A Level Media Studies glossary

You should be completing this glossary as you go through the course

AQA A Level Media Studies

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