The CSP Oh Comely has changed its name to Oh. The update on the magazine’s website states: ‘Oh is a reimagination of Oh Comely magazine and is still a place to meet new people, hear their stories and hopefully leave you looking at life a little differently. And every issue will still have beautiful photography and illustration at its heart’.
This is an in-depth CSP and needs to be studied with reference to all four elements of the Theoretical Framework (Language, Representation, Industries, Audience) and all relevant contexts.
Oh Comely is part of a development in lifestyle and environmental movements of the early twenty first century which rebrand consumerism as an ethical movement. Its representation of femininity reflects an aspect of the feminist movement which celebrates authenticity and empowerment
Print: Magazine (Independent). Oh Comely is an alternative magazine, aimed at a niche audience. The front pages and extracts from issue 35 must be studied are shown the pages following this information. You will also need to study the magazine in relation to Media Industries and Media Audiences. This means looking beyond the specific edition to consider issues of ownership, production, funding, technologies and regulation (Media Industries) and targeting, marketing, sales and readership, audience interpretation, fulfilment, uses and gratifications ideas and theories (Media Audiences).
Owned by Iceberg Press – an independent media organisation that just has a few members of staff
LISA SYKES, EDITOR Lisa then spent further stints at Hearst Magazines UK, working as Deputy Editor of Coast Magazine,
Sykes recalls. “We didn’t like the fact that print dying was becoming a self fulfilling prophecy”
The world of magazines has never been more vibrant and innovative, but you wouldn’t know it from the average newsstand today. From Iceberg Press website
This is an in-depth CSP and needs to be studied with reference to all four elements of the Theoretical Framework (Language, Representation, Industries, Audience) and all relevant contexts.
Print: Magazine. The magazine should be studied in depth – the front page and from inside, both the contents page and the one page article. If you wish to look at other areas of the magazine, look at the Jan/Feb 2017 edition. There is a digital version of the edition below, look at pages 17 and 101. The interview with Vin Diesel is pp 48-56. There is so much material to draw from this magazine, so be careful NOT to JUST FOCUS ON FRONT COVER as this will be a limited reading of this product.
You will also need to study the magazine looking beyond the specific edition to consider issues of ownership, production, funding, technologies and regulation (Media Industries) and targeting, marketing, sales and readership, audience interpretation, fulfilment, uses and gratifications ideas and theories (Media Audiences).
Media Language (the language of print)
Semiotics: how images signify cultural meanings
The magazine front cover and specified content should be analysed in terms of the composition of the images, positioning, layout, typography, language and mode of address etc. this will then provide detailed evidence for application of the other theoretical frameworks
Narrative and Genre
Genre theory ie Steve Neale
The cover and specified content can be analysed in the context of genre in terms of conventions of layout and composition – which will overlap with analysis of visual language – but also as part of the genre of men’s health and lifestyle magazines.
Genre study would include an analysis of the conventions of magazine front covers – a study which would overlap with visual analysis and audience positioning. Students should extend their genre approach by analysing the conventions of content of the magazine.
The genre conventions of the magazine cover will need to be studied. While narrative may be more familiar to students as an approach to apply to moving image forms, it can also be very productively applied to print media as a way of examining audience targeting, positioning and interpretation. • Consider the way the front cover creates a narrative about character and lifestyle in order to attract an audience • The way in which the cover stories create enigma and anticipation for the reader – to be fulfilled by reading on. • Narrative theory (Structuralism) including including Todorov, Lévi-Strauss
Task 1: Start by looking at the key theoretical frameworks of SEMIOTICS, PRINT LANGUAGE, NARRATIVE, GENRE & REPRESENTATION. As before, have a look at the products, front cover, contents page and article, and discuss in a small group as to whether you consider these to be RADICAL or REACTIONARY REPRESENTATIONS OF MASCULINITY, AGE, PHYSICAL AND MENTAL HEALTH AND . . . etc. Try to come up with 12 points in 12 minutes.
Make a new post – call it Revision of Key ideas 1 (or whatever you think is appropriate for you).
Use the headings above to make some notes that help you to understand and engage with these key ideas.
Base your notes on class discussion, your own knowledge, knowledge you have identified in another source (book, web site etc), illustrations or examples from Press.
Remember that your statement of intent needs to make intellectual and academic links to the course (ie theory, concepts, key words) as well as key technical language associated with the professional practice that your are attempting to replicate. To help you look at this post that has my statement of intent for the newspaper production.
PRODUCTION PROCESS
Once you have chosen your set brief and have written your statement of intent, you should start to complete the ancillary product (the smaller production) that is part of your cross-media brief. You should aim to complete this task within 1 week. Make sure you upload to your blog and print out (to the right size, resolution and proportions).
Create a front page from a regional newspaper reporting on a social and/or political issue of interest to its broad local audience.
TASK 1 RESEARCH, PLANNING, PREPARING: make sure you write a statement of intent. I would also suggest you sketch out your design
TASK 2 AUDIENCE RESEARCH: ask your family and friends
TASK 3 BUILD YOUR ASSETS (masthead, front cover story, supplementary stories, index / contents of paper, institutional details – day, date, bar code etc
TASK 4 IMPORT ASSETS INTO INDESIGN
TASK 5 COMPLETE PRODUCTION – print out at appropriate size and upload to blog.
YOU ONLY HAVE THIS WEEK. TUESDAY IS SPORTS DAY!
CONTENTS:
The front page stories can be fictional, but should relate to real world issues in some way. For example, your news story could be based on: • the environment • economics • health • equality issues • any other issue you feel would be of interest to your audience.
The newspaper’s audience are people of all ages living in the region who are interested in national and international news stories as well as stories relating specifically to the local area.
Extension activity: produce a double page spread that follows the lead story on your front page
Planner
3
NEWSPAPER NEA
1. understand brief 2. write statement of intent 3. Make sketch of front cover 4. produce main story body copy (on word or on blog) 5. Take photo for front page story
SPORTS DAY
NEWSPAPER NEA
1. produce masthead on photoshop (use ruler to measure real size) 2. Make other assets that require Photoshop 3. Make InDesign template (use real measurements) 4. Import masthead, photo and body copy 5. Adjust columns for body copy and 6. Add drop cap(s) to copy 7. Add in-line quote (to body text)
NEWSPAPER NEA
1. Add other assets – either directly into InDesign or build in Photoshop first
Aim to complete first draft
NEWSPAPER NEA
Complete all work.
Make sure you have printed your work to the appropriate size (you will probably need an A3 printer) and saved a JPEG on your blog
‘Authoritarianism’ vs. ‘Liberalism’: our own attitudes
ACTIVITY 1: Complete the Political Compass Survey to give you an understanding of left / right . . . authoritarian / libertarian . . .
If news media (and other media forms?) exhibit bias, how can we identify and critically understand it? A good starting point may be to identify our own social-economic-political bias, so take this survey from ‘The Political Compass’ (link to test).
Post up the image of your results from the Political Compass and make some brief notes that show your understanding of left / right politics and authoritarian / libertarian forms of social control.
About the Political Compass
In the introduction, we explained the inadequacies of the traditional left-right line.
If we recognise that this is essentially an economic line it’s fine, as far as it goes. We can show, for example, Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot, with their commitment to a totally controlled economy, on the hard left. Socialists like Mahatma Gandhi and Robert Mugabe would occupy a less extreme leftist position. Margaret Thatcher would be well over to the right, but further right still would be someone like that ultimate free marketeer, General Pinochet.
That deals with economics, but the social dimension is also important in politics. That’s the one that the mere left-right scale doesn’t adequately address. So we’ve added one, ranging in positions from extreme authoritarian to extreme libertarian.
Both an economic dimension and a social dimension are important factors for a proper political analysis. By adding the social dimension you can show that Stalin was an authoritarian leftist (ie the state is more important than the individual) and that Gandhi, believing in the supreme value of each individual, is a liberal leftist. While the former involves state-imposed arbitrary collectivism in the extreme top left, on the extreme bottom left is voluntary collectivism at regional level, with no state involved. Hundreds of such anarchist communities existed in Spain during the civil war period
You can also put Pinochet, who was prepared to sanction mass killing for the sake of the free market, on the far right as well as in a hardcore authoritarian position. On the non-socialist side you can distinguish someone like Milton Friedman, who is anti-state for fiscal rather than social reasons, from Hitler, who wanted to make the state stronger, even if he wiped out half of humanity in the process.
The chart also makes clear that, despite popular perceptions, the opposite of fascism is not communism but anarchism (ie liberal socialism), and that the opposite of communism ( ie an entirely state-planned economy) is neo-liberalism (ie extreme deregulated economy)
The usual understanding of anarchism as a left wing ideology does not take into account the neo-liberal “anarchism” championed by the likes of Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and America’s Libertarian Party, which couples social Darwinian right-wing economics with liberal positions on most social issues. Often their libertarian impulses stop short of opposition to strong law and order positions, and are more economic in substance (ie no taxes) so they are not as extremely libertarian as they are extremely right wing. On the other hand, the classical libertarian collectivism of anarcho-syndicalism ( libertarian socialism) belongs in the bottom left hand corner.
In our home page we demolished the myth that authoritarianism is necessarily “right wing”, with the examples of Robert Mugabe, Pol Pot and Stalin. Similarly Hitler, on an economic scale, was not an extreme right-winger. His economic policies were broadly Keynesian, and to the left of some of today’s Labour parties. If you could get Hitler and Stalin to sit down together and avoid economics, the two diehard authoritarians would find plenty of common ground.
A Word about Neo-cons and Neo-libs
U.S. neo-conservatives, with their commitment to high military spending and the global assertion of national values, tend to be more authoritarian than hard right. By contrast, neo-liberals, opposed to such moral leadership and, more especially, the ensuing demands on the tax payer, belong to a further right but less authoritarian region. Paradoxically, the “free market”, in neo-con parlance, also allows for the large-scale subsidy of the military-industrial complex, a considerable degree of corporate welfare, and protectionism when deemed in the national interest. These are viewed by neo-libs as impediments to the unfettered market forces that they champion.
ACTIVITY 2: Take a screen shot of your Political Compass Survey and post on to your blog (this will help to give you an understanding of left / right . . . authoritarian / libertarian . . .)
This deal is dangerous for our democracy. Billionaires like Elon Musk play by a different set of rules than everyone else, accumulating power for their own gain. We need a wealth tax and strong rules to hold Big Tech accountable.
Get students to express their own ideas in relation to Musk’s take-over bid for Twitter. Ask students to simply state their own case for regulation, censorship and control – or lack of it. Get students to sit in a horseshoe that indicates: FOR v AGAINST CENSORHSIP, REGULATION AND CONTROL. This will indicate either a LIBERTARIAN or AUTHORITARIAN PERSPECTIVE. This is a key conceptual approach that can be revisited by completing the Political Bias activity on the next page.
Hopefully the discussion will focus on the need to speak-up. Make a clear link between the benefits and drawbacks of saying what you think. Underline the role of the (mass) media in SELECTING, GATE-KEEPING & AMPLIFYING particular conversations and ideas.
Overall, if a question comes up in one of the A2 exams about television it will ask you to compare one of 3 pairs. To be absolutely clear: you will need to talk about both of your specific texts BUT you can choose which pair you talk about. So your choice of paired texts are:
Either Capital (Series 1, episode 1) and Deutschland 83 (Series 1, episode 1) watched with 12B (pages 6-9) OR Witnesses (Series 1, episode 1) and The Missing (Series 2, episode 1) watched with 12D (pages 10-13) OR No Offence (Series 1, episode 1) and The Killing (Series 1, episode 1) watched with 12A (pages 15-17)
These are an in-depth CSP and need to be studied with reference to all four elements of the Theoretical Framework (Language, Representation, Industries, Audience) and all relevant contexts.
YOU MUST LOOK AT PAGES 5-17 in the CSP booklet for specific details of what you need to think about when studying TV CSP’s.
I will play them in sets of pairs for each of the three blocks, BUT if you wish to study a different pair then make sure you have watched each episode and have made relevant notes on BOTH of your programmes.
Music Video – Letter to the Free is a product which possesses cultural and social significance. It will invite comparison with other music videos allowing for an analysis of the contexts in which they are produced and consumed.
This is a targeted CSP and needs to be studied with reference to two elements of the Theoretical Framework (Media Language and Media Representation) and all relevant contexts
Common is an Oscar and Grammy award winning hip/hop rap artist who wrote Letter to the Free as a soundtrack to The 13th – a documentary by Ava DuVernay named after the American 13th amendment (the abolition of slavery). His output is highly politicised, existing in the context of a variety of social and cultural movements aimed at raising awareness of racism and its effects in US society (e.g.: Black Lives Matter). The product can also be considered in an economic context through the consideration of if and how music videos make money (through, for example, advertising on YouTube).
What needs to be studied? Key Questions and Issues
Media Language
Detailed study of Letter to the Free should help students to develop an understanding of how music video can serve a range of functions while communicating multiple meanings. Analysis should include: • Mise-en-scene analysis • Cinematography • Semiotics: how images signify cultural meanings • Aesthetics
Narrative
• How does Letter to the Free appeal to its target audience? • How is the narrative being constructed by the song lyrics reinforced? • How does the narrative position the audience? • How can the narrative invite a range of responses? • What pleasures does the narrative offer the audience? • How is the narrative incorporating views and ideologies? • What is the role of Common in the narrative?
Genre
• Identification of the conventions of the Performative music video. • How music videos serve the needs of media producers • How music videos meet the expectations of audiences • Genre theory including Neale
Media Representations
Letter to the Free explicitly focuses on the history and contemporary experience of African Americans and allows for an exploration of the effect of social, cultural and political context on representations of ethnicity. • Representation of ethnicity, with focus on how Common is a black man exploring black culture-specific issues. • Use of specific historical and contemporary experience to construct a political narrative and argument • How representations invoke discourses and ideologies and position audiences • Representation of gender within the video and in the context of wider representations of women in the music industry • Representation of place • Common as celebrity persona
Theories
The idea of culture as a site of political struggle (re: Jodie’s presentation for Ghost Town see below)
The the theory of hegemony – Gramsci
Theories of representation including Hall
Drawing on theories of Postcolonialism (Gilroy)
Theory of the Public Sphere – Habermas
Key Concepts: ● Cultural resistance ● Cultural hegemony ● Subcultural theory
The Idea of Resistance and Political Protest: ● When we first think about political protest, what comes to mind? ○ Attempts to change to laws or legislation ○ Organised political movements ○ Public protests ○ Petitions, marches ● However, we can look at political protest in terms of: ○ Cultural resistance ○ Everyday people ● Why look at cultural resistance? ○ Overt political protest is uncommon. When it occurs, it often results in a backlash. ○ Even if overt political protest does results in changes in legislation, it won’t necessarily change public opinion. ○ Culture is what influences people’s hearts, minds and opinions. This is the site of popular change. Key idea: the political, personal and cultural are always intertwined
