1. Anchorage: Text or captions that help explain the meaning of an image or video.
2. Paradigm: A set of options or choices, like types of characters or scenes that can be used in a media text.
3. Syntagm: A sequence or arrangement of elements (like images or words) that work together to create meaning.
4. Diegesis: The world of the story in media — everything that exists in the narrative, whether we see it or not.
5. Causality: The relationship where one thing causes another to happen, like in a story when one event leads to the next.
6. Genres of order and integration: Media genres (like news or drama) that keep society stable and orderly.
7. ‘Genre as cultural category’: Thinking of genres as ways to express the values and beliefs of a culture.
8. Cultural codes: Symbols or signs (like colors or gestures) that have specific meanings in a culture.
9. Ideological reading: Interpreting media to see what beliefs or ideas it promotes.
10. Pastiche: Copying or mixing different styles in a playful or humorous way, like a parody.
11. Bricolage: Using different cultural things (like images, music, or fashion) to create something new.
12. Countertypes: Media representations that go against stereotypes, offering a different view of a group.
13. Hegemony: When one group or idea becomes the dominant or accepted way of thinking in society.
14. Voyeurism: Getting pleasure from watching others, especially in a private or personal way, like in reality TV.
15. Imagined communities: Media can make people feel connected to a larger group, even if they don’t know everyone in that group.
16. Marginalisation: When certain groups or voices are pushed out or ignored in media.
17. Orientalism: The way Western media often portrays the East (Asia, the Middle East) as exotic, mysterious, or backward.
18. Otherness: Representing people or cultures as different or strange, often to highlight a sense of superiority over them.
19. Diaspora: The movement of a group of people from their original homeland to different parts of the world, and the media they create around that experience.
20. Gender as discourse: The idea that gender is created through language, culture, and media, rather than being something fixed or biological.
21. Conglomerates: Large media companies that own a variety of different types of businesses or media outlets.
22. Neo-liberalism: An economic and political belief that promotes free markets, privatization, and reducing government control, often reflected in media content.
23. Governance: How media helps shape or control the rules and actions in society.
24. Transnational culture: Culture that crosses national boundaries, often spread through global media and the internet.
25. Commodification: Turning something (like a culture or idea) into something that can be bought or sold in the market.
26. Convergence: The coming together of different types of media, like when TV, internet, and social media work together.
27. Cultural imperialism: When one culture (usually Western) dominates and influences other cultures through media.
28. Cumulation: The gradual building up of certain messages or ideas over time in media content.
29. Standardisation: The process of making things similar or uniform, often seen in mass-produced media content.
30. Enculturation: The process of learning and adopting the values, customs, and norms of one’s culture through media.
31. Bardic function: The role of media in telling stories that preserve cultural history and values.
32. Cultivation differential: The difference in how people who watch a lot of television view the world compared to those who watch less.
33. Resonance: When a media message matches a person’s real-life experiences or feelings, making it feel more impactful.
34. Mean World Index: A measure of how much people believe the world is dangerous or violent, often influenced by media portrayals.
35. Agenda setting: The idea that media decides which issues are important by giving them more attention.
36. Conditions of consumption: The circumstances under which people watch or consume media (e.g., time, place, mood).
37. Encoding/decoding: The process of creating (encoding) and interpreting (decoding) media messages. Producers encode messages with certain meanings, and audiences decode them in different ways.
38. Hegemonic/negotiated/oppositional: Different ways audiences interpret media messages:

• Hegemonic: Accepting the message as intended.
• Negotiated: Partly accepting and partly disagreeing with the message.
• Oppositional: Rejecting the message entirely.

39. Prosumer: A person who both creates and consumes media content.
40. Interactivity: The ability of the audience to actively engage with media, such as voting, commenting, or choosing story paths.

Genre is the classification of something in order to create a group of different corpuses where there is repetition and difference. Genre has expectations especially towards audiences. The way they prevent audience from being bored is evolving, burrowing and adapting Genres. This is called historic specificity.

I am producing 2 media products, that show a coming-of-age film (the shift), for set brief 3. The media products include three movie posters and three 45-60-sec TikTok videos promoting a coming-of-age movie. These media products vary in traditional and digital marketing strategies which ensures maximum audience as it guarantees that individuals who don’t use the media will still be aware of the movie and people who use media, will also have acknowledge of the movie. This is because the fascination within the film industry and how films have such depth when it comes to signs is something that often intrigues audiences. I also find it captivating how snippets of films can manipulate the audience to watch the film. I chose this brief because I believe that the exploring and enhancement of knowledge through semiotics will guarantee audience engagement through my 3 videos but mostly through my 3 posters. I enjoy the whole concept of being able to build meanings through signs and I’ve always had a fond for guessing what small details or signs in films meant and often found myself searching for answers. I am hoping that this NEA will help me explore these ideas and create meaning and profundity to the movie.   

I think it is important that I set a target audience, so the audience I have in mind will be teenagers who are mourning or envy their younger self’s or more specifically audiences who fit the profile “adventurers, “virtuoso” and “architect”. In terms of uses and gratifications, I’m aiming to create products that explore a feeling of sadness towards growing up. This is because the characters in my film will show the sorrow towards growing up. Growing up and expressing how you feel about it is something very common. Therefore, my aim is to give comfort to those who miss or are grieving their younger selves and wishing they could be children again and to reassure them that feeling like this is completely normal. So, my film is about the heartache towards growing up. I have enjoyed watching films that discuss these issues as it gives me more understanding. The movies that have a huge influence on my media products are the movies, “13 going 30” and “to all the boys I’ve loved before”. I love how the first movie I mentioned shows a contrast of two different people in two completely different life stages and for the second movie, I like the poster format especially the fact that it is from Netflix. I will make sure that the mini videos I produce have the same type of vibe and scenery. I will also make sure it looks professionally produced with quality videos and aesthetics. Films discreetly use semiotics, and I will reflect this in my videos.  

I want both of my productions to connect in terms of content and representation, so all my characters will be the same in the videos and the posters, however in the videos, there will be different scenes, but they will still somehow relate. E.g. keeping the same characters as in posters. I will also use consistent branding, such as the name of the film to ensure consistent iconic and indexical signs.