All posts by Rebekka Hodgson

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Media regulation

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Key QuestionTheoretical ideasSpecific Examples
Why regulateCriminal Activity
Taste and Decency
Politics
Privacy
Economics
Ethics
Societal benefits
Who regulates whatCinema
Television
Newspapers
Radio
Magazines
Gaming
Social Media Platforms
New Technologies (web browsing, AI, IoT, VR, smart cities)		BBC
OfCom
How will regulation be put in place?Legislation (ie laws, rules, guidelines)
Ethics (personal choices made by individuals based on societal norms)
Ownership and control		9pm watershed

Authoritarian- supreme control over the citizens of the state

Libertarian- minimal state power, those who seek freedom away from government regulation

Institution

Institution key terms

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  1. Production- the major conlongermates that create the media text
  2. Distribution- what platforms the media text is distributed onto
  3. Exhibition / Consumption- how the audience receives the information
  4. Globalisation-integration of media sources and outlets to facilitate the exchange of ideas cross-culturally
  5. Mergers-
  6. Gatekeepers- a process by which information is filtered to the public by the media
  7. Regulation- the control or guidance of mass media by governments or other bodies
  8. Diversity-differing in a way from other media products
  9. Vertical Integration- Gaining control over the whole process of making a media product – developing, publishing, distributing and exhibiting
  10. Innovation- new ideas and developments
Exam Prep, Notes, Theory

media theorists

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Barthes

Signifiers and signified. Denotation and connotations. Barthes five code symphony: hermeneutic code (enigmas)- construct moments of mystery, proairetic code (actions)- meaning is conveyed through action which provides explanation or excitement, semantic code (connotative elements) any element that produces a single connotative effect eg. lighting/ mise-en-scene. Media as a myth, naturalizes events.

Strauss

Binary oppositions of polarised themes eg. character, narrative, stylistic and genre-driven oppositions. Function of oppositions eg. create identifiable character types or clearly explain ideas.

Propp

8 stock characters; hero, villain, princess, donor, helper, dispatcher, false hero.

Todorov

Media narratives are created using moments of action (propositions). 3 act narrative of equilibrium, disruption and new equilibrium.

Neale

Genre repetition and difference. Sub-genres and hybrid genres. Levels of verisimilitude (extent product references to the real world,narrative similarities, character-driven motifs and audience targeting are important to repetition. Repertoire of elements and predictable expectations.

Hall

There isn’t a true representation of people or events in a text, but there are lots of ways these can be represented. Culture is defined as a space of interpretative struggle

Curran and Seaton

most films are made by conglomerates and that they care mostly about profit and power. This can be done through things such as vertical and horizontal integration, this can result in a lack of diversity and innovation. If we had more of a variety of media companies, we’d have more of a variety of better quality media texts.

Butler

Gender as performative it is created through a series of actions. Gender is not an attribution of male or female.

Katz & Gurevitch & Hass

Uses and gratifications- surveillance, identity, personal relationships and diversion

Livingstone and lunt

Regulation of films- the principle function of the independent bodies that regulate the UK’s media is to protect children and other vulnerable groups from the harmful affects of media content.

Chatman

Use of satellites to develop character, emotion, location, time

Lazarfeld

Two step flow of communication, active consumers, receive information from opinion leaders

Lasswell

Hypodermic needle theory- media propaganda performs three social functions: surveillance, correlation, transmission. Lasswell believed the media could impact what viewers believed about the information presented. Audience are passive consumers.

Institution, Television, Theory

recap: media institutions

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Hesmondhalgh- it’s difficult for media companies to make every product successful however they rely on a few main products to get revenue by using star names and easy to follow narrative. Companies have to make a lot of money out of their products initially, because they don’t often resell the same product repeatedly. 

  1. Products exist as a result of their economic context
  2. The media industry is a high risk business- only a few products are successful and take all the money in the business

Ways media companies expand:

  • Horizontal integration- acquiring media companies that operate in similar sectors (achieves scale-based cost savings and maximise profits)
  • Vertical integration- one company takes control over one or more stages in the production or distribution of a product (achieves significant cost-saving efficiencies)
  • Multi-sector integration- buying companies across the culture industry (allows for further cross-promotion and employment of brand across media platforms

Primary audiences are those who receive the communication directly. Secondary audiences is anyone who may indirectly receive a copy of the communication. Tertiary audiences are audience is almost unaware they are consuming for example adverts in a magazine they are reading or on a billboard they walk past

Link to CSP’s

  • No Offence is produced by Abbottvision and broadcast on Channel 4. Abbottvision is a production company
  • Channel 4’s commitment to be innovative and distinctive.
  • Prior to No Offence, Abbott’s most successful programme had been Shameless which was a realistic representation of the lives of people at the lowest end of the socio-economic scale
  • Channel 4 buys programming from production companies
  • Having a distinctive production background and being a ‘Channel 4 programme’ adds to the branding of No Offence itself and helps audiences know what to expect from the programme
  • Channel 4 uses series such as No Offence to add value to the channel through the availability of the ‘box set’ on All4

  • The Killing was the catalyst for the wider distribution of foreign language crime programming on UK television
  • was produced the Danish national public service broadcaster DR
  • specialised nature of media production, distribution and circulation within a transnational and global context
  • it was broadcast in the UK nearly five years after its success in Denmark (doesn’t follow Hesmondhalgh’s theory that media companies make products as a one time thing)
  • Produced by DR and German company ZDF, the police drama was created and written by Søren Sveistrup. – This allowed more opportunity for global networking and international release, bringing more viewers and therefore, money.
  • The character of Sarah Lund is a familiar detective stereotype
Television

Television

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No Offence (Series 1, episode 1) and The Killing (Series 1, episode 1) watched with 12D (pages 15-17)

No offence

A British television police procedural drama on Channel 4 created by Paul Abbott. It follows a team of detectives from Friday Street police station, a division of the Manchester Metropolitan Police.

First episode of No Offence launched with 2.5 million viewers, although subsequent episodes lost overnight viewers, dropping as low as 1.2 million. Average remained at 2.5 million views and finished 47% up on Channel 4’s slot average. The plot revolves around the investigation of 3 cases, a drowning, a murder and a disappearance. Origin is United kingdom and genre is police procedural, drama and black comedy,

The killing

A crime series that follows the police investigation of the murder of a young girl, created by Veena Sud. It interlocks three different stories and is based off of a Danish series called Forbrydelsen (“The Crime”). It premiered on April 3, 2011.

Genre is Crime Drama, Psychological Thriller, Mystery and Scandinavian Noir. and origin is Denmark

Notes, Postcolonialism, Representation, Theory

POSTCOLONIALISM

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Postcolonialism is about 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? 

The slave trade; started in the mid 1400’s as Americans needed workers for the agricultural industry so Africans were sold over to by their own kings. They were brought over by ship and deprived of any legal rights and slave owner had complete power over the blacks. Importation of people ended in the 1800’s but enslavement continued.

postcolonial criticism challenges the assumption of a universal claim

Edward Said

Showed how the West painted a picture of the East

Orientalism is the Link between 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: xiii

‘the East becomes the repository or projection of those aspects of themselves which Westerners do not choose to acknowledge (cruelty, sensuality, decadence, lazine)’

POSTCOLONIALISM operates a series of signs maintaining the European-Atlantic power over the Orient by creating ‘an accepted grid for filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness‘.

Jacques Lacan- The “other”

we cannot actually see ourselves as whole, we use a reflection to understand who we are / who we are not

Lacan proposed that in infancy this first recognition occurs when we see ourselves in a mirror in media, 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.

The West uses the East / the Orient / the ‘Other’, to identify and construct itself. 

REPRESENTATIONS of – the East /the Orient / the ‘Other’ – are CONSTRUCTED through the lens of WESTERN COLONIAL POWER.

Letter to the Free, Music Video, Notes, Theory

Letter to the free

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 Letter to the Free is a product which possesses cultural and social significance.

The rapper in the music video is called Common and he wrote the lyrics as a soundtrack to the film The 13th which is about the abolition of slavery.  It was aimed at raising awareness of racism and its effects in US society (e.g. Black Lives Matter). It focuses on the history and contemporary experience of African Americans and can explore of the effect of social, cultural and political context on representations of ethnicity.

Cultural hegemony: theory developed by Gramsci: Italian philosopher writing in the 1930s. How social classes come to dominate society (capitalist). Hegemony implicates power into cultural texts by framing the ideologies of the dominant social group as the only legitimate ideology.

Theory of communicative action: theory developed by Habermas. Public sphere excluded the poor and uneducated. Habermas argues that the development of early modern capitalism brought into being an autonomous arena of public debate. Where and how is news talked about by the public; democracy depends on a public which is informed, aware, and which debates the issues of the day. Habermas believes the mass media has reduced the effectiveness of the public sphere.

Lyrics

  • Prison is a business, America’s the company
  • Slavery’s still alive, check Amendment 13’
  • ‘Black bodies being lost in the American dream’

Moving Image, Semiotics, Theory

Film sequence analysis

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Task 4: moving image sequence inspirations

  • Switching the perspective of who you are viewing from very often
  • Doing closeups of the main character and long shots of people watching him from afar so you know they are
  • Blurring the background for attentions on character
  • giving background on what other characters are doing
  • Camera angle looking down on the insignificant characters and horizontal angle for main character
  • change scenery ie. different side of room
  • non-linear sequence with flashbacks at time of inciting incident
  • perpertia right at the end of clouds when the boy dies
  • Creates pathos through anchorage of sounds and video