Key Concepts Media Revision

Dear fellow media students,

I hope these notes help you ACE the exam:

Mass Culture Theory

Mass culture is a standardised, formulaic, repetitive and superficial culture

High Culture - 'Good Taste' - smaller audience e.g Opera, Ballet

Low Culture - 'Poor Taste' - mass audience, popular e.g Cinema, Reality TV

Taste is socially constructed, and used by different groups to gain status

Cultural Capital -  linked to social status, and can be acquired through education. Its value can shift over time it is not fixed. 

Semiology 

Ferdinand de Saussure says that language is not just a way of classifying objects in an external world, he does not believe that meanings are fixed. He asks why does a word mean what it means?

 e.g why is it that when we hear the word cat, we automatically think of a small cute furry animal?

He also believes that signs are arbitrary 

Signifier - Sound/image/mark on paper

Signified - The concept 

Referent - Real Item

 e.g heart shape is the signifier, romance is signified, but the referent is a heart organ 

Langue - Language

Parole - actual utterances of words 

C.S Pierce distinguishes three types of signs:

Symbolic - no relevant connection e.g Red means danger/stop

Iconic - resemble meaning in some way e.g Queens head on money - wealth

Indexical - signs which indicate what they stand for e.g smoke indicates fire

Structuralism 

Propp - looks at Russian folk tales, breaks them down into basic narrative units called 'Narratemes', he states that there are 31 narrative units and narratives are made up of 8 characters: hero, villian, helper, donar, princess, father, dispatcher, false hero

Barthes - suggests narratives have up to 5 distinct codes: Symbolic codes, Cultural codes, the Hermeneutic or Enigma code, which acts as a mystery/puzzle which engages the viewer to guess what will happen at the end. 

Wright - Western 

Eco - James Bond

Todorov - argues there is a common underlying structure in narratives: Equilibrium - Disequilibrium - Equilibrium this suggests that narratives begin balanced and stable, they then become disrupted, and then the status quo is restored, and a balanced and stable world is restored. 

Fabula - another word for 'story', forms in our minds through influences

Syuzhet - another word for 'plot', arrangement of events by author 

Genre Theory

Contract between producer and audience

Genre Hybridity - two genres mixed together e.g Romantic Comedy 

Intertextuality - draws in other texts 

Political Economy 
Material conditions in which a text was produced/Relationship between hard and soft power
Hard Power - capital, military, legal systems
Soft Power - symbols, discourses, semiotics

Stuart Hall 
Encoder - Message - Decoder
3 interpretive codes:
1. The dominant - fully decodes it
2. The negotiated - partly decodes it
3. The oppositional - understands it but chooses not to share it

New Media 
WorldWideWeb 
HTML - HyperText Markup Language
Internet
- ability to produce content e.g on YouTube
- ability to communicate with others e.g on Social Networking Sites- Facebook

The Chicago School 
Offers a model for Regulation (I remember it as SLAM)
Social Norms - how we should behave
Law - sanctions and threats given if we disobey the law
Architecture - forms of constraints e.g Tinted windows don't let you see in
Market - availability and prices constraint our actions of what we can afford to buy

Narrative
Relationship between 'teller' and 'listener' 
Narratives are all constructed, they are organised as a sequence of events

Framing - tells us what to think, selects what is salient (important)
Priming - tells us what to think about, allows us to have our own opinion, it stimulates thought and emotional reactions
Agenda Setting - media can influence the audience by amount of attention given to a particular news story

CMC - Computer Mediated Communication 
Seperation between reality and online reality


Hegenomy Theory - where popular ideas of 'common sense' reflects the interests of the powerful elites

Uses and Gratifications 
- Audiences are active not passive, they exercise choice in media consumption
- They use media for what they want, they seek media use for specific needs
e.g to find information, create a personal identity, communicate and socialise with others on SNS such as Facebook, for business, for entertainment
- Media use is goal directed

Chomsky and Herman believe that there is a ruling class which controls the media and its effects

Barthes suggests that codes are 'naturalised' to form myths which convey a particular message.
e.g Bleach is like liquid fire and Soap gently 'lifts' dirt
Two levels of meaning
Denotation - first level, what it actually is
Connotation - second level, what it makes you think of

So that's all, hopefully its enough for us to pass!
I wish you all the best of luck x

Mass Culture

I have been meaning to blog about the 'Mass Culture' lecture we had on monday, but since then my life has been overtaken by Teeline, Russel, and McNae's. The lecture on monday was insightful, a calming and motivational mood was set as we walked in to Beethovens symphony, a contrast from the frantic panic of reading HWP for tuesday's seminar. Greeks aside, I learnt a lot about High and Low culture, so i'll fill you in:

'Taste' (not the food related sense) is often concidered as a 'natural' habit, without realising we all have our own perception as to what we believe is good taste, or poor. It is an expression of individuality or even a group as a whole. In simple terms, high culture such as Ochestral Music, Opera, Ballet and Fine Art tends to appeal to a smaller audience, sterotypically generally to an upper class background.Whereas, Low culture such as Cinema, Soaps/TV, Magazines and Celebrities, is extremely popular appealing to a mass audience.

*French accent at the ready... Pierre Bourdieu questions how the logic of taste and preference work. He claimed that cultural preference works as a form of cultural distinction, and our taste and notions of when we deem as 'quality' are socially constructed. Random example but if you hang around with a bunch of skater chicks you probably rate Avril Lavigne, and amongst that group you would be classed as having good taste, but to someone else you could be looked upon as having very very bad taste. This is where "Cultural Capital" or as Pierre may say "le capital culturel" comes in, it is linked to social status and education. Our individual values of what we categorise as high or low culture are not fixed, in the sense that generations can change them.

Shock was definitely on all our faces when Robert Maplethorpe's art popped up before us: 'A man in a polyester suit' (google it if you wish!). Well, the long awkward silence led to the room suddenly feeling hotter and in my case looking anywhere but at the board, (totally primary school I know) but it reminded me of when I encounted him in my Photography A level.  However, in this instance, it got people thinking as to whether his work could be deemed as pornography or art? Emphasising upon the point that different people will have a different perception, prehaps because of our educational background, or values.

In the words of Raymond Williams - 

"Culture is Ordinary" 

"There are no masses there are only ways of seeing people as masses"