National Year 12 Media Studies

1. 3.1 Close study products and media forms

Nine media forms · Close study products (CSPs)

• Mass Media – Mass media are channels that carry the same message from one sender to a very large audience: print (newspapers, magazines), broadcast (radio, TV, film) and digital (websites, social media, music videos, video games). They inform, educate, entertain and persuade. Owners, editors and algorithms act as gatekeepers that choose which news we see. New media is digital, interactive and two-way, so audiences can reply and create. Sociologists debate how strongly media affect audiences, from direct 'injection' to active audiences who choose and interpret.
• Media Literacy – Media literacy is the skill of reading, questioning and creating media: news, ads, videos, posts, films and games. Every media text is made by someone, for a purpose, for an audience, using forms, conventions and techniques that shape how we feel. A media-literate person checks the source, evidence, other coverage and the original before believing or sharing, notices bias and filter bubbles, and makes their own media responsibly.

2. 3.2 Contexts of the media

Five contexts

• Contexts of the Media: Historical, Social, Cultural, Economic and Political – Every media product, from an advert to a video game, is made at a certain time, by people with certain values, with certain money, under certain laws. These surroundings are its contexts. Media studies uses five: historical (when it was made and what was happening), social (how people lived: family, gender, class, ethnicity), cultural (shared tastes, traditions, art forms), economic (ownership, funding, profit) and political (power, laws, regulation, ideology). Context explains why a product looks the way it does, how it represents people, and why audiences read it as they do. In exams you must link a specific feature of the product to a specific context, not list facts about the period.

3. 3.3 Extended response and synopticity

Sustained argument

Coming soon

4. 3.4 Media language

How media communicate meaning · Enabling ideas

• Semiotics: How Signs Make Meaning – Semiotics is the study of signs. A sign = signifier (the form: a picture, word, sound, colour) + signified (the idea it brings). Denotation is the plain meaning; connotation is the extra cultural meaning. Signs can be icons, indexes or symbols. Codes are shared rules for reading signs, and a caption can anchor one meaning. Barthes called connotations that feel "natural" myths.

5. 3.5 Media representation

Representation of the world and groups · Enabling ideas

• Media Representation – Representation means how the media show (re-present) people, places, groups and ideas. Media never copy reality: someone selects what to show and constructs it with camera angles, lighting, words and editing. When the same simple image of a group is repeated, it becomes a stereotype. Some groups are shown too little (under-represented) or only in narrow roles. Theories by Stuart Hall, David Gauntlett, Liesbet van Zoonen, bell hooks, Judith Butler and Paul Gilroy help us ask who is shown, how, by whom and with what effect.
• Media Theory: The Key Ideas on Representation, Industries and Audiences – Media theories are tools that help you explain how media works. They fall into three groups. Representation: Stuart Hall (meaning is made through signs; stereotypes reflect power), David Gauntlett (people build identities from media), Liesbet van Zoonen (gender is constructed; women's bodies as spectacle), bell hooks (race, class and gender interlock), Judith Butler (gender is performed) and Paul Gilroy (colonial ways of ranking peoples still shape media). Industries: Curran and Seaton (concentrated ownership limits variety), Livingstone and Lunt (regulation balances citizens and consumers) and David Hesmondhalgh (cultural industries cut risk). Audiences: Albert Bandura (people copy media models), George Gerbner (heavy viewing cultivates beliefs), Hall again (audiences decode in different ways), Henry Jenkins (active fans) and Clay Shirky (audiences become producers). Good answers apply a theory to a real product and also say where it falls short.