Media Key Concepts by mirellalloussi on emaze

Media Key Concepts

The Basics

F.A.I.R TOOLS

Forms

Audiences

Institutions

Representations

FORMS

Website

Magazine

This simply means the type of media text or media platform that we are studying. For example, a magazine is a different media form to a TV programme or a website.

The media language we use to analyse a media text will change with different media forms. For example if we were analysing a film, we would talk about camera movement, editing, sound, location, props and mise-en-scene, where as if we were analysing a newspaper, we would talk about headlines, mastheads, captions, bylines and cropping.

If the media is about mass communication, then it’s very important to look at who a media text is communicating with. Different media companies have different audiences. For example, Kerrang! Radio has a different ‘target Audience’ to Classic FM or Choice. Different media texts can also have a different target audience. For example BBC1 make Newsround and News at Ten but the target audiences are clearly different. Media audiences can be broken down into different groups, this is called audience segmentation. You can segment audiences by age, race, gender, social class, how much education they have, where they live, what sort of interests they have or the subculture they identify with.

Audiences

Institutions

In Media studies, it is also important to consider the company or organisation who produce or broadcast the media texts that we receive. Different media institutions have different aims and visions and they often have different audiences or compete with each other for the same audience. Some media institutions are huge and they own lots of different media forms. The study of institutions also includes looking at how a company makes its money. For example, a commercial institution like The Sun newspaper makes its money from advertising which means they need a very big audience to interest their advertisers.

Representations

What we see and hear in the media is never real… Its is a RE-presentation of reality. When we see young people in the media, they are being re-presented to us. How a person or organisation is represented is really important.

Lots has been written about the unfair representation of black men and more recently middle eastern or Muslim men. As Media analysts, we need to look at the representation of characters and organisations critically.