SUBJECT TRANSITION INFORMATION MEDIA STUDIES. Exam Board web site:

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1 SUBJECT TRANSITION INFORMATION MEDIA STUDIES Mrs Flannery Mr Phipps (Head of Department) Course Details Course Title: A-Level Media Studies Exam board: AQA Exam Code: 2570 Exam Board web site: Assessment method: Year 12: 50% Practical Coursework, 50% Examination based on unseen text and case study Year 13: 50% Practical/Written Coursework, 50% Examination based on unseen texts and case study Minimum requirements: Minimum entry requirements (5 good GCSE subjects). However, the course requires aptitude in the use of English and creative subjects such as the arts or performing arts subjects.

2 About the course: The Media is all around us. It reads us, presents to us, represents us and defines who we are. The study of The Media is a vital and challenging skill in today s society. By studying Media A Level you will engage in a popular course in Sixth Form which consistently produces good results for its students. Media Studies is an engaging course which is rooted in the real world, and is suitable for students able to explore the world they live in and question what messages we are told as audiences. AS Media Studies Unit 1 and Unit 2 provide an integrated and complementary introduction to the study of the media and the contemporary media landscape. The content of both units is underpinned by a set of key media concepts and media platforms eg: Media Concepts Media Forms Media Representations Media Institutions Media Audiences Media Platforms Broadcasting Digital/web-based media (e-media) Print Unit 1 requires candidates to carry out a cross-media study for an unseen examination. The study will then also be used to inform their work on Unit 2. For Unit 2 candidates will produce two media productions in two of the three different media platforms, with an evaluation of the productions, including a consideration of the use of the third media platform. A2 Media Studies At A2 candidates will build on their AS work to look more fully at the contexts of media production and consumption why as well as how texts are created as they are. As well as building on the concepts studied at AS, candidates will look at some or all of the following: Media Debates: Representation Media effects Reality TV News Values Moral panics Post 9/11 and the media Ownership and control Regulation and censorship Media technology and the digital revolution: changing technologies in the 21 st century and modern day Media Theories: Semiotics Structuralism and post-structuralism Postmodernism and its critiques Politics and the Media: Gender and Ethnicity Marxism and Hegemony Liberal Pluralism Colonialism and Post-colonialism Consumption and Production: Audience theories Genre theories For Unit 3 candidates are required to study two pre-set media topics on at least one of the three media studies platforms. For Unit 4 candidates will produce a media product linked to their research for an individual critical investigation.

3 Academic and Career Pathways Media Studies provides you with a range of analytical and creative skills necessary for future career pathways. Students who do Media often study a range of other subjects such as Photography, English, Drama, Art, PE, Business and the Social Sciences. The Media sector contains some of the fastest growth in the market and is worth in excess of 60 billion to the UK according to PwC. As a result, career and future pathways are opened up through this subject. Students in recent years have gone on to study at all different types of HE institution including Russell Group Universities, to study such varied subjects as Journalism, Sports Science, Events Management, Film Production, Advertising, Design, and Business and Marketing. What equipment will be needed for the subject? One lever arch file in Year 12 divided into two sections: one for coursework, one for theory work. The classwork section should be divided further; for example into class notes, wider examples, assessed work and exam questions. Dividers Lined paper Pens, pencils, highlighters, colours If you have your own recording equipment (video camera, stills camera), this will be necessary for coursework as equipment is limited.

4 Please complete the following assignments over summer to be completed by the first lesson Activity 1: Analysis. Choose a moving image advert which you find interesting. Find it on Youtube and paste the link into your analysis. Write 500 words approximately under the following headings: --Media Language: How is the advert made? What can you say about the way it looks, sounds, feels? --Media Institutions: What is the advert selling or trying to do? What does it say about the people who make the product? --Media Audiences: Who is the main audience of this advert? Is there a secondary audience? What age, gender, likes and dislikes do the audience have? What is trying to make the audience feel or do? --Media Representations: What does the advert say about life, people, things? Does the advert have anything to say about emotions such as love, success etc? This work is to be ed to both Mr Phipps and Mrs Flannery before September 1 st.

5 Activity 2: Terminology Familiarise yourself with the following terminology list. Although we don t expect you to have learned these terms by September, make sure you are familiar with them so that when they come up you recognise them and can remember the basic ones. You will be tested on these during Autumn Term: Advertorial Anchorage Anti-narrative Bricolage Circulation Codes Connotation Convergence Denotation Encoding Icon Intertextuality News Values Niche Marketing Polysemic Semiotics Uses and gratifications theory Active audience theories Voyeurism Vladimir Propp An advert presented as though it were a piece of journalism The fixing or limiting of particular meaning to an image, eg a caption A narrative which seeks to disrupt narrative flow to achieve a particular effect ( eg repetition) Way in which signs are are borrowed from different styles or genres to create something new Number of copies of a given newspaper sold in a day Rules or conventions by which signs are put together to create meaning Hidden meaning arrived at by the experience the reader brings to it The coming together of different technologies such as television, computer, phone What an image actually shows and what is clearly apparent A process by which the media construct messages A sign that works by resemblance How texts refer to other media texts with the assumption the audience will recognise it Galtung and Ruge's ideas about how editors choose the importance of news Small target audience with specific interests The way in which a text has a variety of meanings The study of signs and sign systems How the media creates a need and then meets it in the audience Theories which view the audience as participants who can choose and have power Theory focusing on staring or gazing at others Theorist who studied folk tales to understand character types and plot devices

6 Archetype Conglomerate Mise en scene Motif Star system Binary Opposition Barthes Antagonist Demographics Closed text Innoculation theory Male Gaze (Mulvey) Diegetic sound Hegemony Hybrid Capitalism Homage Instantly recognisable character type An international company with a wide and varied range of interests Everything arranged in a scene Recurrent theme or image in a film The practice of constructing a film around an actor in order to create success Theory created by Levi-Strauss about putting things against each other for contrast Theorist who developed Action, Enigma and Symbolic Codes The main opposing figure or villain in a narrative Information based around social status, income, gender etc Meaning of text is anchored to restrict the ways in which it can be interpreted The theory that the media has long term effects on the audience which are small and gradual Term used to describe the perspective that the media is created for a male audience Sound heard within a narrative Dominant ideology, or common sense meaning A cross between one genre and another Economic system where goods and services operate in a free market Where one director pays tribute to another by including images or themes from work

7 Task 3: Wider Reading Textbooks The Media Student s Book by Gill Branston and Roy Stafford Media Studies: The Essential Introduction by numerous authors Revision Express AS and A2 Media Studies by Ken Hall and Philip Holmes Other good sources: Newspapers: a range of types, not just red top tabloids! Consider how different newspapers have different agendas. Get into the habit of reading different newspapers and considering how they present the news very differently. Look out for the Media Guardian Supplement in particular. Twitter: If you haven t done so already, join Twitter. Useful sites you should be @themediatweets and lots more; these ones above are sites everyone should follow as a minimum. You should follow a range of people across the media world, including celebrities, politicians and organisations. Television, film and radio: Being a Media student means that you get to watch television and films for research. However, you need to be consuming things outside of your usual diet. Question Time must become a regular part of your weekly schedule. Newsnight and Panorama will keep you up to date with news values, moral panics and international news as well as domestic trends. Newswatch and Points of View are weekly shows made by the BBC where they demonstrate selfregulation and audience opinion. Subscribe to BBC Radio 4 s The Media Show via podcast for a weekly half hour update and interviews with people in the world of media. And yes, you need to keep up to date with the national trends in viewing which means understanding (but not necessarily watching!) reality television shows such as BGT, Strictly and structures reality such as Made in Chelsea. You should be expanding your knowledge of films and this means following the work of auteurs such as Quentin Tarantino, Hitchcock and JJ Abrams. You should be watching films which you have heard of but never seen. Expand your knowledge and cultural understanding.