Notes

Producer: someone makes the media.

Consumer: the reader

Media text: poster, books, magazines, TV programs, films etc.

Semiotics: The study signs and sign systems (Roland Barths)


Denotation: What an image actually shows and is immediately apparent, as opposed to the assumption an individual reader may make about it. 

Connotation: The meaning of a sign that is arrived at through cultural experiences a reader brings to it. 

Mode of Address: The way the media puts their point across. 

Gatekeeper: They decide what can be shown on the media. The job of the gatekeeper changes for different types of media e.g. the new and a comedy new show. 

Semiology: The study of signs and symbols. 


The hypodermic model: This model ejects the audience with ideas and meanings. This model is outdated but is still used to influence the media and control it. This model has been inked to be able to influence general perception about public events and social trends, but has not been proven.


Uses and gratifications: A more recent model suggests that there is a higher active audience making use of the media for range of purposes designed to satisfy needs such as entertainment, information and identification. In this model the individual has the power and they select the media texts that best suit there needs. Main areas that are identified in this model are: news and drama, films and celebrities, soap lives and sitcoms and games shows and quizzes. Diversion, personal relationships, personal identity and surveillance. 

Two Step Flow: Opinion Leaders produce an opinion and the readers choose one to follow. The readers that follow the opinion leaders are passive. 


The active audience: this model shows the process of the producer having a message and they encode it. Then the receiver gets the message and decodes it. Stuart Hall is a cultural theorist and professor of sociology at the Open University and he came up with this theory.


Dominant reading: the reader fully accepts the preferred reading.


The negotiated reading: the reader partly believes preferred reading.


The oppositional reading: "the reader social position places them in an oppositional relation to the dominant code."


Mode of audience: This refers to the way that text speaks to us in a style that encourages us to identify with the text. Different types of media are aimed at different age groups or social groups but don’t exclude other groups reading that type of media.