The Four Media Concepts

MEDIA CONCEPTS

Media revolves around four concepts that are used to understand how media is constructed and how they are received:

FORMS 

AUDIENCE 

INSTITUTIONS 

REPRESENTATION 

Form

• Media forms are what constructs a media text. 
• Music- The type of music used can portray the feeling that is being portrayed on the screen. 
• Dialogue- The dialogue in film and tv shows are often used to show the story behind the characters and those who are speaking. 
• Sound Effects- a non-diegetic sound is a sound that has been edited into the show/film. This includes narrative, music, sound effects. Diagetic sounds are the noises that have not been edited in, so the natural noises from what goes on in a set. 
• Mise-en-scene- Everything that appears on the screen. Set, props, actors, costume and lighting etc. 
• Props- In a crime drama the props are normal weapons, drugs just to show how serious and to add effect to the crime. 
• Location- Where the show/film has been set, links to the stereotypical genre of a show. A crime drama is normally set in one extreme to another 
• Character Types- The different types of characters. 
• Editing Pace- The editing pace of a show/film is normally used to convey what type of action is going on at the time. 
• Audience- An individual or collective group of people who read or consume any media text 

Audience

Niche audience – A niche audience is a small group of people with unique interests.

A way of categorising audiences based on social class (or occupation) is this table:


 


Key Questions

• How do audiences receive texts? 
• Whether constructing a text or analysing one, you will need to consider the destination of that text, i.e. its target audience 
• How that audience (or any other) will respond to that text.

Institutions

A formal organisation (with its own set of rules and behaviours) that creates and distributes media texts


Values and ideologies are transmitted through the representations in media texts. Powerful institutions can influence the attitudes, interests, beliefs and desires of people on a world scale.


Key Questions: 

• Who created this message?
• What creative techniques are used to attract my attention? 
• How might different people understand this message differently from me? 
• Why is this message being sent?

Representation

Representation involves how identities are represented within the text but how they've been constructed. Key markers of identity include- class, age, gender and ethnicity. 

Key Questions: 

• What sorts of things are being represented? How? Using what codes? Within what genre? 
• How is the representation made to seem true, common sense or natural? 
• What is focused on? 
• Whose interests does it reflect? How do you know? 
• Who is it targeted to? How? What does this personally affect you? 
• How do you account for the differences?
• What codes and conventions back this up? 
• Does it reinforce or challenge stereotypes?