Media Studies

• Jenkins theorised that participatory culture as a result of Web 2.0 is the future of media as it allows for audiences to contribute rather than simply consume.
• Clay Shirky - End of Audience

  The idea that the evolution of the internet and digital technologies has allowed audiences to interact with media producers while creating and sharing their own content.
• George Gerbner - Cultivation Theory


  The idea that exposure to repeated patterns of representation over long periods of time can shape and influence the way in which people perceive the world.
• Stuart Hall - Reception Theory


  The idea that communication is a process involving encoding by producers and decoding by audiences.
• Henry Jenkins - Participatory Culture


  The idea that fans are active participants in the construction of textual meanings, some of which are not fully supported by the media producers.
• Albert Bandura - Effects Debate


  The idea that audiences acquire attitudes, emotional responses and new styles of conduct from the media.

  
  

  The idea that media representations of physical aggression can lead to audiences imitating the same behaviour.
• Stuart Hall - Representation Theory


  The idea that stereotyping, as a form of representation, reduces people to a few simple characteristics or traits and occurs when there are inequalities of power.
• Liesbet Van Zoonen - Feminist Theory


  The idea that gender is constructed through discourse and its meaning varies according to cultural and historical context.

  
  

  The idea that the objectification of women is a key element of Western patriarchal culture.
• David Gauntlett - Theories of Identity


  The idea that the media provides us with resources that we use to construct our own identities.

  
  

  The idea that the media today offers us a more diverse range of stars, icons and characters, from whom we may pick and mix different ideas.
• Judith Butler - Gender Performativity


  The idea that gender is a social construct and there is no gender identity behind the conventional expressions of gender.
• Bell Hooks - Feminist Theory


  The idea that feminism is a political commitment rather than a lifestyle choice.

  
  

  The idea that race, class and gender determine the extent to which individuals are discriminated against.
• Laura Mulvey - Male Gaze


  The idea that, as most directors are male, audiences view the female body through the eyes of a male, no matter their own gender.
• Paul Gilroy - Ethnicity and Postcolonialism


  The idea that, even though we no longer have colonies, contemporary attitudes towards race and ethnicity are still influenced by colonialism (e.g. hierarchies constructed to alienate outsiders).
• David Hesmondhalgh - Cultural Industries

  The idea that cultural industries try to minimise risk and maximise profit through vertical and horizontal integration and using techniques that have been tried and tested.
• Livingstone and Lunt - Regulation


  The idea that media companies have to choose between offering protection from possibly offensive material or furthering the interests of consumers by ensuring choice and controversial content.

  
  

  The idea that the increasing power of global media corporations, the rise of convergent media technologies and transformations in the production, distribution and marketing of digital media have all placed traditional approaches to media regulation at risk.
• Curran and Seaton - Power and Media Industries


  The idea that the media industry is controlled by a small number of companies primarily driven by the logic of profit and power, which generally limits variety, creativity and quality.

  
  

  The idea that more socially diverse patterns of ownership help to create the conditions for more varied and adventurous media productions.
• Jean Baudrillard - Semiotics

  The idea that, in postmodern culture, the boundaries between the real world and the world of the media have collapsed and it is no longer possible to distinguish between reality and simulation.

  
  

  The idea that media images have come to seem more real than the reality they supposedly represent (hyper-reality).
• Claude Levi-Strauss - Binary Opposites


  The idea that meaning is dependent upon pairs of oppositions.
• Steve Neale - Genre Theory


  The idea that genres may be dominated by repetition, but are also marked by difference, variation and change.

  
  

  The idea that genres change, develop and vary as they borrow conventions from each other.
• Roland Barthes - Semiotics


  The idea that texts communicate their meanings through a process of signification.

  
  

  Denotation - the literal meaning

  Connotation - the meaning associated with the sign

  
  

  Signifier - the thing

  Signified - the meaning

  Signifier + signified = sign
• Tzvetan Todorov - Narratology


  The idea that two states of equilibrium are separated by a period of imbalance or disequilibrium which must be resolved.