This document discusses theoretical perspectives for analyzing media texts, including how meaning is encoded for audiences. It addresses macro perspectives like ideology/discourse, as well as micro elements of media language. Students are prompted to analyze their past media coursework in terms of themes, target audiences, genre conventions, narratives, and editing/juxtaposition choices made to communicate intended meanings. They are also asked to consider how following or subverting conventions may have enhanced or hindered their creative choices.

1. G 3 2 5 : S e c t io n A : T h e o r e t ic a l
P e r s p e c t iv e s in M e d ia
U s in g
Q u e s t i o n 1a )
C o n v e n t io n s f r o m
R e a l M e d ia T e x t s
W h a t s k il l s d i d w e d e v e l o p
in t h e u n d e r s t a n d in g o f t h e
r e la t io n s h ip b e t w e e n t e x t
a n d a u d ie n c e – i. e . T h e
c r e a t io n o f m e a n in g in t e x t s .

2. Mediation – Encoding and
Decoding, Open/Closed Texts
You will need to investigate, across
AS and A2, how you encoded
meaning in texts to give a
preferred meaning (Hall, 1980)
or closed reading (Eco, 1981) for
the audience based on your
knowledge of the conventions of
real media texts.
This is going to involve an
assessment of the micro and the
macro in relation to audience
readings.

3. Macro Analysis
Pre-production: Ideology and Discourse (discussion
or debate): Mediation of Ideas, Representation and
Debates/Agenda
– what the meanings/messages were.
Production and Post Production: Form and Style:
Postmodernism – Bricolage and Intertextuality,
Medium and Genre, Narrative
– how the meanings/messages were communicated.

4. Micro Elements
What choices did you make in terms of the
following in order to communicate your
meaning to audience (mode of address and
persuasion)?
Media Language:
•Mise-en-Scene,
•Camerawork,
•Editing,
•Sound

5. Macro: Ideology and Discourse, and Audience
Reception
Stuart Hall (1980) – Dominant/Hegemonic reading.
Preferred Meanings. Stuart Hall detailed that texts do
have preferred meanings, but the decoder will not
always necessarily read them as intended by the
producer as everyone has a different social/ cultural
background. Texts that are meant to communicate
hegemony will be encoded so that they are easily
interpreted and understood by a mass audience.

6. Umberto Eco (1981) – Open and Closed Meaning.
Texts aimed at large audiences (mass) will be
encoded so that the majority of the audience can
only decode a very preferred meaning. This is
known as a closed text.
An open text is one that has many meanings, or is
deliberately ambiguous, and can be understood in
different ways by a number of different audience
members.

7. Roland Barthes (1979) – Anchorage and Myth
Images can be polysemic (can have multiple
meanings)and Barthes argued that the meaning of
images can be pinned down to give a preferred meaning
through the process of anchorage (text/music).
Barthes also argued that all texts are encoded in such a
way to reinforce dominant, cultural ideologies or values.
The way that a text is encoded makes the representation
seem ‘natural’ or ‘common sense’. This is the concept of
‘myth’.

8. Macro: Meanings and Messages across AS and A2
coursework
TASK 1: What was the purpose of your texts at AS and
A2?
TASK 2: What were you trying to communicate to the
audience? What was the theme? What was the discourse
(point of view/agenda debated) in your texts?
TASK 3: Who was your target audience and what was the
main mode of address?

9. Macro: Postmodernism, Genre, Narrative
Postmodern Style: Irony, Parody, Pastiche, Bricolage,
Intertextuality.
Bricolage is the process of deliberately ‘borrowing’ or adapting
signs or features from different styles or genres to create a new
mixture of meanings (O’Sullivan et. al, 1998).
Pastiche: Bog standard copying of conventions or can be done for
bricolage effect. Whichever, this ultimately reinforces their
importance in culture and society. Parody is a kind on pastiche
which makes fun of the subject.
Intertextuality is the way in which media texts gain their meanings
by referring to other media texts that the producers assume that
the reader/decoder will be familiar with and recognise (O’Sullivan
et. al 1998).

10. Genre:
Was it a hybrid? Did it have a sub-genre?
What were the stereotypical elements of real media texts that you
encoded into your video?
Narrative:
Is it an open / closed narrative? Did it have a beginning, middle and
end or not (i.e. follow a classic narrative structure)? Linear or non-
linear? Anti-narrative (deliberately doesn’t make any sense –
surrealism)?
NOW THINK BACK:
There are additions to the ‘Creativity’ ppt now you have studied
postmodernism for obvious reasons –this is centred around
postmodernism.

11. TASK 1: How did you pastiche or parody any
other media texts? (this includes bricolage
and intertextuality).
TASK 2: In relation to the above, can you be
more specific in terms of generic conventions
of your medium?
TASK 3: In relation to the above, can you be
more specific in terms of narrative theory of
your medium?

12. Micro Elements – advanced editing theory
Editing is its most literal sense is to remove unwanted
elements.
In terms of production : AS and A2 for your photographs: “a
photograph Barthes claimed, involved a mechanical process
where the image – that which is denoted – is recorded, but
there is also an expressive, human and cultural process that
involves the selection and interpretation of such elements as
camera angles, framing, lighting and focus” (O’Sullivan,
1998:33).
In terms of post-production: You didn’t just decide what
elements to put in your images – it was what to leave out/take
out in order to create meaning.

13. Editing and Sergei Eisenstein (1920s)
Sergei Eisenstein was a Marxist film maker and teacher fo film
theory.
Intellectual/Dialectical Montage – process of putting images
together so that a new meaning is created through the
juxtaposition. It identifies a struggle between opposites. It is like
putting an image of bankers quaffing wine next to an image of pigs
in swill –it creates a meaning: bankers are like pigs (metaphorical).
Vertical Montage - Create meaning through the juxtaposition of
an image with some other element (text (anchorage) or music).

14. Look back at the research into generic conventions
you did at AS. What are the generic conventions of the
media text you created? Which real texts did you
research and adopt the same conventions as? Can you
apply any of the editing theories to your work at AS?
Now do the same for the texts you created at A2.

15. “It is impossible to create a media product that is entirely
original”. From your own experience discuss the extent to
which you used conventions of real media texts to produce
your media products and/or to the extent they allowed you to
be creative.
Note down your thoughts to this question. Do you agree with the
quote? Analyse the extent to which using real conventions
helped to enhance or hinder your creativity.
“Creativity is always constrained by generic conventions”. To
what extent did you adhere to or subvert generic conventions
in the creation of your media products.
Note down your thought to this question. Do you agree with the
quote? List the conventions you adhered to and subverted. Did
the generic conventions restrict your creativity?