Media & Society Lecture 1

Media & Society - Lecture 1

• The lecture covers media texts and their importance in society.

• Media texts are believed to contribute to the understanding of the world and the development of common sense.

• Media texts are always present, even if not always noticed, like background music or TV at home.

• Media texts are subject to change and renewal, such as street posters.

• Media texts engage people, convey information, and create reactions.

• Media text is active, and it produces both conscious and unconscious meanings.

• The study of media is important because of the text's production of meaning.

• Anything can be considered a text if people can engage with it to understand themselves, their society, and their beliefs.

• Examples of media texts are series, magazines, DVDs, broadcasts, and live programs.

• Meaning production in media texts is a process involving an interaction between the producer and the audience, working from stimulus.

• Scholars such as Graddol (1994) and Tolson (1996) discuss the nature of text material, reader, and the process of making sense of texts, along with the reader's pre-existing knowledge, along with expectations.

• Modern media consumers are exposed to many interconnected texts.

• The production of texts is important to understand, analyzing the creator and their purpose.

• Texts are related to meanings, like the relationship between media & audience.

• Texts are vehicles, carrying messages to the audience, aiming to impact or elicit a response.

• A model views texts as stimuli to produce reactions from the audience.

• Meanings are perceptions in the minds of people.

• Media texts are always situated in a context of other media texts.

• The environment of the text impacts the meaning (TV programs in different contexts or coviewing).

• A news article is a part of the larger context of a newspaper.

• A TV program is part of a flow of programs in a day.

• The social context impacts how texts are interacted with.

• The ideological context represents the dominant values of the culture.

• Textual analysis involves dissecting the way texts create a meaning (deconstruction).

• Textual analysis methods vary. These methods may focus on elements of realism in the text.

• Linguistic analysis examines different styles of communication and their impact.

• Content analysis observes the frequency of particular attributes in texts.

• Ideological analysis concentrates on the underlying messages conveying values.

• Narrative analysis considers the stories contained within texts in their structures and plot lines.

• Discourse analysis inspects how language is used in texts to determine the meaning.

• Textual codes include written and spoken language, non-verbal cues, and visual elements.

• Semiotic analysis is used to understand texts as collections of signs with potential meanings.

• Visual codes (e.g., color, camera angles) are signs that are analyzed for understanding.

• Image analysis focuses on position, treatment, and content.

• Discourse analysis connects ideology, representations, meaning in texts, how texts shape perception of everyday life.

• Analysis of language and discourses to learn about underlying ideology and beliefs from different cultures.

• The analysis of a text involves identification of language to determine discourses involved and their meanings.

• Analysis reveals ideologies behind the text.

• Media texts tell stories with narrative structures.

• Narratives may use various modes for building illusion of reality (flashbacks, jumps).

• Narrative structures are order of events and episodes.

• Classic narratives have an objective sequence of events with closure to a conflict.

• Mainstream narratives mimic real-world experiences by progression of events.

• Circular narratives start and finish at the same point or are flashbacks.

• Parallel narratives feature interwoven plot lines.

• The narrator's positioning is about the story's telling.

• The producer may shape the desired effect of the text.

• Media texts have an impact on the audience with positions and categories.

• Representation is fundamental to understand how texts create meaning.

• Texts contain both material and ideological representations.

• Texts use technology; images are a representation of ideas.

• Ideologies are ideas represented through a text.