| What do you know? | What meaning or understandings do you have of their ideas? – how can you apply their ideas to your CSP’s? | |
| Noam Chomsky | – 5 filters of Mass Media Machine: (1) ownership; (2) advertising; (3) official sources; (4) flak; (5) marginalizing dissent. – Manufacturing consent – The process of manipulation or persuasion and how it works – The structures of ownership – The role of advertising – Links with ‘The establishment’ – Diversionary tactics ‘flak’ – Uniting against a ‘common enemy’ – Media uses audiences as an advertising tool | – The manufacturing consent theory argues 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”, by means of the propaganda model of communication … – Chomsky rose to national attention for his anti-war essay “The Responsibility of Intellectuals“. Becoming associated with the New Left, he was arrested multiple times for his activism and placed on President Richard Nixon‘s Enemies List – Noam Chomsky’s theory analyses the functioning of media |
| James Curran | ||
| Jurgan Habermas | HABERMAS AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE Provides a framework for why we have newspapers, what is the point and purpose of them – the idea of a democratic society enabled by news, information, ideas and debate. – The public sphere is a realm of communication and is the reality of the world vs private realm. | The public sphere is a space where peoples ideas are shared, it is a realm of communication which can be related to the 5 mass media filters, more specifically the advertising section, a sphere of public opinion which is wanted and needed to be controlled as a technique for advertising. |
| Semiotics | Sign – a gesture or action used to convey information or an instruction. Code – Tools that use signs to create meaning. Convention – Media code that is accepted. Dominant Signifier – The main thing. Anchorage – An image posted with something else to provide context. Ferdinand de Saussure: Signifier – Stands in for another thing. Signified – The idea that has been created by the signifier. C S Pierce: Icon – Looks like the object its referring to Index – Links to the object its referring to Symbol – A sign that has a random meaning and doesn’t have context Roland Barthes: Signification – Levels of meaning, signification or representation Denotation – The most basic or literal meaning of a item or sign Connotation – The other or secondary meaning for a sign Myth – A changed or distorted meaning of signification. Ideology – Pieces and signs that reinforce powerful structures. Radical – Something that goes against and challenges dominant, typical ideas. Reactionary – Something that goes with and agrees with dominant, typical ideas. Paradigm – A collection of items relating to a thing Syntagm – How signs and things are put together and fitted together. | There is multiple words used to express ideas within media, these include semiotics. They are useful to analyse media CSP’s and other works. It is the study of signs and how the relationship of these signs are used to target audiences. |
| Audience | ||
| Feminist Critical Thinking | Feminist = a political position Female = a matter of biology Feminine = a set of culturally defined characteristics Mulvey Butler Feminist frequency Tori Moi Jean Kilbourne 3 Waves of feminism 1: – In the past men were regarded greater at creating literally pieces and writings then woman were. Virginia Woolf stating that simply if women were not stereotyped and given equal opportunities to men originally, then more literacy pieces would have been made. 2: – Feminist critical thought became much more prominent and pronounced during the counter cultural movements of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. – A feminist group during this wave was the suffragettes who argued for voting rights for women. 3: – The Third Wave of feminism was greatly focused on reproductive rights for women. – Third-wave feminism began in the early 1990s, led by Naomi Wolf. Challenging and re-contextualising some of the definitions of femininity that grew out of that earlier period. The third-wave sees women’s lives as intersectional, demonstrating a pluralism towards race, ethnicity, class, religion, gender and nationality when discussing feminism. – An idea of 3rd wave in modern times is the body positivity and sex positivity in feminism, women want to be able to show off their bodies without it having to be a big deal. This is reinforced by things like the ‘Free the Nipple’ campaign. Laura Mulvey: The Male Gaze | Ideas of feminist critical thinking, bur more specifically how women are represented in media is relevant to CSP’s such as Tomb Raider and Maybelline as it shows to vastly different representation of women. Different markets use women in different ways and illustrate the message behind feminist critical thoughts and ideas. Modern views chases equality and body positivity but markets such as the gaming industry continue to use women in a sexual manner and appeal to the male gaze for the benefit of sales, these type of movements aim to stop this. All different forms of media represent women in different ways so it is very relevant to the CSP’s and other works. |
| Postcolonialism | Concerns IDENTITY and REPRESENTATION. In other words, where does our identity come from? How is our identity formed? How do we understand our own identity and how is our identity represented in the local, national and global media? – Postcolonial critical thought emerged as a distinct category in the 1990’s – Postcolonial criticism challenges the assumption of a universal claim towards what constitutes ‘good reading’ and ‘good literature’; questioning the notion of a recognised and overarching canon of important cultural texts – book, poems, plays, films etc. | |
| David Gauntlett | Fluidity of identity– Gauntlet states how someone’s identity can change because of how men and woman are being represented differently in media. He now says we have a “greater diversity of identities”. Fluidity of identity means that a persons identity is always changing and they’re personality traits differ vastly. Constructed identity– This is when people build up their identity and it slightly changes, depending on their peers/audiences. Now people can decide and create different genders and ideas and make it an identity, this generation allows for almost every idea and feeling to be dawned as a new identity. Different forms of media and influencers help us construct this reality. Negotiated identity– A negotiated identity is a balance between our own ideologies and desires, as well as meeting the expectations of others and their ideas. Collective identity– Means that we refer to our sense of belonging to group, weather that be out of a shared interest/experience or even something in common. Our desire to engage with others and “fit in”. These groups could be social, religious, occupational or gendered. – Traditional and Post-Traditional Media Consumption: Anthony Giddens – Reflex Identity Construction: David Gauntlett | Theories on identity, specifically by Gauntlett, comes up with 4 categories which are relevant to all forms of media, shows different forms of identity and can be evaluated and fits into forms of these identities which can help identify differences and similarities between medias. In men’s health there is a theme/narrative of toxic masculinity traits and follows ideas of a ‘real man’ and its manliness and creates a constructed reality of the ‘cool man’ |
| Lasswell | Lasswell’s model of communication describes an act of communication by defining who said it, what was said, in what channel it was said, to whom it was said, and with what effect it was said. What are the 5 elements in Lasswell’s models? Who? Says What? In Which Channel? To Whom? With What Effect? Notion of vulnerability and brainwashing, passive and active consumption. | WHO? The parent company, Hearst Communications UK, creators of the magazine specifically the main editor Morgan Rees SAYS WHAT? Men’s Health and how to become stronger and lose weight etc, various other messages also IN WHICH CHANNEL? Print, online, social media TO WHOM? The target audience of the magazine, younger impressional men, and magazine subscribers. Men specifically interested in health and exercise, active adventurous people. 70% of all Millennials and 69% of all Gen Z over the age of 18 WITH WHAT EFFECT? Profit. Inspirational, perhaps aggressive. |
| Lazarsfeld | The two-step flow of communication model hypothesizes that ideas flow from mass media to opinion leaders, and from them, to a wider population. It was first introduced by sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld in 1944 | Use of opinion leaders in media products help as a theme of control and reinforcement, such as in ‘Men’s Health’ there is a dominant signifier of Vin Diesel on the front, a famous actor who is used as a tool for promotion, using him to endorse their ideas and products, it opens up to the consumer and the general public as a method of active consumption. Page 6-7, use of the ‘Man of today’, an opinion leader used to sell a product (Hugo Boss aftershave) to the masses is a prime example of the 2 step model.  |
| Uses and Gratifications Katz, Hass and Gerevitch | Personal and Social needs Recognises the decision making processes of the audience themselves, rather than being influenced by opinion leaders or the source itself. Essentially, individuals sought out particular pleasures, uses and gratifications from individual media texts Understanding self Enjoyment Escapism Knowledge about the world Self confidence, self esteem Strengthen connections with family and/or friends Any other category or theme | Understanding self – Helps people discover how to be stronger and look like the magazines opinion leaders Enjoyment – Enjoyment in the stereotypical look of a ‘real man’ and how to get ‘t-shirt arms’. Men’s Health pg 10-11 – Personal needs as an enjoyment and escapism feature. As well as a social self-esteem feature. Many other features in magazine. |
| Gerbner | – (Cultivation theory / behavioral psychology) – George Gerbner introduced cultivation theory in the 1960’s as part of the Cultural Indicators Project to examine the influence of television on viewers. – Cultivation theory holds that long-term exposure to media shapes how the consumers of media perceive the world and conduct themselves. – The cultivation hypothesis states that the more television people watch, the more likely they are to hold a view of reality that is closer to television’s depiction of reality. A reality where the creators can conduct and manipulate the masses viewships through this form of media creation. – The paradigm was made up of three prongs: institutional process analysis, message system (content) analysis, and cultivation analysis People who consume large amounts of violent media texts, e.g. video games or even newspapers showing the world as violent are exposed to more violence and therefore are affected by the ‘Mean World Syndrome’: the belief that the world is a far worse and dangerous place than it actually is. 2 main concepts: 1. Media texts cultivate a heightened sense of fear in society (mean world syndrome) 2. Media consumption leads audiences to accept mainstream ideologies (mainstreaming) | |
| Stuart Hall | – (theory of preferred reading) – Active consumption ideas WE either: Accept Negotiate OR Reject the dominant message People who make media products put ideas in their texts which they expect audiences to understand. Hall calls this a preferred reading, as this is what the producers of the text wanted them to understand. However, each audience is different, so they might understand the text completely different to what was intended. – In the 1950s Hall was a founder of the influential New Left Review – Encoding and decoding model The first was in “Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse” (1973) – Hall’s work covers issues of hegemony and cultural studies, taking a post-Gramscian stance | This view on active consumption within media generates an interesting view on media products, but more specifically in Men’s Health on page 121 there is 3 different ways a reader may perceive this: The text wants you to believe that becoming stronger and to gain ‘serious arm growth’ they need to use ‘weighted chin-ups’ 1. They except and understand the message being portrayed by this page, they understand the promotion of exercise and believe that ‘weighted chin-ups’ are effective and will help them ‘face up to the competition’. They may be up for being better than the ‘gym newbies’. 2. Some readers may hold a negotiated view on this, although they may not fully support or understand the idea of exercising as a way to ‘face up to the competition’, but, they do have a understand as to why someone may support or follow or act on this ideology. They may not be interested in working out. but understand that this may be a way to do so. 3. Some people may also reject the idea, their ideology does not support the ideas being portrayed by the text and do not support it at all. They are not interested in working out at all and do not understand why people would do what’s suggested in the ad. |
| Clay Shirky | Believes that Gerbers ideas are not as relevant to modern days as the view of media has changed because of the internet and the mass has moved on. Has become more active and more fragmented. People are actively interested in vastly different things, which means we are pulling away from passive consumption. | |
