The Key Aspects of Media Studies
The Media Studies courses and units seek to develop students’ knowledge and understanding of the media by a balance of analysis and practise in relation to seven key aspects:
- Categories: how texts are classified which include:
- Medium - press, radio, television, film
- Purpose – to inform, persuade, entertain, educate, make a profit
- Form – drama, light entertainment, newspaper, series
- Genre – soap opera, action movie, tabloid newspaper.
- Language: how the media creates meanings through the use of conventions. There are two main kinds:
- technical (eg in film: camera angle, editing)
- cultural/symbolic (eg dress, gesture, accent).
- Narrative. Involves the plot line detail of characters, setting and action as well as Structure – the organisation of the sequence (normality/disruption/normality; single or multiple storylines; happy endings; cliffhangers).
- Representation: how media texts represent places, people, events or ideas. Stereotypes/non-stereotypes.
- Audiences: how the audiences are identified and addressed(target audience, different audience reaction).
- Institutions: how the production of the media output is organised and financed(type of production company, effects of finance).
- Technology: how media products are created and distributed to the audience. Technological issues are not dealt with as separate but described when appropriate.
Within the Analysis units this might lead to students addressing questions such as:
- What kind of text is it? (Categories)
- What does the text mean and how do I know this? (Language)
- What story does the text tell? (Narrative)
- Who is the text aimed at and what do they think of it? (Audiences)
- How does the text present its subject? (Representations)
- Who made the text and why? (Institutions)
- How was it made and distributed? (Technologies)
Similarly, when students are creating their own media texts for the Production unit they could begin structuring their progress by considering:
- Who is making this text and why (Institutions)
- Who is the text aimed at and how should they react? (Audiences)
- What kind of text are we making? (Categories)
- What is the subject and how do we present it? (Representations)
- What story should it tell and how do we tell it? (Narrative)
- What should it mean and how do we convey these meanings? (Languages)
- How do we make and distribute it? (Technologies)