Alternative

Outside or on the edge of the mainstream eg Independent film and music are examples of alternative media.

Antagonist

The opposite/ opposition to a hero. This is usually the 'bad guy' eg a character (usually a villain) but can also be a force of nature or an abstract concept. The antagonist is the force that disrupts the equilibrium of the narrative.

Archetype (Proppian)

Propp. A type, which most other examples of that type may be seen to be facets of. For example, the heroic archetype may be seen in Superman, Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, and many more characters. Archetypes are easily recognised, much like stereotypes. Princess, hero, anti-hero, helper etc.

Auteur / Authorship

An auteur (French, author) is a singular artist who controls all aspects of a collaborative creative work, a person equivalent to the author of a novel or a play. The term is commonly referenced to filmmakers or directors with a recognizable style.

Blockbuster

A high-budget production aimed at mass markets, with associated merchandising, on which the financial fortunes of a film studio or a distributor depend. It was defined by its production budget and marketing effort rather than its success and popularity, and is essentially a tag which a film's marketing gives itself.

Brand Values

Brand values are the idealistic connotations brands and products aspire to be known by. They are the set of associations every institution aims to project in their audience's mind.

Broadsheet

Serious newspapers associated with hard news and reporting important events at home and abroad.

Code

Systems of combinations of Signs that create meanings for the audience

Conglomerate

A media conglomerate, media group, or media institution is a company that owns numerous companies involved in mass media enterprises, such as television, radio, publishing, cinema, or technology. Media conglomerates strive for control of the markets around the world.

Connotation

Deeper or hidden meaning created through association. For example, the 'M' above Kendrick's head looks like a crown or devil horns which has religious connotations of a king, a curse, hell, demons, while the colour red has connotations of blood, danger, passion, sex, rage, and warning.

Conventions

Expectations and patterns. Unwritten rules in mainstream texts. eg low key lighting, creaky doors, and jump scares used in Horror. Main characters will always survive to the end. All media develops its own familiar ways of doings things - we call these 'conventions' eg podcasts with their set-ups and the structure of their content

Convergence

The ‘coming together’ of older media technologies into new forms. The process where different technology/ systems/ media platforms evolve toward performing similar or related tasks. It refers to the moving away from singular purposes or functions, to devices or platforms that perform a range of functions eg your phone can do all sorts of things beside simply phoning people - you can send texts, play music, take HD photo/ video etc.

Demographics

Media companies tend to group audiences into categories according to measurable quantifiable attributes, such as gender, race, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, class, geographics, age, social status, economic status. This can help products to target groups but can result in stereotypes when used to formulate mainstream target audience assumptions.

Digital Divide

Refers to the growing contrast between the "information haves," those who can afford to purchase computers and pay for internet services, and the "information have-nots," those who may not be able to afford a computer or pay for internet services. During COVID-19 the disparity between people with limited access to technology across the world showed this.

Emotional Transfer

Creating a set of emotions that the advertiser is trying to map onto their product or service. The process of generating emotions in order to transfer them to a product. For example, a Pepsi advert shows happy and beautiful people but tells us nothing about the product. The point is to make you feel good and to transfer that feeling to the brand or product. This is the number one and most important process of media manipulation.

Enigma Codes

A narrative device that teases the audience by presenting a question or mystery to be solved. Enigma codes can drive the narrative forward and make the audience active.

Equilibrium (Todorov)

Stability within a story. Over the course of the narrative, equilibrium is disrupted, and restored by the end of the story.

Escapism / Diversion

Also known as Diversion. To seek distraction / relief from reality, especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy. One of the four Audience Gratifications, identified by Blumer & Katz.

Exclusive Appeal (OR Symbolic Positioning)

The suggestion that the use of the product makes the customer part of an elite group with a luxurious and glamorous lifestyle. A coffee manufacturer shows people dressed in formal gowns and tuxedos drinking their brand at an art gallery. Self-image enhancement, ego identification, belongingness and social meaningfulness, effective fulfilment.

Experiential Positioning

An advertising technique that conveys the experience of a product. Allows you to feel the danger, or excitement, or adrenaline etc.

Hegemony

The practice among powerful groups of dominating the media, asserting their ideology and dissuading audiences from other ideologies, through use of propaganda.

Hybrid

The fusion of two or more genres to create a new sub-genre eg Structured reality and Docu-soaps, which fuse together elements of reality TV, documentary, and soap opera.

Hype

Generating anticipation, excitement for a product using different marketing techniques.

Hypodermic Needle Theory

An audience theory which holds that when an audience engages with a media text, they will act in a manner that is directly influenced by it eg watching a film about being nice to people might cause the viewer to do an act of kindness in imitation of that film. This theory has been criticised because it assumes that audiences will passively consume whatever text is thrown at them which can lead to the media being blamed for society’s problems. Computer games make people violent.

Immersion

Immersion occurs when audience members become invested in a media product. The greater the suspension of disbelief, the more immersive the experience is. Usually links to escapism.

Institution

Collection of individuals sharing a common ideology or beliefs, for a shared purpose.

Iconography

Signs associated with a particular genre. The blood, bats, and crucifixes are part of the iconography of the vampire sub-genre.

Ideology

The beliefs and ideals behind an individual, product, institution, or a group of people. In Media this tends to be what a text 'believes in' and what they want you to believe in eg brand values and their characteristics which are evident in what they produce.

Intertextuality

This is where one media text references another. A text within a text. Takes advantage of Post-modern popular Culture references.

Mediation

Someone’s version of events. The process by which a media text represents an idea, issue or event to us. This word can be used to highlight the way things change after being filtered, edited, selected, and then represented by the media.

Mise en scène

The setting of the stage - the composition of everything you see on screen including costumes, lighting, actors, position, body language, setting, location, and set design.

Mode of Address

The specific way a media text talks to its audience. For example some women’s magazines address readers as their friends would and Thor: Ragnarok had a more irreverent, playful, and post-modern mode of address than the other Marvel movies

Monopoly

A situation in which a single company or group owns all or nearly all of the market for a given type of product or service. Such as the 'Big' Majors in Hollywood. Apple in the smart phone market.

Montage

A narrative device that compresses, or denotes passage of time. Usually used to inform the audience. Gives them information they need to know in order to understand what is to come. Possibly backstory, or something that happened off screen. Also used as 'previously on' in TV shows, or as the 'best bits' in a highlights package.

Moral Panic

A hyped overreaction from the media causing people to believe society’s values have collapsed. Something (rock 'n' roll, communism, gun crime, etc.) is perceived to be a threat to the moral order and society. Consequently, the significance of the problem is blown out of proportion by the media, which provokes widespread hysteria. Stan Cohen refers to them as 'folk devils.'

Narrowcasting

Gearing advertising to a niche market.

Negotiated Reading

This position is a mixture of accepting and rejecting elements. Readers are acknowledging the dominant message, but are not willing to completely accept as it. The reader to a certain extent generally accepts the preferred meaning, but is simultaneously resisting or modifying it in a way which reflects their own experiences and interests.

New Media

Smart phone, internet (social networking, web 2.0), video games, personal music devices.

Niche Market

A small target audience with specific interests, for example, gardeners who watch gardening programmes.

Oppositional / Alternate Reading

A consumer understands the meaning, but due to individual circumstances, the audience’s situation has placed them in an opposing position in relation to the producers intended meaning, and although they understand the intended meaning they do not agree and ultimately reject it.

Post Modernism

Postmodernist works are characterised by their frequent referencing, remixing, and playing around with the conventions of their genre eg intertextuality, satire, parody etc. exhibit postmodern approaches

Post Structuralism

Rejects the idea of a text having a single purpose or single meaning. The author's intended meaning is secondary to the meaning that the reader perceives. Every individual reader creates an individual meaning for a given text. The text has the meaning that the audience chooses to give it. This is referred to as the "destabilizing" or "decentering" of the author. Without an audience, a text has no meaning. See Stuart Hall (encoding/decoding) and Blumler and Katz (uses and gratifications) for more

Preferred / Dominant Reading

The way in which the creator of a text intends it to be read. This position is one where the consumer takes the actual meaning directly, and decodes it exactly the way it was encoded. They interpret the text exactly as intended producer intends them to.

Red Tops or Tabloids

The Sun and Mirror, lowbrow papers full of soft news, gossip and opinion.

Shock Tactics

Shock tactics deliberately attempt to startle or offend audiences by subverting or violating social norms or expectations. Graphic imagery and blunt slogans are used to capture attention and create buzz, and to attract an audience to a certain brand or bring awareness to a certain health issue, or cause. It is often controversial or disturbing.

Satire

Parody with teeth. The use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticise people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues: https://twitter.com/TitaniaMcGrath

For example, Titiana Mcgrath (Activist. Healer. Radical intersectionalist poet. Nonwhite. Ecosexual. Pronouns: variable. Selfless and brave) is actually this man here >>>>>>

Skeptics

Those who worry that the effects of new media on society may be detrimental.

Stereotype

Oversimplified generalised, or exaggerated representation of a person or group.

"Stereotypes are a media shorthand" - Medhusrt (1995)

"Those with power stereotype over those with less power" - Dyer (1979)

"Stereotypes are a good thing and have an element of truth to them" - Perkins (1979)

Star Theory / Power (Dyer)

Richard Dyer's star theory is the idea that icons and celebrities are manufactured by institutions for financial gain. He believes that stars are constructed to represent 'real people' experiencing real emotions. Stars are manufactured as a 'brand' or media product, and every action in the public domain is geared towards maintaining that brand.

"A star is a constructed images, represented across a range of media and mediums."

Structuralism

Suggests we understand texts according to structures. An understanding of the ‘rules.’ Assumes that the meaning behind the text was put there by the author or producer. From their POV, it is already there and always was. The 'meaning' pre-exists and infers there is a dominant reading of how the text will be interpreted.

Levi Strauss (Binary opposites, Good/Evil, Man/Woman etc) Todorov (narrative structure, equilibrium/disequilibrium) Vladimir Propp (character archetypes) Barthes (Narrative and enigma Codes).

Synergy

The use of one product to make another more successful. Like the film? Buy the toothpaste! Common in large franchises such as Star Wars, The Hobbit, Marvel films, Doctor Who, The Simpsons and Harry Potter.

Unique Selling Point (USP)

A factor that differentiates a product from its competitors, such as the lowest cost, the highest quality or the first-ever product of its kind. Something to stand out from the crowd in a media saturated world. Something your competitors don't have.

User Generated Content

Due to technological convergence, audiences are no longer passive consumers of media. They can be considered 'prosumer's who are able to create their own content. Could include blogs, YouTube videos, parodies, memes, etc and often take advantage of intertextuality and popular culture references.

Uses and Gratifications (Blulmer & Katz)

An audience theory which suggests that rather than passively absorbing media, audiences will seek out and respond to texts that meet their needs, and make active choices.

Personal Identity, Personal Relationship, Diversion, Surveillance.

Vertical Integration

When a company own several stages of production within the same industry. For example, a Hollywood company owning the means to control the production, distribution and exhibition of a film. This gives the company control and power, allows them to make economic savings and more profit, which lead to monopolies over an industry.

Viral Marketing

Advertising that relies on word-of-mouth to spread the news of a product, commonly using the internet. Examples include Deadpool, Cloverfield, District 9, Lost or Breaking Bad. Benefits are that it is usually FAST and FREE/CHEAP, and that most of the hard work is done by the Target Audience.

Young and Rubicam's

Marketing firm’s attempt to pigeon hole consumers according to their interests and desires. Seven Kinds of People.