theory of ‘Hegemonic Struggle’, which connects to the idea that there is a control of oppressed groups by those who are upper class (the elite) in society. An example of this can be the opposition of representation and social injustice between white people and people of colour.

In relation to the Daily Mail, a news subsidiary owned by the conglomerate Daily Mail and General Trust, is overall owned by an elite class family. The theory of Hegemonic Struggle can be seen within this because of the political stance The Daily Mail takes with how it supports the publication of insulting and derogative stories. The rich (in this case, Lord Rothermere) creates a story, in order to manipulate and influence the dominant opinion. An example of the Daily Mail trying to influence their extreme opinions and influence their audience is in the image below. Richard Littlejohn seems to had been faced with having no interesting stories to publish and a pending column deadline in September leading Littlejohn to randomly publish a false rant about burka wearing boys, creating controversy from thin air. He wrote: “Diversity nazis are now hell-bent on eradicating any notion of ‘men’ and ‘women’ as part of their crusade to destroy every last vestige of traditionalism.”, “Politicians and public bodies were always going to be a pushover. You can rely on taxpayer-funded organisations to advance the diversity agenda.” and “Now education authorities have put hijabs for five-year-olds on the uniform list, it’s probably only a matter of time before some right-on retailer starts selling burqas for boys.”. In relation to Gramsci, hegemonic struggle is very much evident here as The Daily Mail talks about a respected religion and transgender rights but yet makes fun of how people are changing some rules in order to accomodate for everyone and make sure each person feels comfortable. (SOURCE: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/12/28/12)

As Gramsci’s ideas can very evidently be seen through The Daily Mail, this leads me to believe that his theories are accurate in terms of the struggles between how each article is formulated to shock and offend the audience in order for them to read on and buy the newspaper in order for The Daily Mail to be able to gatekeep certain information and ideas and apply and force dominant ideologies onto their audiences that they may not want to be changed.

	The I	The Daily Mail
When they were first introduced?	26th October 2010	4th May 1896
Are they part of a bigger organisational structure?	Was a sister paper to The Independent but were bought by the Daily Mail on 29 November 2019, for £49.6 million.	Started by Viscount Rothermere and Viscount Northcliffe and ownership has been handed down over time down the Rothermere family and is now owned by the 4th Viscount Rothermere today.
Are they known for a particular political perspective?	The i tries to have a centralist view but tends to mainly lean towards liberal views.	The Daily mail is a right-wing newspaper.
What kind of journalism do they produce? What is their USP? What stories do they specialise in?	News and information focused articles.	Entertainment and news focused articles.
What kind of people run the paper? Produce the stories?	The editor is Oliver Duff who is a 38 year-old British Journalist educated at Cambridge.	The editor is Geordie Greig, a 59 year-old British Journalist educated at Eton and Oxford.
Do they have a similar readership reach?	The i circulation: 221,083 (as of October 2019)	Daily Mail circulation: 1,134,184 (as of February 2020)
Do they have a similar readership profile / target audience?	The i’s target audience is middle class people.	The Daily Mail’s target audience is lower middle class people.
How are they currently doing? Increasing or decreasing sales and revenue?	Circulation decreased from 233,869 in February 2019 to 221,083 in October 2019.	The Daily Mail overtook The Sun as the UK’s best-selling newspaper in June 2020.
How are they looking to embrace new media technologies?	The i has a website where articles are published via blog posts but they actually focus on the production of print products rather than promoting digital.	The Daily Mail has a popular app and different social media pages where they post their most entertaining articles. Online they go by MailOnline. But they too, still product print products.
Do they have a similar layout and design?	Broadsheet format.	Tabloid format.

Jurgen Habermas and the concept of the Public Sphere

How media lets bigger demographics consume and share unique ideas rather than the ideas released from the government or other higher economical figures like royalty.

QUOTES:

“The media do serve the public interest or general welfare whether by design or chance”

“In democratic societies, there are likely to be grounds on which an argued claim can be made”

James Curran & Jean Seaton – The Theory of The liberal free press

Media having the freedom to publish what they want, without interference from the Government. The information that is published by the press is free to use in the public domain and is open to anyone to access this information.

Public Broadcasting Services are neither commercial nor state-owned, free from political interference and pressure from commercial forces allowing the public to be informed, educated, included and also entertained.

QUOTES:

“The free market, it is also argued, makes the press a representative institution.”

“The market-based press is independent because it owes allegiance only to the public, the press is the people’s watchdog, scrutinizing the actions government and holding the country’s rulers to account”

“British broadcasting was started as a public service, and this proved as creative commercially as it was innovative culturally.”

Noam Chomsky – The 5 Filters that Manufacture Consent

How the media manipulates and controls the stories and articles they produce to portray the agreement and consent they supposedly have with the public (propaganda).

THE FIVE FILTERS:

1. The size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms
2. Advertising as the primary income source of the mass media
3. The reliance of the media on information provided by government, business and ‘experts’ funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power.
4. ‘Flack’ as a means of disciplining the media
5. ‘Anti-Communism’ as a national religion and control mechanism. – common enemy

Louis Althusser – Interpellation & Ideological State Apparatus

How the government builds different constructs e.g. buildings, laws, food, drinks, etc that forms society and our views.

• Repressive state apparatuses (RSA) makes the most dominant class with the highest amount of power use their to control the working class.
• Ideological State Apparatus uses pacifist methods in order to ‘maintain control’ over a population.

Antonio Gramsci – The Concept of Hegemony/Hegemonic Struggle

Hegemony is the struggle between the most powerful class and the lower classes, the struggle between the independence of different groups and their identities. Imagine a tug of war between your own identity and what other people are telling you.

QUOTES:

“How certain cultural forms predominate over others, which means that certain ideas are more influential than others”

GRAMSCI – HEGEMONIC

Hegemony is a struggle that emerges from NEGOTIATION and CONSENT – Not total domination (not totalitarianism or explicit propaganda) but a continual exchange of power, through ideas.

AN EXAMPLE OF A HEGEMONIC STRUGGLE – LEVESON INQUIRY

“The Leveson inquiry was a judicial public inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the British press following the News International phone hacking scandal, chaired by Lord Justice Leveson, who was appointed in July 2011.” – Wikipedia

MURDOCH PAYING POLICE AND OTHER GOVERNMENT ORGANISATIONS FOR STORIES – CONTINUAL EXCHANGE OF POWER RUINED FOR MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT STORIES.

LACAN – THE OTHER

How we explore and identify ourselves by viewing things that may potentially reflect ourselves.

Applying that theory to culture, communications and media studies, it is possible to see why we are so obsessed with reading magazines, listening to music, watching films, videos and television because, essentially, we are exploring ‘The Other’ as a way of exploring ourselves.

ALTHUSSER – ISA

ISAs are used to describe the way in which structures of civic society – education, culture, the arts, the family, religion, bureaucracy, administration etc serve to structure the ideological perspectives of society, which in turn form our individual subject identity.

CHOMSKY – MANUFACTURING CONSENT

The mass communication media of the U.S. “are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion”

5 FILTERS OF CONSENT

• Structures of ownership
• The role of advertising
• Links with ‘The Establishment’
• Diversionary tactics – ‘flack’
• Uniting against a ‘common enemy’

KEY POWER AND CONTROL TERMS

Media concentration / Conglomerates – A company which owns numerous companies involved in the distribution of mass media enterprises.

Globalisation (in terms of media ownership) – The worldwide integration of media through the cross-cultural exchange of ideas.

Vertical Integration – Vertical integration is when a company integrates multiple stages of a production line to a small number of production units

Horizontal Integration – Horizontal integration is the process that a company or an institution uses to increase the production of goods.

Nepotism – The practice among those with power or influence of favouring relatives or friends, especially by giving them jobs.

Key Words:

Media concentration / Conglomerates: A media conglomerate, media group, or media institution is a company that owns numerous companies involved in mass media enterprises, such as television, radio, publishing, motion pictures, theme parks, or the Internet

Globalisation: The combination of media through the cross-cultural exchange of ideas.

Horizontal Integration: When a business grows by acquiring a similar company in their industry at the same point of the supply chain.

Vertical Integration: When a business expands by acquiring another company that operates before or after them in the supply chain.

Regulation: Where a government removes controls and rules about how businesses are owned and controlled.

Deregulation: The limit in government power over a particular industry, usually to create more competition within the industry.

Gatekeepers: Someone or a group of people who holds power that can control the flow of information on a certain subject.

Free market: A type of economy that promotes the production and sale of goods and services, with little to no control or involvement from any central government agency. 

Monopolies: The ownership of different kinds of media by the same group. Those in power of monopolies can gatekeep information/ data/ the product they own.

Media Mergers: A result of one media related company buying another company for control of their resources, successful media companies usually buy out other companies to reach a larger viewing audience in order to increase views and profit.

Neo-liberalism: Reducing state influence in the economy, especially through privatization and austerity that tends to favour free market capitalism.

Surveillance/ Privacy/ Security: Monitoring data

GDPR: A regulation in EU law about data protection and privacy in the European Union.

Rupert Murdoch:

Murdoch is an Australian-born American media mogul. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world.

David Hesmondhalgh:

Hesmondhalgh is a researcher and theorist who critically analyse the relationship between media work and the media industry.

He wrote a book called The Cultural Industries calling it a critical reflection that highlights the ‘myth-making’ process surrounding the potential digital future for young creatives, setting up a counter-weight against the desire of so many young people who are perhaps too easily seduced to pursue a career in the creative industries.

A quote from his book states: ‘the distinctive organisational form of the cultural industries has considerable implications for the conditions under which symbolic creativity is carried out’ – In other words there must be serious concerns about the extent to which this business-driven, economic agenda is compatible with the quality of working life and of human well-being in the creative industries.

Music Videos are how listeners identify artists with a song. They are short, moving image shots for the purpose of accompanying a music track made by the artist/s in order to encourage sales of the music. The narratives of these music videos are organised around a specific theme and are based on an idea giving a structure to these videos to follow (structuralism), “Structuralism has been very powerful in its influence on narrative theory. Its main virtue is that it is most interested in those things that narratives have in common, rather than in the distinctive characteristics of specific narratives.” – Turner p.85 ‘Film as Social Practice’ (source: http://mymediacreative.com/narrative/). Structure is so important to any form of media, especially within a music video when an artist/s is trying to convey a message because if the structure isn’t properly put in place e.g. a linear and sequential structure (beginning, middle, end – Todorov’s Tripartite Narrative Structure and Freytag’s Pyramid) then the audience won’t be able to decode, deconstruct and analyse the music video and get the artist’s message and therefore the music video would fail to serve it’s purpose.

An example of narrative theory in Common’s Letter to the Free is Seymour Chatman’s Satellites and Kernels. In the music video, the visuals are more based and related to the lyrics rather than a visual story other music videos may follow e.g. Avicii’s Wake Me Up. the kernels within Letter to the Free is the fact that this song has been made about the black slavery in america and how the 13th amendment still allows prisoners to be taken in as slaves, poking at the fact that a reason for so many african americans being locked up in america may be because of racially fuelled police officers and other higher racist powers in america’s corrupt police system. The satellites in Letter to the Free are the repeated lyric of “freedom” is being chanted and sung throughout the song in the background encouraging us to release ourselves from the‘mental slavery’ of racism and to instead, embrace the fact that freedom will eventually come. This can also show how audiences may mentally position themselves politically by their socio-cultural status to offer different views and readings of the narrative in the music video, “Letter to the Free”.The narrative structure in Ghost Town by The Specials is very different, it follows Claude Levi Strauss’ Binary Oppositions. It’s narrative in the music video consists of ominous shots of an empty East End of London with the band in a car lip syncing to the song referencing a large variety of iconic film styles including thriller and horror genres, evident from and by the expressionist lighting that brings different meanings of the lyric ‘ghost town’ helping us develop an understanding of the processes of selection, combination and binary oppositions that the band is trying to represent and show which constructs versions of reality. Rather than presenting opposing characters, The Specials were showing opposing views which was unusual for the time it was made in because of them conveying a strong social message within the video instead of going with the dominant ideology style of other popular music and their music videos at the time. The audience who watched the video may have potentially shocked them because they were so used to the non-politically fuelled videos being produced at that time e.g. Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic By The Police.

“Leonard Shelby, an insurance investigator, suffers from anterograde amnesia and uses notes and tattoos to hunt for the man he thinks killed his wife, which is the last thing he remembers.” – Google’s summary of Memento.

Memento is told in reverse, we find out the conclusion to the plot at the very beginning of the film (Todorov’s traditional Narrative structure has been reversed, fragmentary). It touches on topics such as:

• There is no cohesive identity, no ‘real you’; we are different people in each individual situation, virtual and actual. Our identities are in constant flux.
• There is no ‘truth’ in history (personal or national), memory cannot be relied upon as evidence for knowledge;
• People who claim to know the ‘truth’ can’t be trusted;
• Fiction and fact depend on each other to the point that they can’t be divided – in the end they can’t be separated;
• Knowledge doesn’t ‘add up’ cohesively to ‘truth’; there are too many contradictory elements.

These topics can be translated into codes, specifically Roland Barthes Proairetic and Hermeneutic codes.

Christopher Nolan’s inspiration for Memento was based on a semi-postmodernism novel, Waterland written by Graham Swift, “an examination of the end of History, the trajectory of the promise of the Enlightenment. It is set in the 80’s, but looks backwards through history, centering around 1943 providing three different plots” – Jessica on Goodreads.com. Therefore the film is intertexualised from this book.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/148639.Waterland

Roland Barthes – Proairetic and Hermeneutic Codes

• Proairetic code: action, movement, causation
• Hermeneutic code: reflection, dialogue, character or thematic development

Vladimir Propp – 8 Stock Character types, Spheres of Action

8 STOCK CHARACTER TYPES

1. Hero
2. Helper
3. Princess
4. Villain
5. Victim
6. Dispatcher
7. Father
8. False Hero

SPHERES OF ACTION

The types of character types we identify with and adopt. Each character follows an individual narrative with multiple different functions that is essential in organising the characters in a plot. These narratives can be watered down and divided into 6 types of mini narrative plots:

1. PREPARATION
2. COMPLICATION
3. TRANSFERENCE
4. STRUGGLE
5. RETURN
6. RECOGNITION

Todorov – Narrative Structure = Equilibrium, Disruption, New Equilibrium (Includes resolution)

• Equilibrium
• Disruption
• New equilibrium

Seymour Chatman – Satellites & Kernels

• Kernels: key moments in the plot / narrative structure
• Satellites: embellishments, developments, aesthetics

Levi-Strauss – Binary opposition

NARRATIVES (=myths) are STRUCTURED around BINARY OPPOSITIONS, e.g. Love VS Hate, Good VS Bad

Postmodernism can be understood as a philosophy that is characterised by concepts such as RE-IMAGINING, PASTICHE, PARODY, COPY, BRICOLAGE. 

DEFINITIONS

Pastiche – A parody but rather than mocking, it celebrates a work of visual art, literature, theatre, or music imitating a style or character of the work of artists.

Bricolage – Creating something new out of different things.

Intertextuality – Shaping a text’s meaning by a different text.

Implosion – A collapse of a system.

Cultural Appropriation – The inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another culture.

Simulacrum – A simulation of reality

Hyperreality – When the simulation is a lot more real than reality.

Metanarrative – Narratives that have historical meaning, experience, or knowledge allowing the completion of an overall master idea.

Parody – A piece of work or performance that copies and ridicules another piece of work or performance.

Consumerist Society – A type of society where people devote a great deal of their life to “consuming”. Implosion- a sudden failure or collapse of an organization or system.

Reflexivity – The evaluation of a person’s own beliefs, judgments and practices.

Implosion – The failure of an organization or system.

PARODY VS PASTICHE

Pastiche is a work of art, drama, literature, music, or architecture that imitates the work of a previous artist. Parody is a work or performance that imitates another work or performance with ridicule or irony.

INTERTEXTUALITY: SURFACE SIGNS, GESTURES & PLAY

Intertextuality suggests signs only have meaning in reference to other signs and that meaning is therefore a complex process of decoding/encoding with individuals both taking and creating meaning in the process of reading texts.

“the concept that the meaning of a text does not reside in the text, but is produced by the reader in relation not only to the text in question, but also the complex network of texts invoked in the reading process.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intertextuality#History)

SURFACE AND STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE

The emphasis of style and surface over substance, means that what something looks like becomes more important than anything else, as opposed to what something might mean, or what it could be used for.

In terms of the key principles of art and design the priority is in formal elements: of shape, colour, texture, movement, space, time and so on. As opposed to more discursive principles of: narrative, character, motivation, theme, ideology. Or put simply: STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE. Put another way, are we more interested in the surface of an object than its’ inner meaning?

FRAGMENTARY CONSUMPTION = FRAGMENTARY IDENTITIES

This process of fragmented consumption separating, splitting up and dividing previously homogeneous groups such as, friends, the family, the neighborhood, the local community, the town, the county, the country and importantly, is often linked to the process of fragmented identity construction. 

THE LOSS OF A METANARRATIVE

Fredric Jameson claimed that Postmodernism is characterized by pastiche rather than parody which represents a crisis in historicity. Jameson argued that parody implies a moral judgment or a comparison with previous societal norms. 

The focus on FRAGMENTATION OF IDENTITY is characterised and linked to an increase of consumption and the proliferation of new forms of digital technologies. In effect, another key characteristic of postmodernism is the development of fragmented, alienated individuals living (precariously) in fragmented societies.

As an example, mobile telephony (both hardware and software) now appears to proliferate and connect every aspect of our lives, and generally does so from the perspective of consumption – consuming images, sounds, stories, messages etc – rather than production. We don’t make mobile phones, mobile networks (hardware) or Apps, content and platforms (software).

“Putting it very simply, the transition from substance to style is linked to a transition from production to consumption. ” – Strinati (235)

JEAN BAUDRILLARD

Jean Baudrillard describes as IMPLOSION which gives rise to what he terms SIMULACRA. The idea that although the media has always been seen as a representation of reality – a simulation, from Baudrillard’s perspective of implosion, it is has become more than a representation or simulation and it has become SIMULACRUM not just a representation of the real, but the real itself, a grand narrative

HABERMAS

He traces the decline in the public sphere identified already in this process through a range of societal shifts: the increased globalisation of economic trade, the transformation of citizens into consumers, the increase in digital communication technologies, the dominance of a small economic elite over global economic, political and cultural exchange