Media theorists

Media Language

Roland Barthes - Semiology

Signs have meanings past their denotation for example the silence and mid shot of Sarah Lund lets the audience know she has had an epiphany before she suggests to check the river. A limitation can be that signs may be misinterpreted.

Tzvetan Todorv - Narratology

Study of narratives with a structure of equilibrium(everything is normal), disruption(equilibrium is broken), transformation(the hero must change or go on a journey), new equilibrium(everything is good again) for example in Stranger Things, the boys are happy together, Will is taken and they go to find him but a new equilibrium isn't formed as it is only the first episode but is formed later in the show when Will is found. A limitation is that it cannot be applied to other media such as radio or news.

Steve Neale - Genre Theory

genres are created by repeated narratives, codes and conventions with genres always evolving and sometimes fusing to make hybrid genres such as Stranger Things which has part of a crime show, coming of age and horror mixed in together. Limitations is that it cannot be applied to all media.

Structuralism

Claude Levi-Strauss - Structuralism

 stories need conflict which he calls binary opposition, the idea of two opposites. This could be applied to the news industry with Harry and Meghan vs the Royal Family or Mike's upper class family vs Will's lower class family in Stranger Things.

Jean Baudrillard - Postmodernism

What a reality is meant to represent is more important than what it actually is and media is made of hyperrealities. For example Stranger Things is a Spielbergian hyperreality of the 80s. A limitation of this is that these hyper realities aren't always accurate like the Spielbergian lens of Stranger Things.

Media Representations

Stuart Hall - Representations

media companies use their power to create a preferred meaning which is the intended interpretation of the world. They can do this by keeping information present, making it different or entirely leaving it absent. This can lead to stereotypes that can try and create a preferred meaning about a person or group however an anti-stereotype will still fix meaning just in a different direction. An example of this is in news when a paper will present immigrants as thieves where they will make a story about an immigrant who stole present but leave stories about immigrants doing good absent or present immigration as different where instead of 'boosting the economy' they are 'stealing jobs' to create a stereotype of immigrants being evil thieves but to present them all as angels who do no wrong would also cause issues and presenting them as regular people is much more helpful and realistic. Not all groups are portrayed as stereotypes or anti stereotypes.

David Gauntlett - Identity

Media represents lots of different groups that audiences may identify with. For example a mother might see herself in Joyce from Stranger Things or a teenager may see themselves in Nancy, Steve or Johnathan

Liesbet Van Zoonan - Feminist Theory

Gender is performative and gender is how we present and not what we are. She also believes that due to the patriarchy women are sexualised in media. For example The Sun using adverts of celebrities in bikinis on its front covers.

bell hooks - Feminist Theory

Black women are treated badly in the media and therefore black women should oppose most media. This is shown in Meghan Markle's treatment by right wing newspapers as opposed to Kate Middleton

Judith Butler - Gender Performativity

Gender is performed and not necessarily genetic. For example Sarah Lund's more masculine appearance in The Killing with a big jumper and jeans.

Paul Gilroy - Ethnicity And Post-Colonialism

Media is still quite racist and still obsessed with the British Empire and colonialisation as they want to go back to the 'good old days'. For example the Daily Expresses crusader or how right wing newspapers talk about immigrants.

Media industries

James Curran and Jean Seaton - Power And Media Industries

Media ownership is the media industry's most important influence as the concentraton of ownership is in fewer and fewer hands leading to narrower opinions. It is constrained by nationalism and state censorship with news industries having successfully defended their oligopoly. This could apply to news and 80% of the industry being owned by 3 corporations

Sonia Livingstone and Peter Lunt - Regulation

media should be regulated so that children cannot view inappropriate content but adults have the option to and to find balance between the two but the internet has made regulation almost impossible as audiences want opposite things in place. However this study was based on Ofcom specifically so may not apply to all media. For example IPSO and Impress regulating news but not doing anything with the Daily Mail posting 2000 articles a day means that regulators can't look through all of them leading to a produce then refine model.

David Hesmondhalgh - Cultural Industries

Cultural industries follow capitalist patterns with the concentration of conglomerates using vertical integration(buying competitors). Success is hard to predict so to make up for any failures media companies make big hits that they know will succeed by repeating stars, franchises and repeatable narratives to sell. Technology is not liberating but just allows for more control. This can be seen in the repitition of the narrative for the Jungle Book and the Daily Mail using big safe stories about the royal family and immigrants to make up for any of their 2000 articles that fail. Reach PLC owning the Daily Star and Express (right wing newspapers) as well as the left wing Daily Mirror shows an example of vertical integration.

Media Audience

Albert Bandura - Media Effects

Media can influence its audience if they try and replicate violent acts they see in the media. For example people may see violence in The Killing and try to replicate it. Although the test he used to demonstrate this was old and done on children.

George Gerbner - Cultivation Theory

exposure to the media for a long time can cause behaviours to become standardised and cause a cynical world view. For example audiences repeatedly seeing wars in newspapers may get 'mean world syndrome'.

Stuart Hall - Reception Theory

producers put a preferred meaning into texts that audiences are supposed to take from it but audiences may read the text in different ways. Dominant reading is that they accept the intended meaning of the text. The negotiated reading of the text is when the audience accepts the meaning but disagrees with certain aspects. Oppositional reading is when the reader rejects the meaning entirely

Henry Jenkins - Fandom

Fans of media texts like to particpate in the media they consume with online communities and merchandise. Such as Minecraft YouTubers and Lego sets

Clay Shirky - End Of Audience Theory

Consumers are now becoming producers with increased interactivity leading to new prosumers. Instead of filtering then publishing new media publishes then filters. However this theory was made for Wikipedia so it may not be entirely accurate. For example comments on the Daily Mail website and the lack of regulation in online news.

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Richard Dyer - Star Theory

stars are constructed by institutions to make money and we don't know the real star like Emelie Sande being constructed as humble and flawed.