Martha French - Media Studies

 Henry Jenkins - fandom theory "If it doesn't spread, its dead." Fans are textual poachers - taking elements from media texts to create their own culture  The development of the new media ha accelerated participatory culture in which audiences are active and creative participants rather than passive consumers  They create online communities, produce new creative forms, collaborate to solve problems, and shape the flow of media, this creates collective intelligence. From this perspective, convergence is a cultural process rather than a technological one Jenkins prefers the term spreadable media  Macro: Nintendo co. ltd, headquartered in Kyoto Japan, has created franchises that have become household names worldwide  It has sold 5.5billion games  Estimated value of $55billion - impressive, yet less than its competitors with Sony ans Microsoft who are large global conglomerates that diversify their income Animal Crossing is the 13th highest selling game of all ...

 'The good mother' stereotype  Over many years, the media has constructed a societal stereotype of the mother as a woman who cooks, cleans, cares for her child and is happy and fulfilled in this role The 'good' mother is also calm, glamorous, loving and organised  Her children are well behaved, polite and obedient  Her realm is the home/kitchen and things go smoothly for her. She is wise and in control, she is the matriarch in her domain Doves mission Dove are trying to bring awareness to the issue of toxic beauty standards being pushed to young girls on social media, making them feel bad about the way they look. Dove are highlighting how girls think negatively about themselves when others don't think that. Associative advertising - dont appeal to the features of the products itself, instead they correlate the product with an activity or lifestyle (DOVE with body positivity)

  MEDIA REPRESENTATION Media Representation is the result of media showing or describing people, places or events. Media messages can be analysed through class, age, gender, ethnicity and/or disability.  A  stereotype  is a characterisation of a certain group or individual that has certain features, they can be both positive or negative however they are often generalised and inaccurate, media representations work by reinforcing these stereotypes. Roland Barthes,  who studied signs in media argued that values that we attach to these stereotypes are not natural but created by society. When producing these stories, decisions are made to represent them in certain ways, for example they have to understand who their target audience is, what political views the newspaper is aligned with eg The Daily Mail is more right wing whereas The Guardian is more left wing.  Staurt Hall  is a theorist who believed that media is an active agent in shaping and affecting th...

  Representation in news  Negative bias - people are more interested in bad news than good news, bad news is 6x more likely to sell than good news. News producers have the power to fix a 'preferred meaning' to align with their political viewpoint They have considered how the stories appeal to the target audience (or to anger them) Ideology A system of beliefs and ideals held by an individual pr a group of people Stuart Halls concept of the Other  The idea that media representations define a 'norm' which they encourage the audience to identify with and portray those outside this norm as 'other' lesser and alien is a key concept. It builds an us vs them ideology and emphasizes difference. These opposites are known as binary opposites. 1. Challenging stereotypes to 'fix' the meaning in the opposite way is a 'clunky' sometimes necessary solution to the issue  2. Hall argues it is much better to deconstruct the stereotype rather than trying to fix Hy...

  Representation   Represent: to show or describe people, places and events     Representation: the result of the above    C lass   A ge    G ender   E thnicity    D isability    Often these caged representations are useful starting points for analyzing media messages (note they do not include sexuality , religion, regional identity, or education) .   Representations work by enforcing or reinforcing stereotypes   A stereotype is a characterization of an individual or group that has certain features , they can be positive or negative, but they are often generalized and inaccurate      Barthes, the creator of semiotics, the study of signs, suggests that the values attributed to these stereotype s are not real.   Middle class, educated, white men will always be seen in a positive light in comparison to teenage bo ys, blonde women or Muslim asylum seekers      The producers ...