Teen Vogue:

• Targets a young female audience
• Primary audience are 14-17 years old
• Has an explicit feminist stance
• Appeals to younger people and is engaging for females
• 8 million dollars made a year
• Focused pm fashion, politics, culture, identity
• 1.7% of their May 2018 audience was 17 or younger, 2.6% were 18 to 24 years old
• https://www.teenvogue.com/story/homeless-students-covid-pandemic

• Circulate: This article is circulating how Covid is causing trouble for students and some are being left homeless due to the pandemic. The information is being spread as it is important.
• Active: There is an active audience with this article as people want to know what is happening with the pandemic and how some people will have been affected by this. It’s a current global issue and people want to get involved and know what will happen and when it could all be over.

• Teen vogue is online which means there is no need for articles to be printed as they aren’t being produced on paper; this means there wouldn’t be a need for the people who print articles and in the future a person may not need to manage what articles are posted online as AI would develop and could control what us published and what isn’t. Although people would still need to write the articles, AI would be able to edit and post articles. Media is a risky business (Hesmondhalgh) and people who choose to work in this industry they will be competing with developing technology and the idea that people don’t really have a need for newspapers/articles being printed.

Tomb Raider:

• Female protagonist, radical to dominant ideologies
• Lara Croft is sexualised to appeal to the dominant male audience
• Portrays how women can be active in this way going against the stereotypes of how a woman should act
• Portrays a strong/confident image for women

• 

The Hero – Richard

The Villian – Polly

The Helper – Annabel

The False Hero – The Mother

The Donor – The Chicken

The Dispatcher – Polly

The Princess – Annabel

• Chicken is a micro budget film which was approximately £110,000, and was independent financing, box office made £10,000, this means he lost around £100,000
• Compared to Hidden Figures which had a $25 million budget, received a net profit of $95.5 million
• B Good Picture Company, Joe Stephenson was the director
• Distribution: Relied on streaming, new technology, VOD
• Used trailers, posters, film festivals etc to promote the movie Chicken, normal distribution factors
• Chicken received positive reviews and holds a 100% ‘certified fresh’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 12 critic reviews
• CineVue praised the film and mentioned that it is ‘the sort of British indie which restores faith in cinema’
• Independent films are often screened at local, national or international film festivals before distribution
• An independent film production can rival a mainstream film production if it has the necessary funding and distribution

Funding/BFI:

• Chicken tried to secure funding from the BFI Film Fund who use the money paid for lottery tickets to provide financial aid/support young filmmakers. The films created often have cultural and/or artistic value and are typically aimed at niche audiences.
• BFI didn’t think Chicken would be successful or make a good enough profit. Joe Stephenson was also an unknown filmmaker so the BFI were unwilling to help fund the film

Production:

• Filmed in 19 days and mostly outside locations which means there could have been problems with weather
• Adapted a play by Freddie Machin which originally ran at Southpark Playhouse

Distribution:

• World premiere on June 27th 2015 at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Theatrical release was on May 20th 2016
• Film festivals help to promote low budget films so they can reach a wider audience. This means most distributors would see the success of the film which would make companies more likely to distribute the film
• DVD and BluRay release by Network September 18th 2017

Hesmondhalgh – risky business

• Joe Stephenson took a risk when deciding to produce a film as he didn’t know if people would watch it or if it would be successful
• Took a risk when choosing to produce a film especially as an independent production
• People take risks so that they can potentially maximise their profits and challenge themselves to see if they can be successful in certain industries
• Companies were unwilling to invest time/money into this film as distributors found it unlikely that Chicken would generate enough revenue to create profit

Curran and Seaton – more diverse media landscape

• “The media industry is driven by the twin forces of creativity and business” – Chicken had a creative idea in the sense that Stephenson wanted to promote a message about not judging people based on how they appear, this brings a more diverse media landscape as Stephenson is attempting to implement a different idea which will add diversity to the film industry
• Bringing innovative ideas into the film industry, independent film makers can adapt mainstream producers in order to create something that is more diverse and can be something different for the film industry

• Audience is an important element to consider when creating/distributing media products. This is because the media need to know who their target audience is and what they need to do in order to reach this target audience
• The Missing and Witnesses have a target audience of people who are into crime dramas so the producers will try do distribute their products where this audience will see the products
• By following the genre conventions of a crime genre (often includes a murder of an innocent victim in an isolated setting) people like to watch these sorts of shows so there will generally be a large following for The Missing and Witnesses as people enjoy watching crime dramas.
• Uses and gratifications theory can be considered here as people’s needs need to be met in order for people to enjoy a show or movie. An audience may watch The Missing or Witnesses as it doesn’t reflect real life and are fictional TV shows; this will create a sense of escapism for the audience as they can relax and watch something that doesn’t resemble real life. They can suspend their disbelief and just enjoy watching something for a while
• Trailers are used to draw in an audience and to get people excited about a show or movie that will come out soon, this will create a sense of mystery for an audience and will make people want to watch the movie or show more as they have seen the trailer and will want to know what will happen

Cultivation Theory

• George Gurbner created this theory named cultivation theory which suggests that people who are regularly exposed to something over and over again, the longer someone sees this the more likely they will be to agree with what they’re seeing or being told
• For example, the more people watch crime dramas then the more likely they will be to like this genre so will continue to watch shows within this genre.
• If you are watching a series and you aren’t sure if you like it or not, if you continue to watch it then you will be more likely to start enjoying a show
• Say someone didn’t enjoy the first episode of The Missing because they don’t really want to watch a TV show that’s based in a foreign country and based off a missing child, they could continue watching the show to see if they would start to like it more

What is the difference between a consumer based media regulation system and a citizen based regulation system?

Consumer based media is focused on giving people what they want, there is an environment created in which audiences make judgments themselves about the kinds of media appropriate for their consumption. Citizen based media is a positive form of regulation that directs media content so that it can improve the lives of citizens and contribute to the well-being of wider society. This is used to ensure that the media isn’t flooded with shows/news that may be unnecessary or valuable to the public.

What impact did the 2003 Communications Act have on media regulation?

The 2003 Communications Act promoted independent television production by requiring the BBC and Channel 4 to create/commission more content from smaller production companies. This meant that individual television companies could grow and have more freedom when creating content which would allow their content to be more commercially viable. However, this resulted in the production of programming that lacks the civic-minded republicanism that had been adopted within previous regulatory frameworks.

What is the drawback of a self-regulated system?

Requirements for businesses/companies may not be met if people are able to self-regulate as there won’t be any real guidance on what is allowed and what isn’t, companies may not know what to target in order to reach their target audience if they have no guidance and are solely relying on their own opinions and ideas. It isn’t possible for a person to self-regulate their own company especially if they are a big company such as the BBC, everyone needs some guidance on a direction that companies should go on. Although it is good to have your own ideas and bring your own things into a business, it is also good to understand that there needs to be some guidance on what needs to be covered.

How do you regulate media content and organisations on a global scale?

Tech giants don’t author their own content, this is because user generated content is published which makes it impossible to prevent or properly check problematic material. Some companies have embedded content-vetting algorithms to automate their gate keeping processes, but they lack the standard to solve meaningful regulatory issues in a satisfactory way.

Hesmondhalgh	Case Studies
Changing audience consumption	The Missing was created and broadcast by the BBC, this allowed for more people to watch and access the show
Multi-sector integration
Star formatting	Tchéky Karyo who starred in The Missing was also in a show called Baptiste, he starred as a detective in both of these shows
Genre based formatting	Witnesses and The Missing are both Crime dramas, these sort of shows are of interest to the public as it gives people something to ‘figure out’ and gets people to think whilst watching a show
Serialisation	The BBC often make and host Crime dramas/thrillers, the BBC know there is an established audience for this and people will watch the shows since this is a genre that they’re interested in
Independent stylising	The Missing focused on a missing boy in Germany which added an element of independent stylising as not every crime drama has someone go missing
Internationalisation

The Missing and Witnesses, quotes that can relate to this:

“Media formats that are successful are replicated to deliver mass audiences”

“The media industry is driven by the twin forces of creativity and business”

“Vertical integration enables conglomerates to control the production and distribution of media products”

“Horizontal integration occurs when a conglomerate acquires media companies of the same media type”

“The web landscape of today is increasingly commercialised, with large-scale traditional media companies having invested huge amounts of time and money to develop equally huge web presences”

Commercial Media:

The production company for Witnesses was Cinétévé

PSB (Public Service Broadcaster):

The Missing is an international co-production between BBC and Starz

Horizontal Integration:

The BBC and Starz worked together to create and show The Missing. The Missing and Witnesses are similar in the sense that they have similar genre conventions, both involve a detective and is based on a crime drama

Vertical Integration:

The BBC enabled The Missing to be broadcast as it was made by the BBC, this means they had ownership over the show so were able to broadcast it themselves

Media Concentration – Used to describe the reduction in the number of media organisations that produce products

Media Pluralism – Media landscape with a healthy balance of products made by different media company types. These company types typically include psb, commercial media and citizen-generated media

The Missing

• Synopsis: “The Missing” follows Tony, played by James Nesbitt, as a man devastated by the abduction of his young son, Oliver, during a family vacation in France. He becomes a man obsessed, unable to accept that his child may be dead and spends years searching for him.
• British TV series
• International co-production between the BBC and Starz
• Fiction and isn’t based on any real events
• Was initially released 28th October 2014 and finished 30th November 2016
• Series 1 is about the search for a missing boy who’s family traveled to Northen France for a holiday, however their car broke down and they had to take shelter for the night at  the fictional small town of Châlons du Bois , but this proved to be a bad night for the British family
• Series 2 is a about a missing girl in Germany
• Series 2 is set near a British army garrison in Eckhausen and is paralleled by flashbacks to 2014
• Complex mainstream television product
• Provides a range of representational areas to explore gender, the family, place, issues, events, class
• Representations of gender (Judith Butler), place (Europe and the Middle East)
• Curran and Seaton – Neo-Marxian approach

Witnesses

• Synopsis: After witnessing a brutal murder, young Amish boy Samuel (Lukas Haas) and his mother Rachel (Kelly McGillis) seek protection from police officer John Book (Harrison Ford). When Book uncovers evidence of police corruption involving narcotics lieutenant James McFee (Danny Glover), Book must take Rachel and Samuel, and flee to the Amish countryside where Rachel grew up. There, immersed in Amish culture and tradition, Book and Rachel begin a cautious romance.
• Genre – Similar conventions, all have detectives and is a crime story – Stephen Neale