Task 1:

Calculate what you need to get to secure your target grade (this link may help you)

Questions	What went well?	What could be improved?	What I am going to do to make the improvements
1	I understood how to analyse signs and constructs	Provide more information about signifiers and the key theory	Practice analysing unseen products and go over signifiers again
2	I knew enough information about my CSPs	I must try to refer to the unseen product and not avoid it	Practice essay questions similar to this one with a CSP and unseen product
3	I knew quite a bit about Score and Mulvey’s male gaze theory	Include more theories such as bell hooks’ intersectionality	Go over the feminism topic again
4	I understood the question and Neale’s theory	Use more key words and provide more theories	Go over theories that could be relevant to this question and rewrite it
5	I understood the key terms and what the hypodermic needle theory was	Make sure to think more before answering	Keep revising and include the key words in some essay questions
6	I understood the question and had enough information about newspapers	Include a variety of key words in my answers	Re-visit key words from each topic
7	I understood the question and knew quite a bit about the media industries topic	Could have provided more information and key words	Re-visit the topic and study key words

Task 2:

Identify how many marks you need to secure your target grade.

I had gotten 60/84=B, B=51 and A=61, my target grade is a B

Calculate how you could achieve the overall mark that you are aiming for as your target. In other words, identify the answers that needed a higher score to secure your target grade

Questions 2, 4 & 7

Rewrite those questions using your notes and the mark scheme

-In Progress-

Question 2:

Question 7:

Task 3:

Complete task 1 on page 4 and post this into a new post on your blog.

Briefly look at pages 5-14 – these pages (and most of the conference) looked at representation and advertising, so there may be something there that will help you.

Briefly look at pages 15-18 (this is something that we will come back to)

Briefly look at 19-20 – this is about Ghost Town

Media Language	Media Representations	Media Audiences	Media Industries
Barthes – Semiotics	Butler – Gender Performativity	Hall – Reception	Hesmondalgh – Cultural Industries
Strauss – Structuralism	Stuart Hall – Representation	Shirky – End Of Audience	Curran and Seaton – Power & media
Neale – Genre	Bell Hooks – Intersectionality	Jenkins – Fandom	Livingstone & Lunt – Regulation
Todorov -Narratology	Gilroy – Ethnicity & Post- colonial	Bandura – Media Effects
Baudrillard – Post Modernism	Van Zoonen – Feminist	Gerbner – Cultivation
	Gauntlett – Identity

Q1.  The Father Christmas is fairly crudely constituted (being iconic with low motivation) by colour, styling, positioning to offer instant recognition, reassurance, benevolence, a warm welcome and a clear focus. The setting further suggests an urban, business-oriented, consumerist Christmas where there is warmth here but nothing particularly spiritual unless the audience identifies a star in the east among the white spots in the sky (which may be stars or snow and add either way to the manufactured ‘magic’). The words provide anchorage through a tagline (“when it comes to Christmas, there’s no place like…Manchester”). This stating of Christmas then sharpens up the snow-covered iconic buildings which add relevance and a familiar Christmas aesthetic. It also draws focus to the pretty lights which draw attention to what most will recognise as a German or continental or merely generic Christmas market.  

Q2.  This city scape is The Public Sphere, iconic buildings, the central shopping area, an economic centre: the commercial heart: it is dark and mysterious also ‘promising’. The representation here may be seen as dangerously bland, as if we are observing a ‘natural’ scene, a kind of Capitalist Realism. Equally it may be seen as ‘gorgeous’: glamour and spectacle this is a classic Barthesian myth, a deliberate confusion of History and Nature: we are to imagine this is what cities are like rather than this is how cities have developed. Additionally, this is a representation of the city as a ‘resort’: a location for consumerist adventure: Christmas as a spending spree with Manchester as a temporary materialist theme park, the political here is disguised as if its meaning came from just how things are. 

Ghost Town is more overtly political, a conscious reproach to Thatcher’s Britain. A booming City and Southeast juxtaposed with the post-industrial collapse of the economy everywhere else drew up lines of opposition across the 1980s. The video provides a guided tour of deprivation anchored by a literate protest lyric and there is also a political message in the multi-racial composition of the band in a Britain beset by the mobilisation of the hard right. Punk had provided access to expression to the disenfranchised and prompted a new kind of political pop that was articulate and working class. 

Wednesday 12th March 2025

Language	Representation	Audiences	Industries
Roland Barthes – Semiotics	David Gauntlett – Identity theory	George Gerbner – Cultivation theory	David Hesmondalgh – media is a risky industry
Levi-Strauss – Structuralism	Judith Butler – Gender performativity	Clay Shirky – end of audience	Curran and Seaton – power media
Todorov – Narratology	bell hooks – intersectionality	Henry Jenkins – fandom	Livingstone and Lunt – Regulation
Steve Neale – genre theory	Paul Gilroy – ethnicity and post-colonialism	Albert Bandura – media effects
Jean Baudrillard – Post-modernism	Van Zoonen – Feminist theory	Stuart Hall – Reception theory
	Stuart Hall – representation theory

MONDAY WORK.

TUESDAY WORK.

QUESTION 1:

• The Father Christmas is fairly crudely constituted (being iconic with low
  motivation) by colour, styling, positioning to offer instant recognition,
  reassurance, benevolence, a warm welcome and a clear focus.
• Here is signification at four levels: reference (denotation), association
  (connotation), myth and ideology.
• The setting suggests an urban, business-oriented, consumerist Christmas.
  There is warmth here but nothing particularly spiritual unless the audience
  identifies a star in the east among the white spots in the sky (which may be
  stars or snow and add either way to the manufactured ‘magic’).
• The words provide anchorage through a tag-line (“when it comes to
  Christmas, there’s no place like…Manchester”).
• This stating of Christmas then sharpens up the snow-covered iconic
  buildings which add relevance and a familiar Christmas aesthetic.
• It also draws focus to the pretty lights which draw attention to what most will
  recognise as a German or continental or merely generic Christmas market.
• There is a semiotic vocabulary for those who want to use it: paradigm,
  syntagm, icon/index/symbol, denotation/connotation/myth/ideology.
  Equally it is appropriate to respond out of the language of composition and
  framing (size of shot, camera angle)

QUESTION 3:

the hybrid identity of this text

• the Protest element which has reference to the sixties but also through
  Maya Angelou (“the caged bird sings for freedom”) to Billie Holiday
  (“southern trees we hung from”)
• the associations of the song and images with Hip Hop and Rap
• there is also a documentary element in both style (cinema verité: black and
  white film, realistic location, element of historical accuracy) and lineage: the
  song and video are both connected with the award-winning documentary
  The 13th (about the 13th amendment)
• if genres are ‘cultural categories’, produced with particular discursive
  practices, then they are not found in texts but are subject to the cultural
  readings of media industries, audiences and historical contexts. The
  discourses here are political, cultural and connected to the moment (eg
  Black Lives Matter)

QUESTION 5:

Briefly explain the ‘hypodermic needle’ theory.

• impact of TV violence
• decline of moral standards
• drug misuse
• consumerism
• impact of texting on literacy.

Q1.  Three sets of signs are potentially useful (but this is only 8 marks of work):
the signs that constitute the Father Christmas, the signs that combine as
words to provide anchorage and the signs that draw significance from this
anchored context.

The Father Christmas is fairly crudely constituted (being iconic with low
motivation) by colour, styling, positioning to offer instant recognition,
reassurance, benevolence, a warm welcome and a clear focus.

Here is signification at four levels: reference (denotation), association
(connotation), myth and ideology.

The setting suggests an urban, business-oriented, consumerist Christmas.
There is warmth here but nothing particularly spiritual unless the audience
identifies a star in the east among the white spots in the sky (which may be
stars or snow and add either way to the manufactured ‘magic’).

The words provide anchorage through a tag-line (“when it comes to
Christmas, there’s no place like…Manchester”).

Q5. Demonstrate knowledge of the theoretical framework of media

Examples might include:

• impact of TV violence
• decline of moral standards
• drug misuse
• consumerism
• impact of texting on literacy.

Q7. how media organisations maintain, including through marketing, varieties of
audiences nationally and globally

processes of production, distribution and circulation by organisations,
groups and individuals in a global context

the relationship of recent technological change and media production,
distribution and circulation

the significance of economic factors, including commercial and not-for-profit
public funding, to media industries and their products

the impact of ‘new’ digital technologies on media regulation, including the
role of individual producers

how processes of production, distribution and circulation shape media
products

cultural industries as summarised by Hesmondhalgh:
o cultural industries
o commodification
o convergence
o diversity
o innovation
o conglomeration
o vertical integration
o cultural imperialism.