News revision

Monday 9th May 2022

News: exam format

L/O: to understand the exam format for the news unit.

Question 1 -
Analyse 2 sources in terms of either media language or representation.
The sources will be from a tabloid and the quality press with only 1 being a set product.
May ask you to use a specific concept or theory.
Will need to reference the sources in detail, using accurate terminology.
10 marks = 17 minutes
Van Zoonen: women are objects, performance of gender roles, what we do rather than what we are (dependent on cultural/historical context)
Patriarchy = male dominated society

Question 2 -
show your understanding of the news industry through analysis, as well as asking you to make judgements and draw conclusions.
same sources as question 1.
bullet points to show you want to include.
need to show a developed line of reasoning, supporting your ideas with detailed reference to the source.
15 marks = 25 minutes.
state expectations of tabloid and broadsheet
new hybrid - celebrity culture
state our view
Have a conclusion

Question 3 -
Will ask for your understanding of the news industry and the impact and influence of the contexts.
You will be expected to reference the set products as examples.
10 marks = 17 minutes.

Question 4 -
Will ask you to evaluate one of he theories studied, in relation to understanding print and/or online news.
May be given a choice of theories or it might specify one.
You should be talking about the usefulness and limitations of the theory - do not just explain the theory.
Will be expected to reference the set products as examples.
10 marks = 17 minutes.

1. Summaries the theory.
2. How does this apply to the daily mail and examples of it.
3. How does this apply to the guardian and examples of it.
4. Limitations of the theory or where it falls short in general application to news.

Theory revision:
Shirky's - end of audience theory - 

Was designed to explain the changes in media audiences brought about by the online media. 

Online participatory media brings about a change in the audience from atomised consumers addressed by centralised media to consumers as producers, due to the user-generated content allowed by the online media.

Monday 16th May 2022

Theory:

Industries:

Curran and Seaton: Media industries are capitalist and the owners control the media leading to a narrowing of opinions concluding that owners pursue profit.

Hesmondhalgh: Production is owned and controlled by a few media conglomerates with companies rely on repetition to minimise risk and cover failure as risk is seen in loss of money.  

Livingstone and Lunt: Citizens are social, seek public or social benefits from the media and require regulation to promote public interest and consumers who seek private benefits from the media require regulation to protect them.

Audience:

Bandura: The media can influence people directly influencing their values judgements and conduct can be altered directly.

Gerbner: Long term exposure to media forms cultivates standardised roles and behaviours with 'mean world syndrome' causing a mistrusting attitude towards others. 

Hall: media producers encode with a preferred meaning the dominant readings, negotiated readings and oppositional readings. 

Jenkins: Audiences are active, participatory audiences create online communities using new media forms to develop or influence how media is consumed. 

Shirky: Traditional media are shaped by centeralised producers, audiences are now seen as a mass of people with predictable behaviours, audience behaviour is now variable, they are prosumers who can create and shape their own content and user generated content creates emotional connections.

Media Language:

Baudrillard: Modern societies were organised around production of goods, postmodern society is organised around simulation - the play of images and signs. Hyperreality - media simulations which control the way we think and behave.

Levi-strauss: Binary oppositions, hidden rules which shape a structure to communicate ideologies or myths. 

Barthes: the meaning is communicated through signs which are made up of a signifier, the meanings created by these myths often reflect dominant values and ideologies.

Neale: Genre depends upon the repetition of codes and conventions in media products, genre conventions are not fixed and evolve over time as producers subvert established conventions or use other genres. 'the intertextual relay'

Todorov: narratives move from a state of equilibrium to disequilibrium to resolution to a new equilibrium. 

Representation:

Butler: Gender is created in response to our performance of gender roles. Performativity of these roles causes 'gender trouble' for those who do not fit the heterosexual norms.

Gilroy: The black atlantic is a transatlantic cultures that is simultaniously African, American, Caribbean and British. Britain has failed to mourn its loss of empire, creating post-colonial melancholia, leading to a version of British colonial history that criminalises immigrants.  Representations support a belief in they inherit superiority of white western civilisations.

Hall: meaning is created by a representation, but it isn't just by what is present but also what is absent and different. stereotypes are constructed and should be deconstructed to identify what they tell us about ideology. 

Gauntlett: identity: The media portray a wide range of different identities allowing people to think through their own identities, identities of gender and sexuality are now less fixed than they were in the past. 

Van Zoonen: Women are often objectified, viewed as sexual objects, in media representations.

Bell Hooks: Feminism challenges patriarchy and sexist representations, hooks argues for an intersectional approach considering how identities such as race, class and sexuality contribute to oppression alongside gender.

Webinar notes:

Daily Mail: masthead in a serif font - elaborate.

Monday 23rd May 2022

Webinar:

Media language elements: 

rhetorical questions - informal language

Unflattering photo - low quality, entertainment values - typical tabloid layout.

The mirror - left wing values - labour values

Daily Mail - construct meaning and ideology: 

Vibrant colour palette - younger demographic, upbeat mode of address. Balanced ratio of image to text - mid market tabloid. (General information)

Cultural context: 

Platforms and technology - 

How a newspaper reflects the culture in which it is made, because of digital technology print media has been in decline for many years, hence more online news on a range of platforms.

Genre - 

Readers expect more soft news in a mid market tabloid than a tabloid.

How responses to certain news stories may be culturally interpreted, dependent on beliefs/views.

Industry -

Curran and Seaton

Hesmondhalgh

Livingstone and Lunt

The Guardian - doesn't make you pay but asks for you to support them.