Media Representations and Responses (MS2)

This unit aims to provide candidates with a framework for analysing the media and requires them to explore representations and audience/user responses.

Candidates will be encouraged to explore the media through a study of genre, narrative and representation and make connections between the texts and audience/user responses to them.

In the developing area of interactive media, this involves considering users and their interaction with texts. It will be important for candidates to be provided with a range of examples which will enable them to understand and interpret the media independently. 

The representations of social/cultural groups, events, issues and their underlying messages and values will be explored using a range of approaches.

Content

Candidates will be required to study how media texts are constructed and how audiences and users respond to and interpret them using the following framework:

(a)    Texts

• genre conventions
• narrative construction
• technical codes such as camerawork, lighting, editing and sound for audio-visual media and graphic design elements for print-based and interactive media
• language used and mode of address.

(b)   Representations

• the role of selection, construction and anchorage in creating representations
• how the media uses representations
• the points of view, messages and values underlying those representations.

 Candidates will be expected to have studied a range of representations of:

• gender
• ethnicity
• age
• issues
• events
• regional and national identities.

(c)    Audience Responses 

Candidates will need to consider the ways in which different audiences can respond to the same text in different ways. This will involve studying:

• the ways in which audiences can be categorised (e.g., gender, age, ethnicity, social & cultural background, advertisers' classifications)
• how media producers and texts construct audiences and users 
• how audiences and users are positioned (including preferred, negotiated and oppositional responses to that positioning).

You will have a 2.5 hour exam in May with three questions that cover image analysis, representations and audience