Media Studies Glossary
Anchorage - how meaning is fixed, as in how a caption fixes the meaning of a picture
Archetype – A universal type or model of character
that is found in many different texts, e.g. ingenue, anti-hero, wise old
woman, hero-as-lover, hero-as-warrior, shadow trickster, mentor, loyal
friend, temptress
Audience – viewers, listeners and readers of a media
text. A lot of media studies is concerned with how audience use texts
and the effects a text may have on them. Also identified in demographic
socio-economic categories.
Binary Opposites – the way opposites are used to
create interest in media texts, such as good/bad, coward/hero,
youth/age, black/white. By Barthes and Levi-Strauss who also noticed
another important feature of these ‘binary opposites': that one side of
the binary pair is always seen by a particular society or culture as
more valued over the other.
Catharsis – the idea that violent and and sexual
content in media texts serves the function of releasing ‘pent up’
tension aggression/desire in audiences.
Censorship – Control over the content of a media
text – sometimes by the government, but usually by a regulatory body
like the British Board of Film censors.
CGI – Computer Generated Imagary, Refers to the
(usually) 3-D effects that enhance all kinds of still and moving images,
from text effects, to digital snow or fire, to the generation of entire
landscapes
Code – a sign or convention through which the media communicates meaning to us because we have learned to read it.
Technical codes – all to do with the way a text is technically constructed – camera angles, framing, typography, lighting etc.
Visual codes – codes
that are decoded on a mainly connotational level – things that draw on
our experience and understanding of other media texts, this includes
Iconography
– which is concerned with the use of visual images and how they trigger
the audiences expectations of a particular genre, such as a knife in
slasher horror films.
Consumer – purchaser, listener, viewer or reader of media products.
Context – time, place or mindset in which we consume media products.
Conventions – the widely recognised way of doing things in particular genre.
Convergence – The way in which technologies and
institutions come together in order to create something new. Cinema is
the result of the convergence of photography, moving pictures (the
kinetoscope, zoetrope etc), and sound. The iPad represents the
convergence of books, TV, maps, the internet and the mobile phone.
Demographics – Factual characteristics of a population sample, e.g. age, gender, race, nationality, income, disability, education
Denotation – the everyday or common sense meaning of a sign.
Connotation – the secondary meaning that a sign carries in addition to it’s everyday meaning.
Diegetic Sound – Sound whose source is visible on the screen
Non Diegetic sound – Sound effects, music or narration which is added afterwards
Enigma – A question in a text that is not
immediately answered and creates interest for the audience – a puzzle
that the audience has to solve.
Feminism – the struggle by women to obtain equal rights in society
Gaze – the idea that the way we look at something,
and the way somebody looks at you, is structured by the way we view the
world. Feminist Laura Mulvey suggests that looking involves power,
specifically the look of men at women, implying that men have power over
women.
Genre – the type or category of a media text, according to its form, style and content.
Hegemony – Traditionally this describes the
predominance of one social class over another, in media terms this is
how the controllers of the media may on the one hand use the media to
pursue their own political interest, but on the other hand the media is a
place where people who are critical of the establishment can air their
views.
Hypodermic Needle Theory – the idea that the media
can ‘inject’ ideas and messages straight into the passive audience. This
passive audience is immediately affected by these messages. Used in
advertising and propoganda, led to moral panics about effect of violent
video and computer games.
Ideology – A set of ideas or beliefs which are held
to be acceptable by the creators of the media text, maybe in line with
those of the dominant ruling social groups in society, or alternative
ideologies such as feminist ideology.
Indexical sign – a sign which has a direct relationship with something it signifies, such as smoke signifies fire.
Image – a visual representation of something.
Institutions – The organisations which produce and control media texts such as the BBC, AOL Time Warner, News International.
Intertextuality – the idea that within popular
culture producers borrow other texts to create interest to the audience
who like to share the ‘in’ joke. Used a lot in the Simpsons.
Media language – the means by which the media communicates to us and the forms and conventions by which it does so.
Media Platform - nothing to do with trains, this
refers to the different ways that media content is delivered, mainly via
TV, laptop, tablet, smartphone, cinema, video/computer game, printed
page etc. for instance the BBC delivers content via TV, laptop and
mobile device, and also through printed publications. Most media
organisations deliver their content via a multitude of platforms.
Media product – a text that has been designed to be consumed by an audience. E.G a film, radio show, newspaper etc.
Mise en Scene – literally ‘what’s in the shot’
everything that appears on the screen in a single frame and how this
helps the audience to decode what’s going on.
Mode of Address – The way a media product ‘speaks’
to it’s audience. In order to communicate, a producer of any text must
make some assumptions about an intended audience; reflections of such
assumptions may be discerned in the text (advertisements offer
particularly clear examples of this).
Montage – putting together of visual images to form a
sequence. Made famous by Russian film maker Eisenstein in his famous
film Battleship Potemkin.
Moral Panic – is the intensity of feeling stirred up
by the media about an issue that appears to threaten the social order,
such as against Muslims after 9/11, or against immigrants, or against
‘video nasties’ following the Jamie Bulger murder.
Multi-media – computer technology that allows text, sound, graphic and video images to be combined into one programme.
Myth – a complex idea by Roland Barthes that myth is
a second order signifying system ie when a sign becomes the signifier
of a new sign
Narrative code – The way a story is put together
within a text, traditionally equilibrium- disequilibrium, new
equilibrium, but some text are fractured or non liner, eg Pulp Fiction.
News values – factors that influence whether a story will be picked for coverage.
Non-verbal communication – communication between people other than by speech.
Ownership – who produces and distributes the media texts – and whose interest it is.
Patriarchy – The structural, systematic and historical domination and exploitation of women.
Popular Culture – the study of cultural artefacts of the mass media such as cinema, TV, advertising.
Post Modernism – Anything that challenges the
traditional way of doing things, rejecting boundaries between high and
low forms of art, rejecting rigid genre distinctions, emphasizing
pastiche, parody, intertextuality, irony, and playfulness. Postmodernism
favours reflexivity and self-consciousness, fragmentation and
discontinuity (especially in narrative structures), ambiguity,
simultaneity, and an emphasis on the destructured, decentered,
dehumanized subjects! This is tricky!
Preferred Reading - the interpretation of a media
product that was intended by the maker or which is dictated by the
ideology of the society in which it is viewed.
Oppositional Reading – an interpretation of a text by a reader whose social position puts them into direct conflict with its preferred reading.
Negotiated Reading
– the ‘compromise’ that is reached between the preferred reading
offered by a text and the reader’s own assumptions and interpretations
Propaganda – the way ruling classes use the mass media to control or alter the attitudes of others.
Reader – a member of the audience, someone who is actively responding to the text.
Regulation – bodies whose job it is to see that
media texts are not seen by the wrong audience (eg British Board of Film
Censors) or are fair and honest (EG Advertising Standards Association)
Representation – The way in which the media ‘re-presents’ the world around us in the form of signs and codes for audiences to read.
SFX – special effects or devices to create visual illusions.
Shot – single image taken by a camera.
Sign – a word or image that is used to represent an object or idea.
Signifier/Signified – the ‘thing’ that conveys the
meaning, and the meaning conveyed. EG a red rose is a signifier, the
signified is love (or the Labour Party!)
Sound Effects – additional sounds other than dialogue or music, designed to add realism or atmosphere.
Stereotype – representation of people or groups of people by a few characteristics eg hoodies, blondes
Still – static image.
Sub-genre – a genre within a genre.
Two Step Flow theory – the idea that ideas flow from mass media to opinion leaders, and from them to a wider population.
Uses and Gratifications – ideas about how people use
the media and what gratification they get from it. It assumes that
members of the audience are not passive but take an active role in
interpreting and integrating media into their own lives.
Here is the blog I took it from - lots of great stuff!
