Terminology

• Homogeneous Group: A group that all have the same characteristics
• Mediation: The selection and construction of material in how it is given over to audiences via editing and point of view
• Hegemony: Traditional stereotypes that are reinforced and circulated as common sense to audiences
• Marginisalisation: How stereotyping can lead to someone or a social group being ‘placed’ on the outside of accepted cultural norms
• Ideology: An overarching set of ideas often uses as a form of social control
• Moral Panics: Issues in society that often lead to the blaming, and marginalisation of a scapegoat
• Deviancy Amplification: Associated with moral panics, this explains how the media exaggerate a negative representation to ensure a dominant shared reading
• Liberalisation: A more diverse, tolerant, equally acceptable approach
• Pluralism: Again, more liberal suggesting and range of different, challenging representations
• Web 2.0: Interactive internet media e.g. blogs and social networking
• Manifest: Obvious, on the surface meaning
• Cultural Stereotyping: The stereotyping of social groups in society by the media
• Prosumer: A producer and consumer of media
• Passive Audiences: Audiences that accept and do not challenge representations
• Iconic: Well known and respected
• Aspiration: Looking up to something or somebody
• Encoding/Decoding: Putting meaning in, taking meaning out
• Dominant, Negotiated and Oppositional Readings: The intended meaning of a text, where meaning is uncertain or where audience have decoded a completely different reading
• Anchorage: How meaning is made more definite
• Binary Oppositions: Where representations are deliberately different to construct further meaning
• Latent Meaning: Less obvious meaning
• Memes: Internet ‘stars’

Revision

Section B

Narrative
Genre
Representation
Audience
Media language


1) Were Marxists right in asserting that many media texts encode hegemonic values that support the status quo?
2) Have minority ideologies such as gay rights now become hegemonic? How does the media promote such ideologies?
3) Does a liberal elite or capitalist elite control the media? Research who owns the main media companies.