You should be completing this glossary as you go through the course
AQA A Level Media Studies
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Terminology
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Definition
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Active consumption
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Auteur theory
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Suggests that the director is the
author of the film, and the product will reflect their particular visual
style, themes, values and ideologies
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Binary oppositions
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Censorship
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Collective identity
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Constructionist view
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A view of representation that suggests
our knowledge of the world is constructed by media representations
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Consumerism
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Convergence
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Cross-cultural factors
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The differences in culture between nations
and groups within nations
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Cultural imperialism
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A process by which one country
dominates other countries’ media consumption and consequently dominates their
values and ideologies
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Democratise
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Make something more accessible to
everyone
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Deregulation
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Desensitisation
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Diaspora identity
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The result of forced or voluntary
migration where people experience a sense of belonging to
a cultural group that is ‘other’ to
the dominant culture of their country of residence.
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Discourse
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Distribution
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Dystopian
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A perspective where everything is as
bad as it can possibly be
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Enigma narrative
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Female gaze
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Globalisation
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The way in which in contemporary
society distant countries are inter-related and connected together by trade,
communication and cultural experiences
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Hegemony
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The process in which a power
relationship is accepted, consented to and seen as natural or ‘common sense’
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Hyper-reality
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The fact that the distinction between
the real world and the media world is disappearing
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Iconography
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Particular signs we associate with
particular genres
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Ideology
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Imagined community
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A term developed by Benedict Anderson
(1980) which refers to communities that predominantly exist in people’s minds
and gives them a sense of identity
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Inter-textuality
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Left wing
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Political views that support
government being involved in people’s lives to prevent suffering and
exploitation- in favour of more welfare services and higher taxes to pay for
them
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Liberal pluralism
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Progressive attitude that sees the relationship
between audience and the media as more even and less about power
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Male gaze
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Marginalisation
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Mass audience
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Marxism
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Mediation
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The process by which an institution or
individual or a technology comes between events that happen in the world and
the audience who receive the representation
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Meta-narratives
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Over-arching explanations of society;
sometimes referred to as grand narratives
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Misogyny
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Moral panic
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A media-generated public outcry
against a group, community or practice considered threatening and/or
dangerous
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Narcissism
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News agenda
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Topics and issues focussed upon by
media news
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News values
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The relative importance of certain
stories over others
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Niche audience
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Oligopoly
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Oppositional readings
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Orientalism
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A perspective that suggests the East
and the Orient are represented as provoking both fear and fascination within
Western culture
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Ownership
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Passive consumption
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Pastiche
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Creation of a media text out of
elements of, or with reference to, other media texts in a mocking or
caricatured way
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Patriarchal
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Polysemic
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Post-colonialism
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A theory that suggests issues of race
and the legacy of colonialism have a strong influence on
media and media representations
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Post-modernism
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Preferred readings
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Prosumer
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Psycho-analytic themes
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Based on the work of Sigmund Freud. He
argued that human actions are often motivated by repressed sexual fears and
desires.
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Queer theory
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Regulation
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Right wing
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Political view that stresses the
freedom of the individual and a more limited role for the government and
consequently lower taxation (and less welfare etc)
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Scopophilia
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Finding pleasure in looking at other
people as objects
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Semiology
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Simulacrum
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A media text that makes no attempt to
represent reality and merely represents other representations
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Synergy
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Technological determinist
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Argues that technology dictates or
determines the nature of society
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User generated content
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Utopian
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Belonging to or characteristic of an
ideal perfect state or place
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Verisimilitude
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‘seeming real’ or ‘like the truth’.
Refers to what an audience expects from a text in terms of content, but also
forms and conventions.
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Viral advertising
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Voyeurism
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Gaining pleasure from watching,
especially secretly, other people’s behaviour and bodies in sexual, intimate
or emotional behaviour
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Web 2.0
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