BBC & The British Class survey

Take a look around the website of  The Great British Class Survey to find out the answers and upload to your blog for next week.

John Cleese sketch on class

VALS "Values, Attitudes And Lifestyles"

VALS is a  research methodology used for psychographic (the study of personality, values, attitudes, interests,) and lifestyles market segmentation. Market segmentation is designed to guide companies in tailoring their products and services in order to appeal to the people most likely to purchase them.

Take the and find out what you are. survey  and find out what you are.

Two-Step Flow

2. Two-Step Flow

The Hypodermic model quickly proved too clumsy for media researchers seeking to more precisely explain the relationship between audience and text. As the mass media became an essential part of life in societies around the world and did NOT reduce populations to a mass of unthinking drones, a more sophisticated explanation was sought.

Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet analysed the voters' decision-making processes during a 1940 presidential election campaign and published their results in a paper called The People's Choice. Their findings suggested that the information does not flow directly from the text into the minds of its audience unmediated but is filtered through "opinion leaders" who then communicate it to their less active associates, over whom they have influence. The audience then mediate the information received directly from the media with the ideas and thoughts expressed by the opinion leaders, thus being influenced not by a direct process, but by a two step flow. This diminished the power of the media in the eyes of researchers, and caused them to conclude that social factors were also important in the way in which audiences interpreted texts. This is sometimes referred to as the limited effects paradigm.

• Katz & Lazarsfeld: Two Step Flow - Mick Underwood

http://www.mediaknowall.com/as_alevel/alevkeyconcepts/alevelkeycon.php?pageID=audience

War of the Worlds HG Wells

For a report about what happened when the War of the Worlds was broadcast.

Audience

Audience theory provides a starting point for many Media Studies tasks. Whether you are constructing a text or analysing one, you will need to consider the destination of that text (i.e. its target audience) and how that audience (or any other) will respond to that text.

Remember that a media text in itself has no meaning until it is read or decoded by an audience.
For GCSE, you learned how audience is described and measured. Now you need a working knowledge of the theories which attempt to explain how an audience receives, reads and responds to a text. Over the course of the past century or so, media analysts have developed several effects models, ie theoretical explanations of how humans ingest the information transmitted by media texts and how this might influence (or not) their behaviour.

Effects theory is still a very hotly debated area of Media and Psychology research, as no one is able to come up with indisputable evidence that audiences will always react to media texts one way or another. The scientific debate is clouded by the politics of the situation: some audience theories are seen as a call for more censorship, others for less control. Whatever your personal stance on the subject, you must understand the following theories and how they may be used to deconstruct the relationship between audience and text.

Hypodermic Needle theory

1. The Hypodermic Needle Model
Dating from the 1920s, this theory was the first attempt to explain how mass audiences might react to mass media. It is a crude model (see picture!) and suggests that audiences passively receive the information transmitted via a media text, without any attempt on their part to process or challenge the data. Don't forget that this theory was developed in an age when the mass media were still fairly new - radio and cinema were less than two decades old. Governments had just discovered the power of advertising to communicate a message, and produced propaganda to try and sway populaces to their way of thinking. This was particularly rampant in Europe during the First World War (look at some posters here) and its aftermath.
Basically, the Hypodermic Needle Model suggests that the information from a text passes into the mass consciouness of the audience unmediated, ie the experience, intelligence and opinion of an individual are not relevant to the reception of the text. This theory suggests that, as an audience, we are manipulated by the creators of media texts, and that our behaviour and thinking might be easily changed by media-makers. It assumes that the audience are passive and heterogenous. This theory is still quoted during moral panics by parents, politicians and pressure groups, and is used to explain why certain groups in society should not be exposed to certain media texts (comics in the 1950s, rap music in the 2000s), for fear that they will watch or read sexual or violent behaviour and will then act them out themselves.  


http://www.mediaknowall.com/as_alevel/alevkeyconcepts/alevelkeycon.php?pageID=audience

Lonely Orphan Story

Test your Narrative Theory knowlege

Test your knowledge of Narrative Theory in this Narrative quizlet

Linear, Open, Closed and Circular Structures

What kind of structure(s) would your film trailer use?

Narrative Revision

Narrative theory from jphibbert1979

Todorov - Equilibrium

 

For more visit  Todorov animation

Narrative Theory animation

Binary Oppositions - Levi Strauss and Barthes - Symbolic Codes

Levi-Strauss and Barthes were fascinated by Saussure’s realisation that meaning (and thus any concept of what we call reality) can exist only at the level of idea. At the core of this is the recognition that any meaning we attribute to a thing can neither be inherent in the thing itself nor be something we arrive at independently; instead, meaning must always be, at least in part, a ‘construct’ and a ‘given’, i.e. something we learn from others for more on this look at binary opposition.pdf

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Narrative Christopher Booker and The Seven Basic Plots

The Seven Basic Plots

Christopher Booker's The Seven Basic Plots is a long book. You can also get a good dose of Jungian psychology to boot. Booker likes to talk about the symbolism of the masculine and feminine aspects of a character. Below are Booker's The Seven Basic Plots

Summary                                                                             Overcoming the Monster                                                                    Hero learns of a great evil threatening the land, and sets out to destroy it.

Rags to Riches

Surrounded by dark forces who suppress and ridicule him, the Hero slowly blossoms into a mature figure who ultimately gets riches, a kingdom, and the perfect mate.

The Quest

Hero learns of a great MacGuffin that he desperately wants to find, and sets out to find it, often with companions.

Voyage and Return

Hero heads off into a magic land with crazy rules, ultimately triumphs over the madness and returns home far more mature than when he set out.

Comedy

Hero and Heroine are destined to get together, but a dark force is preventing them from doing so; the story conspires to make the dark force repent, and suddenly the Hero and Heroine are free to get together. This is part of a cascade of effects that shows everyone for who they really are, and allows two or more other relationships to correctly form.

Tragedy

The flip side of the Overcoming the Monster plot. Our protagonist character is the Villain, but we get to watch him slowly spiral down into darkness before he's finally defeated, freeing the land from his evil influence.

Rebirth

As with the Tragedy plot, but our protagonist manages to realize his error before it's too late, and does a Heel-Face Turn to avoid inevitable defeat.

Which plot(s) would you say that your film falls into?

Barthes Narrative Codes

Test your knowledge of Barthes Narrative 5 Codes with this quizlet

Student exam blog links

Emmy Exam  Blog
Alice Exam Blog
Emily Exam Blog
Claire Exam Blog
Jo Exam Blog

To do list - up date Section 1 blog - Deadline Tueday November 12

Please ensure that you have moved your blog postings over to Blogger from Tumblr and uploaded your post-it animations. Section 1 a is all the work we did before the Summer holidays and should be up on your blogs by next Tuesday.

Section 1 b - you should have completed Genre - notes from your readings, one or two quizlets and a suitable quote about genre this is work from last half term and needs to be posted for next Tuesday as well.