Media Studies Glossary
Anchorage - how meaning is fixed, as in how a caption fixes the meaning of a picture
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.
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.
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
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 product – a text that has been designed to be consumed by an audience. E.G a film, radio show, newspaper etc.
Media text – see above. N.B Text usually means a piece of writing
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.
Montage – putting together of visual images to form a sequence.
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.
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.
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.
