Key Concepts

1. Media
Homework
By Georgie Davis
Key concept research
Audience
Institution
Media language
Representation
You are investigating the definition, key ideas and theories that surround these
key concepts.
How can the ideas you have come across be related to our exam
topic television game shows?
please use PowerPoint to collect your ideas and thoughts
please embed all work in your blog

2. Key Concept
research:Audience: People or market segment at whom an advertising
message or campaign is aimed. Total number of readers, listeners, or
viewers reached by a particular advertising medium.
Institution: Organisation or company, public or privately owned that
produces and/or distributes media products.
Media language is the way in which the meaning of a media text is
conveyed to the audience. One of the ways Media Language works is
to convey meaning through signs and symbols suggested by the way
a scene is set up and filmed.
Media representations: are the ways in which the media portrays
particular groups, communities, experiences, ideas, or topics from a
particular ideological or value perspective.

3. Key Ideas:
Institution: "The Press" or "TV" and have a general awareness of the values
and codes of a) what is produced and b) the producers. For instance, we
think of journalists, regardless of politics and rightly or wrongly, as
sharing the same set of values as their newspapers. We know what a
newspaper is and how it behaves. We see 'Newspapers' as something
bigger than, and probably more authoritative/powerful than us as
individuals.
However, as global patterns of ownership change, so does the concept of
Institution. Media ownership is now concentrated in the hands of a few
companies worldwide, and these companies own examples of many
different media. So, it is true to say that the 'Institutional Values' of, say,
Disney, are reflected in a number of different media companies that they
own (e.g. Marvel Studios, the Discovery Channel), which can therefore be
grouped together and considered as part of the same institution (the
Disney Corporation).

4. Audience: The HYPODERMIC NEEDLE THEORY was the first theory created
to explain the different ways in which the audience reacts to mass media.
The theory suggests that the mass media could influence a very large
group of people directly and uniformly by ‘shooting’ or ‘injecting’ them
with appropriate messages designed to trigger a desired response eg
laughing at a comedic scene of a film.
THE USES AND GRATIFICATION THEORY is an approach to
understanding why and how people actively pick out specific media to
satisfy specific needs. UGT is an audience-centred approach to
understanding mass communication. The theory also holds that the
audience themselves are responsible for using types of media (e.g
social media) to meet their own needs.
THE CULTIVATION THEORY is the exploration on how people make
sense of media texts. Three ways were discovered - Preferred reading,
Negotiated reading and oppositional reading.
This topic links to game shows as certain genre
game shows cause the audience to react in
different ways. There are formal and informal
game shows , each sending different signals to
the audience. Also, it is the audiences personal
choice to start watching/ taking part in Game
shows. They are influenced by themselves and the
reviews of the game show.

5. Media Language: Media language is the way in which the meaning of a
media text is conveyed to the audience. One of the ways Media
Language works is to convey meaning through signs and symbols
suggested by the way a scene is set up and filmed. This could also
depend on the genre of the media. This can be shown through images,
live events, texts and through music. This relates to game shows as the
hosts/contestants reflect on the audience by the actions they perform.
In game shows, there are always expensive prizes or large amounts of
money to offer to the winning contestants. This makes the show generally
more interesting, and gives people a good reason to take part and watch
it. This also links back to audience as the more interesting the
performance, the bigger the audience.

6. Representations: Representation is a way in which certain medias
convey the different elements eg (in a game show) the hosts,
contestants, scenery etc. to the audience. This is important as these
different types of elements will attract different audiences. Also,
there are stereotypical representations, and representations that
have to be a certain way in order to attract the correct audience eg a
game show made for young adults would be very informal and
energetic whereas would be the opposite for elderly people.
The representation of media links back to the idea of
marketing(institution). The representation is the form in which the
media is shared with the audience. For example, game shows are
presented through TV channels, music and news are presented
through the radio etc… However, representation also includes the
presentation of each individual media – props, clothes, colours,
backgrounds and the hosts. These all play important roles in the
representation of media.