Key Media Theories

Roland Barthe - Semiotics:

Signs: Anything can have a meaning                              Examples: Open

Signifiers: The things that creates meaning                  Signified - To start something new

Signifieds: The meaning that is created.

Codes: Any element of media language that creates meaning for the audience

Hermeneutic code: Also known as enigma codes, these refer to something within the media product that creates mystery or suspense

Proairetic code: Also known as action codes, this refers to something within a media product that suggests that something will happen

Symbolic code: Something within a media product that creates a deeper meaning for the audience

Claude Levi-Strauss - Structuralism:

We don't know the world through what it is, but what it is not. If there was no concept of night then we wouldn't have days. If there wasn't any villains there wouldn't be heroes. Binary opposition is two things that are the opposite of each other but one is needed for the other to be a thing.

David Gauntlet - Theories of identity:

He believes that despite many negative perceptions of the media, audiences are capable of constructing their own identities through what they see on television. Additionally he writes there are now many more representations of gender that the traditional 'gender binary'.

Steve Neale - Theories around genre:

Genres exist as a classification system, if they weren't there it would be difficult to locate similar to one they liked. It allows audiences to classify films and locate others. It is bad because it gives people expectations of the media product. It allows producers to make films efficiently. Genre is manipulative and cynical - The audience is presented almost as zombies - only to exist to generate a profit.

Neale believes that genre is essentially instances of 'repetition and difference'. He suggested that texts need to conform to some generic paradigms to be identified within a certain genre - but must also subvert these conventions in order to not appear identical.

Tzvetan Todorov - Narratology:

Establishment of equilibrium -> Disequilibrium -> Partial restoration of equilibrium

                                            The Liminal Period

                                               ----------------->

- Equilibrium is the state of something that doesn't change, it is the state of balance

- Liminality is a period of translation

- A multi strand narrative follows many isolated narratives whereas a single strand narrative only follows a single narrative. Soaps are multi strand narratives and sitcoms are single strand narrative.

- A non-linear narrative is non chronological, it doesn't follow the order of time (flashbacks) whilst a linear narrative is a chronological narrative.

- Narrative for Todorov is the movement of one state of equilibrium to another.

- It is only a partial restoration of equilibrium because things will never be the same once the issue has been solved.

Other buildings blocks of narrative:

- Genre conventions

- Character archetypes

- Costume & mise-en-scene

- Barthe's codes

- Binary oppositions

Albert Bandura - Media Effects:

If you watch too much television you may accept biased ideologies. The program is made by people with opinions and so therefore it is biased e.g. The News.Watching horror films can desensitise you from this sort of things in the future. 

The hypodermic needle theory is the theory of being brainwashed. Mass media is media that can be spread to mass audiences quickly and easily (radio and television). An advantage is that it can be used in positive propaganda. A disadvantage is that the theory doesn't work. Somebody can play a violent game without killing someone or hurting someone. One reason why it is believed is because it is much easier to blame a video game than go into mental health issues or social issues.

George Gerbner - Cultivation Theory:

- When we cultivate something we allow it to grow. We allow the ideologies to grow. 

- This theory is "the idea that prolonged and heavy exposure to TV cultivates", (as in grows or develops in audiences) "a view of the world consistent with the dominant or majority view expounded by television"

- Television present a mainstream view of culture, ignoring everything else. In doing so, television distorts reality. Heavy televisions users are therefore more likely to accept this edited and distorted view of reality. This may be correct for someone but not for someone else. Some people are easier led than other people do. It doesn't take into account the complexity of the human mind. 

Issues:

- Not everyone watches excessive amounts of tv

- It is distressingly similar to the effects model

Hegemony:

- Where one group wields power over another, not through domination, but through coercion and consent

Examples of hegemonic power:

- School system

- Giving up your seat on the bus to elderly or disabled

- Queuing 

- Wearing clothes

Stuart Hall - Reception theory:

Preferred reading - The 'right' reading of a text, which can be enforced by positioning. 

Stewart Hall categorised audience response into three separate groups:

- Dominant reading: The audience agrees with dominant values in the text, and agrees with the values and ideology it shows

- Negotiated reading: The audience generally agrees with what they read, but they may disagree with certain aspects

- Oppositional reading: The audience completely disagrees with what they see, and rejects the dominant reading

- Aberrant reading: When the audience doesn't understand

Factors that affect the audience readings:

- Their upbringing

- Morality/ moral beliefs

- Financial situation

- Religion

- Ethnicity

- Gender identity

- Sexuality

- Age

- The TV program you're watching when the advert comes on

- What time it is

- Location

David Hesmondhalgh - The cultural industries:

Horizontal integration is where a company buys out other film companies to cut out the competition (E.g. Disney bought out LucasFIlm - Star Wars)

Vertical integration is where a company buys up other companies involved in different stages of the production and circulation (They could buy and own theatres, equipment, studios and actors/ actresses)

Curran and Seaton - Power and media industries:

The media is controlled by a small number of companies primarily driven by the profit and power. Media concentration limits variety, creativity and quality. More socially diverse patterns of ownership can create more varied and adventurous media productions.

Judith Butler - Gender Theory

Sex is what you are born as whereas gender is a performance and through the choice of the individual

Lisbet Van Zoonen - Feminist Theory

- The idea that gender is constructed through discourse and that its meaning varies according to cultural and historical context

- The idea that the display of women bodies as objects to be looked at is a core element of western patriarchal culture

- The idea that in mainstream culture the visual and narrative codes that are used to construct the male body as spectacle differ from those used to objectify the female body
- Gender is constructed through codes and conventions of media products, and the idea of what is male and what is female changes over time
-Women's bodies are used in media products as a spectacle for heterosexual male audiences, which reinforces patriarchal hegemony- The male gaze theory - Media is all about the gaze. Everybody is looking at somebody. Women are used as a spectacle

Clay Shirky - 'End of audience' 

Audiences are no longer passive: they interact with media products in an increasingly complex variety of ways. 

bell hooks - Feminist theory

-Feminism is a struggle to end patriarchal hegemony and the domination of women

-Feminism is not a lifestyle choice: it is a political commitment

-Race, class and gender all determine the extent to which individuals are exploited and oppressed. 

-She has dropped the capital letters from her name to show that her name is not important enough to have capital letters

-Book: 'Feminism is for everyone'

-If we have expectations of women we have expectations of men

In a beer advert women are represented to be useless because she has ruined the dinner. The emotional response of her crying that she has burnt the dinner and using the mans tissue as she feels as though she has failed. Whilst she is still in the home she is wearing feminine clothing. It suggests that the men don't care about the women, they only care about the beer - this objectifies her as it suggests the beer is better than her. This could also suggest that women can't drink beer. However it could show that he is offering her a bottle of beer and letting her having a rest rather than making her cook. The women is in the kitchen which shows that women are supposed to be in the kitchen. On its own it doesn't do much but if we are cultivated and keep seeing it we will begin to believe that women should be in the kitchen. She is shown to be dependent on the man as he is the one calming her down. 

Sonia Livingstone - Regulation of the media industries

Postmodernism - Jean Baudrillard

"It is no longer  question of imitation,nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs for the real for the real."

Representation is the new reality.

Paul Gilroy - Theories around ethnicity and post-colinal theory

Colonisation is what happens when a country takes over another and makes them house their culture.
Racial hierarchy is anther method of establishing hegemonic control.