2. A collective identity refers to individuals' sense of
belonging to a group (the collective).
From the perspective of the individual, the collective
identity forms a part of his or her personal identity.
3. Communities formed from shared identity:
age, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity,
cultural values, political ideas etc.
Not just representations by mainstream media
but also self-construction by users of the
media.
Collective identity: the individual’s sense of
belonging to a group (part of personal identity)
4. Interactionist theorist
Sheldon Stryker states that
we interact with others to
create an identity, this is
called identity negotiation.
This develops a consistent
set of behaviours that
reinforce the identity of the
person or group. Hence,
these behaviours then
become social expectations.
6. Focus: women/gender representation.
Diverse representations including fiction,
non-fiction and self-representation.
For the exam, your own examples and
analysis of your case of study is what will
gain you marks.
7. There are four areas you need to understand in preparing
for the exam:
1. How do the contemporary media represent women?
2. How does contemporary representation compare to
previous time periods?
3. What are the social implications of different media
representations of groups of people?
4. To what extent is human identity increasingly
‘mediated’?
8. 1. How do the contemporary media represent women?
How are women represented? Discuss how the representations use
stereotypes
Are the representations hegemonic/ reinforcing dominant ideologies? Do they
challenge hegemony?
Are they represented as heterogeneous/ homogenous;
How could terms and phrases like Female solidarity, Constructed certitude,
Consciously cultivated (fe)male bond, Socialisation, Binary, Plurality,
Femininities/ masculinities be useful in discussing the representations?
Who are these representations aimed at, and how does this affect the way the
women are represented? (Audience)
Who is creating these representations?(Institutions/Media organisations)
How are women represented in the media industry, as well as by the media?
What is the purpose of these representations?
How does the media construct representations of groups of people?
How is collective identity constructed?
9. 2. How does contemporary representation
compare to previous time periods?
Compare a recent case of study (Orange is the
New Black, Girls) to another case of study from
the past (1950’s-1990’sTV adverts)
What differences/similarities can you find?
29. Feminism is a collection of movements and
ideologies aimed at defining, establishing, and
defending equal political, economic, cultural,
and social rights for women.
Feminist theory, which emerged from feminist
movements, aims to understand the nature of
gender inequality by examining women's social
roles and lived experience; it has developed
theories in a variety of disciplines in order to
respond to issues such as the social construction
of sex and gender.
31. After selling her home, Emmeline Pankhurst, pictured in NewYork City in 1913,
travelled constantly, giving speeches throughout Britain and the United States.
32. LouiseWeiss along with other Parisian suffragettes in 1935.
The newspaper headline reads "The Frenchwoman MustVote."
34. InternationalWomen's Day rally in Dhaka, Bangladesh on 8 March 2005,
organized by the NationalWomenWorkersTrade Union Centre.
35. Decontextualisation:
Consider (something) in isolation from its context.
Instrumentalisation:
The act of rendering something instrumental.The
act of direct, organize or adapt something.
36. Beyonce performs onstage at the 2014 MTVVideo Music Awards at
The Forum on August 24, 2014 in Inglewood, California.
37. Singer Beyonce performs onstage during the 2014 MTVVideo Music
Awards atThe Forum on August 24, 2014 in Inglewood, California.
38.
39. The “This is how a feminist looks like” campaign
40. Apart from the obvious decontextualisation and
political instrumentalisation of the concept
feminism shown in the previous examples, some
other debates which imply ideological
confrontations have prompted from the media.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2827035/Scandal-62p-hour-T-shirts-
Shame-feminists-betrayed-cause-writes-ROSIE-BOYCOTT.html
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/04/feminist-t-shirts-made-
ethical-conditions-fawcett-society
http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/sustainable-fashion-
blog/2014/nov/08/feminist-t-shirt-scandal-ethical-problem-economic
41.
42. Miss Representation is a 2011
American documentary film
written, directed, and
produced by Jennifer Siebel
Newsom.
It explores how mainstream
media contribute to the under-
representation of women in
influential positions by
circulating limited and often
disparaging portrayals of
women.
43. 3.What are the social implications of different media
representations of groups of people?
What impact does the media have on audiences’ sense of
identity?
How do audiences respond to/ use media representations?
To what extent are audiences active in constructing their
own sense of identity?
How useful are Uses and Gratification theory/ Hypodermic
NeedleTheory/ Cultivation theory in understanding
audiences’ responses to media representations?
Does the media reflect or shape our sense of who we are?
44. Stereotyping: what is its impact?
What power does the audience have to
‘resist’?
How do we ‘measure’ the representations
we encounter?
45. 4.To what extent is human identity
increasingly ‘mediated’?
Does the media reflect or shape our sense of who
we are?
Is the media increasingly important in how we
shape our identity?
How powerful is the media in shaping/ helping us
to shape who we are?
46. Increasing media = increasing mediation?
Re-presentation by others/by selves
47. Thesis:
A statement or theory that is put forward as a premise to be
maintained or proved
(In Hegelian philosophy) a proposition forming the first
stage in the process of dialectical reasoning, being the other
two:
Antithesis: The negation of the thesis as the second
stage in the process of dialectical reasoning.
Synthesis: the final stage in the process of dialectical
reasoning, in which a new idea resolves the conflict
between thesis and antithesis.
48. Laura Mulvey (born August 15,
1941) is a British feminist and film
theorist.
She is currently professor of film
and media studies at Birkbeck,
University of London.
She worked at the British Film
Institute for many years.
49. As a filmmaker she co-wrote and co-directed
with her husband PeterWollen:
Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons (1974)
Riddles of the Sphinx (1977) Perhaps their most influential film)
AMY! (1980)
Crystal Gazing (1982)
Frida Kahlo andTina Modotti (1982)
The Bad Sister.
Other films
Disgraced Monuments (1991), documentary film co-directed
with Mark Lewis.
50. Mulvey is best known for her
essay,Visual Pleasure and
Narrative Cinema, written in
1973 and published in 1975 in
the influential British film
theory journal Screen. It later
appeared in a collection of her
essays entitled Visual and Other
Pleasures, as well as in
numerous other anthologies.
51. Prior to Mulvey, film theorists such as Jean-Louis
Baudry and Christian Metz used psychoanalytic ideas in
their theoretical accounts of the cinema.
Her article is one of the first major essays that helped shift
the orientation of film theory towards a psychoanalytic
framework.
Mulvey's combative text, however, inaugurated the
intersection of film theory, psychoanalysis and feminism.
This article is based on the theories of Sigmund Freud as
formulated in his Three essays on Sexuality (1905)
and Jacques Lacan in The Mirror Stage as Formative of the
Function of the I (1966),
52. Use of semiotic analysis and psychoanalysis (Freud and
Lacan) to elaborate a feminist thesis about traditional
narrative fiction cinema (“Psychoanalysis as a political
weapon”)
Proposes an alternative avant-garde cinema which will
differ politically and aesthetically from the mainstream
Hollywood film
53. Symbolic order of society is dominated by the heterosexual
male gaze.
Dichotomy and sexual imbalance in that symbolic order:
male-active/female-passive.
Objectification of woman as representation / signifier of
male desires and fears.
Audience are forced to identify with the heterosexual male
gaze of the male protagonist, even if they are homosexual
males or women.
54. Here is an illustrated example of this theory:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUcvlJmCVcI
55. Scopophilia (Freud) Love to look at.
From Greek Scopo (Mirror), scopein (to look at) and
philia/philein (love to/ to love)
Voyeurism (from French voyeur):
A person who gains sexual pleasure from watching others
when they are naked or engaged in sexual activity.
A person who enjoys seeing the pain or distress of others
Diegesis vs. Mimesis (Aristotle)
56. 1975 – Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
Schopophilia (Freud) - pleasure in looking
‘The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the
female figure’. (1989: 19)
Cinema screen acts as distorting mirror (Lacan) for
spectators who then (mis)recognise themselves
57. Stuart McPhail Hall (3 February 1932 –
10 February 2014) was a Jamaican
born cultural theorist and sociologist
who lived and worked in the United
Kingdom from 1951.
Hall, along with Richard Hoggart and
RaymondWilliams, was one of the
founding figures of the school of
thought that is now known as British
Cultural Studies orThe Birmingham
School of Cultural Studies.[1]
58. Role of a text according to its institution-audience relation:
Active institutional view: Message transmitted from institution
(active emitter) to audience (passive receiver), which accepts the
preferred reading (the one which the media producers want the
audience to receive)
Negotiated view:The institution encodes a meaning into the text
which the audience interprets in relation to other factors (i.e.
knowledge of previous similar texts) Meaning is ‘negotiated’
between institution and audience.
Active audience view:The meaning is re-created by the audience
(active receiver).The institution becomes passive since it has no
control over how the audience re-creates the meaning of that text.
59. According to Stuart Hall, there are 3 main ways
which audiences take about representation.They
are called views.
The reflective view
The intentional view
The constructionist view
60. According to this view, when the media
represents something, the audience are
taking its true meaning and trying to create a
replica of it in the mind of our audience, like a
reflection.
This is the view that many people have of
how news works: the news producers take
the truth of news events and simply present it
to us as accurately as possible.
61. This is the opposite of the Reflective view.
This time the most important thing in the process of
representation is the person doing the representing-
they are presenting their view of the thing they are
representing and the words or images that they use
mean what they intend them to mean.
According to this theory, if you see a picture of an
attractive person drinking a can of Coke in an advert, it
will have the same meaning to you as the advertiser
intended- go away and buy some!
62. This is really a response to what have been seen a weakness
in the other two theories- constructionists feel that a
representation can never just be the truth or the version of
the truth that someone wants you to hear since that is
ignoring your ability as an individual to make up your own
mind and the influences of the society that you live in on the
way that you do so.
This emphasises the role of the audience and their readings
and the context they are in.
63. Any representation is a mixture of:
The thing itself.
The opinions of the people doing the representation.
The reaction of the individual to the representation.
The context of the society in which the representation is
taking place.
64. Preferred Reading: The dominant view and what the creator
wants you to see.
Oppositional Reading: The complete opposite reading to
what the creator had intended.
Negotiated Reading: An understanding of the dominant
reading but can also see it from other perspectives.
Aberrant Reading: Completely reject the product and have
no view at all.
65. Angela McRobbie (born
1951), is a British cultural
theorist, feminist and
social commentator
whose work combines the
study of popular culture,
contemporary media
practices and feminism.
She is a Professor of
Communications at
Goldsmiths College,
University of London.
66. McRobbie has authored many books and
scholarly articles on young women and popular
culture, gender and sexuality, the British fashion
industry, social and cultural theory, the changing
world of work and the new creative economy,
feminism and the rise of neoliberalism.
One of her main thesis is that “There has been a
change in focus from the representations of the
passive, dependent female to a more confident
focus on the self”
67. Research on Angela McRobbie main thesis
about female gender representation.
Use internet and PDF texts that you can find
online.
68. David Buckingham is one of the leading
international researchers in the field of
media education, and in research on children
and young people's interactions with
electronic media.
He is the author, co-author or editor of 24
books, and around 200 articles and book
chapters and his work has been translated
into 15 languages.
Professor Buckingham has been aVisiting
Scholar at the Annenberg School for
Communications, University of
Pennsylvania, aVisiting Professor at New
York University, and aVisiting Professor at
the Norwegian Centre for Child Research.
69. “A focus on identity requires us to pay close attention to
the diverse ways in which media and technologies are
used in everyday life, and their consequences both for
individuals and social groups”
(Buckingham, David. Youth, identity and digital media,Cambridge, 2008)
70. He classifies identity as an ‘ambiguous and slippery’
term:
Identity is something unique to each of us, but also
implies a relationship with a broader group.
Identity can change according to our circumstances.
Identity is fluid and is affected by broader changes.
How can you relate this to GENDER
representation?
Identity becomes more important to us if we feel it is
threatened.
71. David Gauntlett (born 15
March 1971) is a British
sociologist and media
theorist. His earlier work
concerned contemporary
media audiences, and has
moved towards a focus on
the everyday making and
sharing of digital media
and social media, and the
role of such media in self-
identity and self-
expression.
72. “Identity is complicated. Everyone thinks they’ve got one. Magazines and talk show
hosts urge us to explore our ‘identity’. Religious and national identities are at the
heart of the major international conflicts. Artists play with the idea of ‘identity’ in
the modern society. Blockbuster movie superheroes have emotional conflicts about
their ‘true’ identity. And the average teenager can create three online ‘identities’
before breakfast…Thinking about self-identity and individuality can cause some
anxiety – at least in cultures where individuals are encouraged to value their
personal uniqueness. Each of us would like to think – to some extent – that we have
special, personal qualities, which make us distinctive and valuable to the other
people in our lives (or potential future friends). But does this mean anything? Is
individuality an illusion? Maybe we are all incredibly similar, but are programmed to
value minuscule bits of differentiation.”
(Gaunlett, David. Creative explorations: New approaches to identities and
audiences. Routledge, London. 2007)
73. “ I have argued against the view that men’s lifestyle magazines represent a
reassertion of old-fashioned masculine values, or a ‘back-lash’ against feminism.
Whilst certain pieces in the magazines might support such an argument, this is not
their primary purpose or selling point. Instead, their existence and popularity shows
men rather insecurely trying to find their place in the modern world, seeking help
regarding how to behave in their relationships and advice on how to earn the
attention, love and respect of of women and the friendship of other men. In post-
traditional cultures, where identities are not ‘given’ but need to be constructed and
negotiated, and where an individual has to stablish their personal ethics and mode
of living, the magazines offer some reassurance to men who are wondering ‘Is this
right?’ and ‘Am I doing this OK?’, enabling a more confident management of the
narrative of the self”
(Gaunlett, David. Media, Gender, Identity. Routledge. London. 2002)
74. The concept of identity is complicated, however,
everybody feels/thinks that they have an individual one .
Religious and national identities are at the heart of major
international conflicts.
We create numerous identities in a short space of time
depending of the circumstances (specially evident in the
use of the social networking sites
We like to think we are unique, but Gauntlett questions
whether this is an illusion, and we are all much more
similar than we think.
75. Judith Butler (born
February 24, 1956) is
an American
continental philosopher
and gender theorist
whose work has
influenced political
philosophy, ethics and
the fields of feminist,
queerand literary
theory.
76. In her most influential book GenderTrouble (1990),
Butler argued that feminism had made a mistake by
trying to assert that 'women' were a group with
common characteristics and interests.
That approach, Butler said, performed 'an unwitting
regulation and reification of gender relations' -
reinforcing a binary view of gender relations in which
human beings are divided into two clear-cut groups,
women and men.
Rather than opening up possibilities for a person to
form and choose their own individual identity,
therefore, feminism had closed the options down.
77. Butler notes that feminists rejected the idea
that biology is destiny, but then developed an
account of patriarchal culture which assumed
that masculine and feminine genders would
inevitably be built, by culture, upon 'male' and
'female' bodies, making the same destiny just
as inescapable.That argument allows no room
for choice, difference or resistance.
78. Butler prefers 'those historical and
anthropological positions that understand
gender as a relation among socially constituted
subjects in specifiable contexts'. In other words,
rather than being a fixed attribute in a person,
gender should be seen as a fluid variable which
shifts and changes in different contexts and at
different times.
79. Butler says: 'There is no gender identity behind
the expressions of gender; ... identity is
performatively constituted by the very
"expressions" that are said to be its results.'
(GenderTrouble, p. 25).
In other words, gender is a performance; it's
what you do at particular times, rather than a
universal who you are.
80. “Gender is a performance and gender lifestyle
magazines provide the script for this performance”
To what extent do you agree with this
statement?
81. Research on representation of collective identity in Media.Visit the
following resources and take notes on contents:
http://petesmediablog.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/collective-identity-exam-
questions.html
http://www.slideshare.net/jphibbert1979/media-and-collective-identity-
theory-revision
http://www.slideshare.net/jphibbert1979/media-and-collective-young-
people
http://mediastudiesnwcc.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/representation-of-
youth.htmlhttp://mediastudiesnwcc.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/representati
on-of-youth.html
Make a PowerPoint presentation including the theoretical aspects that you
find most significant/relevant in order to start producing resources for your
mock exam.You will be asked to present your research onTuesday's lesson
and share your work with your classmates.
82. Other recommended resources that you should consult:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDE4VX_9Kk
84. http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-butl.htm
Mulvey, Laura.Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.
Buckingham, David. Youth, identity and digital media,
Cambridge, 2008
Gaunlett, David. Creative explorations: New approaches to
identities and audiences. Routledge, London. 2007
Gaunlett, David. Media, Gender, Identity. Routledge. London.
2002
85.
86. Almost every mass media text has a commercial purpose
and, therefore, is a commercial product itself (perhaps with
the exception of a PBS or very particular cases in
independent filmmaking or publishing)
A mass media text is made by a media organisation
(institution) within a particular context to appeal a
particular target audience. Knowledge of this target
audience defines the ideology and thus the representation.
The key concept AUDIENCE is closely related to the key
concepts REPRESENTATION, INSTITUTION and IDEOLOGY.
87. All mass media texts have two contexts that you need
to think about when analysing them:
context of production: the context in which they
were made.
context of consumption: the context in which they
are consumed by the audience or market.
Conditions of reception:
The contexts of production and consumption
88. So, when studying a text, it is important to think about:
The historical context for the text: economic, social and political factors
that influenced the way it was made.
The cultural context of construction: conventions, attitudes, ideologies
and expectations exposed in the text.
The institutional context of the text:
Who made it
Why they made it
When/where was distributed
Assumptions made about the target audience
Other texts created by the same institution or within the same genre
that are known by the audience (intertextuality)
Conditions of reception:
The contexts of production and consumption
89. Example of context of consumption:
Towards the end of the Iraq war, the Iraqi authorities ordered
Reuters (the famous international news agency) to stop
distributing video material to CNN at risk of losing all
permission to gather news in Iraq.
Reuters was allowed to continue to send live video material to
other news organisations, but not to CNN because the Iraqi
authorities felt that it was not being shown in context and was
being used as US propaganda about the war rather than as
news reporting.
http://media.guardian.co.uk/iraqandthemedia
Conditions of reception:
The contexts of production and consumption
90. Abraham Harold Maslow (April 1, 1908 – June
8, 1970) was an American psychologist who was
best known for creating Maslow’s hierarchy of
needs, a theory of psychological motivation.
Maslow wanted to understand what motivates
people. He believed that individuals are
motivated to achieve certain needs.
When one need is fulfilled a person seeks to
fulfill the next one, and so on.
The earliest and most widespread version of
Maslow's (1943, 1954) hierarchy of needs
includes five motivational needs, often depicted
as hierarchical levels within a pyramid.
91. Physiological needs: food, water, sleep and
sex/procreation.
Safety Needs: security and stability, needed for
the physical survival of the person, shelter and
safety.
Love and Belonging: which are psychological
needs: family and friends.
Esteem needs: the need to be competent and
recognized, such as through status and level of
success.
Cognitive level: the need to know and understand
the world around us, intellectually stimulate
ourselves and explore.
Aesthetic needs: which is the need for harmony,
order and beauty.
Need for Self-actualization: occurs when
individuals reach a state of harmony and
understanding because they are engaged in
achieving their full potential, self-fulfilment and
seeking personal growth and peak experiences.
Transcendence: help others to achieve self-
actualization.
93. Effects theory (Frankfurt School, 1930’s)
(Passive audience)
Uses and gratifications theory (Blulmer and
Katz, 1974) (Active audience)
Reception theory (David Morley, 1980)
(Active audience)
94. Effects theory (Frankfurt School)
The Frankfurt School (Frankfurter Schule) refers to a school of
neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, associated with the
Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am
Main, in the years between the twoWorld Wars, and who were
exiled to NewYork during the Second World War.
The philosophical tradition now referred to as the ‘Frankfurt
School’ is perhaps particularly associated with Max Horkheimer
(philosopher, sociologist and social psychologist), who took over
as the institute's director in 1930 and recruited many of the
school's most talented theorists, including Theodor W. Adorno
(philosopher, sociologist, musicologist), Erich Fromm
(psychoanalyst), and Herbert Marcuse (philosopher).
95. Effects theory (Frankfurt School)
The hypodermic needle model
The original model proposed to explain how this worked was the
hypodermic needle model, which demonstrates the effects of the
power of the mass media to inject ideologies in their passive
audiences.
This theory owes much to this supposed power of the mass media
to the mechanisms of propaganda of the Nazi regime, commonly
seen in Nazi propaganda films such as Leni Riefenstahl’s ‘Triumph
of theWill’.
96. Effects theory (Frankfurt School)
The Frankfurt School was concerned with the impact of the rise of
the media industries on totalitarian and capitalist societies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHs2coAzLJ8
The mass audience (which is seen as a passive audience, not as
active consumers) is thus manipulated and indoctrinated by the
hegemonic ruling classes, and progressively less able to criticise it.
Mass media are seen as a way of entertaining the workers
while drip feeding them ideologies and beliefs.
97. The ‘culture industries’ (as Theodor W. Adorno described
them) constantly seek greater audiences, in search of the
economical profit and therefore sustainability of the
media product.Thus, they will construct texts intended to
generate mass audiences, hence dumbing down the
product.
Their argument was that the rise of the ‘culture
industry’ resulted in increased standardisation within
society. Under capitalism, culture is processed through
the mass media as something which is bought and sold.
Culture is commodified by the mass media in order to
fit the capitalist system.
98. Other Marxist theorists related to Media:
Antonio Gramsci (22 Jan. 1891 – 27 April 1937)
Walter Benjamin (15 July 1892 – 26 Sept. 1940)
Louise Althusser (16 Oct. 1918 – 22 Oct. 1990)
99. Uses and gratifications theory (Katz, Blulmer and Gurevitch, 1974)
This theory is opposed to the EffectsTheory as it considers an active
audience, which chooses the texts it consumes and where individuals
have different reasons for consuming those texts.
In 1974, Blulmer and Katz suggested a series of possible reasons why
audience members might consume a media text:
Diversion: Escape from everyday routine.
Personal relationships: Using media for emotional interaction.
Personal identity: Learning behaviour and values and constructing their
own identity from media texts.
Surveillance: Information gathering (i.e. Educational programmes,
financial news, weather reports,...)
100. Uses and gratifications theory
Denis McQuail suggests a more detailed breakdown of
audience motivation:
Information: Satisfying curiosity and general interest.
Learning: Self-education.
Personal identity: Finding models of behaviour or
reinforcement for personal values. Identifying with
celebrities.
Integration and social interaction: Finding basis for
conversation and social interaction. Identifying with others
(sense of belonging)
Entertainment: Escaping, relaxing, emotional release.
101. Information: finding out about the world; seeking advice;
satisfying curiosity; education; gaining security through
knowledge.
Personal identity: reinforcement of personal values; models of
behaviour; identifying with valued other; gaining insight into
oneself.
Integration and social interaction: gaining insight into
circumstances of others; identifying with others; basis for
conversation with others; substitute for real life companionship;
helping to carry out social roles; enabling connection with family
friends and society.
Entertainment: escapism; diversion; relaxation; cultural or
aesthetic enjoyment; filling time; emotional release; sexual
arousal.
102. Reception theory (David Morley, 1980)
In a sense, this is an extension of the uses and gratifications
theory.
Reception analysis is based on the idea that no media text has
one single meaning.
Instead, the individual members of the audience themselves help
to create the meaning of the text.They decode the text, creating
different meanings for it.
Factors such as gender, social status, social context, cultural
background can be enormously important when we construct the
meaning of a text.
103. Reception theory (David Morley, 1980)
David Morley has exploded the ‘politics of the living room’ and how
our understanding of one text may be affected by our knowledge of
another and our expectations, based in our previous experience with
similar texts.
In 1980, David Morley conducted a very detailed audience study,
observing how many different social groups read the same media text.
He discovered that there are three main types of reading:
Dominant (or hegemonic)
Negotiated
Oppositional (or counter-hegemonic)
104. How a message is decoded and its meaning interpreted by the audience?
David Morley (UK.1980) The Nationwide audience and the politics of the
living room.
Dominant (or hegemonic) reading:The reader shares the
institution’s codes and ideology, and accepts the preferred reading.
Negotiated reading:The reader partly shares the programme’s code
but modifies it in a way which reflects their position and interests.
Oppositional (or counter-hegemonic) reading:The reader does not
share the programme’s code and rejects the preferred reading,
bringing to bear an alternative frame of interpretation (i.e. a feminist
reading of a ‘lads’ magazine)
105. Useful questions we can ask ourselves in order to identify
an active institutional view:
Who constructed this text?
What context did they construct it for?
What other texts have they constructed?
What codes and conventions can I recognise from
other texts they have constructed?
106. Useful questions we can ask ourselves in order to identify
the negotiated view:
What genre codes and conventions are being used
in the text?
What do I know about the time and place where this
text was constructed?
Is this typical of its genre or time and place?
What representations are being used in this text to
create meaning?
What meaning has been encoded into the text?
107. Useful questions we can ask ourselves in order to identify
an active audience view:
How does this text conform to audience
expectations?
What previous experience does the audience use
when consuming this text?
How does the audience create meaning from this
text?
How and where might an audience receive this text?
How might this influence the meaning they receive?
108. Useful questions we can ask ourselves when deconstructing
a media text:
Who is this text aimed at?
What assumptions are made about the audience which
are revealed in the text’s scheduling or positioning?
Where and when is the audience likely to receive the
text?
How does this influence the form and structure of the
text?
How will this audience ‘read’ this text?
109. In the exam you:
have a choice of two questions.
have 60 minutes to answer the ‘Collective identity’
question.
MUST write about two media (e.g. film and
magazines. It doesn’t need to be even between the
two media, so could be 90% on one and 10% on the
other)
MUST apply theory (and name theorists) to your
case studies.
Should be able to discuss past, present and future.
110. We have looked at collective identity in terms
gender. Other schools will have looked at
different sorts (e.g. youth, representation of
Britishness in contemporary cinema,
representation of Islam post 9-11 etc.)
The exam question will be broad enough so
that you can write about whatever area you
have studied.
111. These are the kind of questions you will be asked:
Discuss the contemporary representation of a nation, region or social group in the media, using
specific textual examples from at least two media to support your answer. (Exam Board Sample)
How far does the representation of a particular social group change over time? Refer to at least
two media in your answer. (Exam Board Sample)
Looking at two media, describe the ways in which a particular group of people are collectively
represented or provided for, using specific examples to support your response. (Textbook)
Analyse the ways in which the media represent one group of people that you have studied. (Jan
2010)
“The media do not construct collective identity; they merely reflect it”. Discuss. (Jan 2010)
A couple of bonus ideas:
To what extent do audiences use media to construct their own sense of collective identity?
“The media has replaced family, society and religion as the main source of collective identity.”
Discuss.
112.
113.
114. Explanation/Analysis/Argument (20 marks)
Use of examples (20 marks)
Use of terminology (10 marks)
Structure your answer following the PEAT model:
Introduction: Definition
Different theoretical approaches (Point)
Use examples to illustrate your point (Example)
Analyse the example to support your point
(Analysis)
Use subject terminology in your analysis
(Terminology)
