AS Media Studies

The Essential Introduction for AQA

Peter Wall, Philip Rayner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780415448239, 9781138358331
• eBook ISBN: 9781135867355
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

AS Media Studies: The Essential Introduction for AQA is fully revised for thecurrent specification with full colour throughout, over 100 images, new case studies and examples. The authors introduce students step-by-step to the skills of reading media texts, and address key concepts such as genre, representation, media institutions and media audiences as well as taking students through the tasks expected of them to pass the AQA AS Media Studies exam. The book is supplemented with a companion website at www.asmediastudies.co.uk featuring additional activities and resources, further new case studies such as music and sport, clear instructions on producing different media, quizzes and tests.

Areas covered include:

• an introduction to studying the media
• the key concepts across print, broadcast and e-media
• media institutions
• audiences and the media
• case studies such as Heroes, Nuts, and The Daily Mail
• guided textual analysis of real media on the website and within the book
• research and how to do it
• preparing for exams
• a production guide and how to respond to a brief.

AS Media Studies: The Essential Introduction for AQA clearly guides students through the course and gives them the tips they need to become proficient media producers as well as media analysts.

Part 1

Key Concepts

1 Image Analysis

2 Narrative

3 Genre

4 Representation

5 Media Intertextuality

6 Media Ideology

7 Media Audiences

8 Media Institutions

1	Image Analysis

In this chapter we:

• explore the use of semiotics in analysing media texts
• consider semiotics as a critical tool in the understanding of how texts create ‘meaning’
• look at different kinds of sign, the way we read codes and the concepts of connotation, denotation and anchorage
• identify some of the limitations of semiotics as a critical tool for textual analysis.

What is a Media ‘Text’?

We usually associate the word ‘text’ with something that is printed or written. In Media Studies, however, the word ‘text’ is used to describe any media product such as television programmes, photographs, films either on video or in the cinema, newspaper articles, radio programmes, advertisements, video games or web pages.

‘Texts’ are, therefore, the main point of our study in understanding how media languages create meaning. One of the keys to understanding the meaning in texts is the use of codes. Codes are rules or conventions by which signs are put together to create meaning.

The English language itself is a set of codes: letters made up into words, words made up into sentences and sentences made up into paragraphs. Just as we learn to read the letters, words and sentences, so too we learn to ‘read’ media codes and languages.

We learn that sounds or images can be put together in particular sequences, working as codes to give particular meanings. These sequences have the technical name ‘syntagms’. A syntagm, therefore, is a series of signs put together in a specific order to create meaning. The sentence you are reading is a syntagm. Similarly, a sequence of shots in a film or television programme is a syntagm put together to communicate a meaning.

Just as there is a great variety in the forms and style of media texts, so the codes used to construct meanings are varied and frequently depend upon the form of the media text. In most cases the text will use a variety of codes – visual, audio and written – that ‘fit’ together in a certain way, or syntagm, to create a particular meaning.

Look at the Diesel advertisement (Figure 1.1). We see that this is a text that is print-based but contains visual and written codes. Its exact meaning may be quite difficult to ‘fix’, except to say that it is an advertisement and is trying to ‘sell’ a product, a particular brand of clothing. In this advertisement additional meaning is given through the use of colour codes and a few written words at the top and bottom of the advert.

Figure 1.1

Some adverts do not even seem to be trying to sell a specific product but are, presumably, just trying to make us aware of a particular company or name, for example, the United Colors of Benetton campaign (see p. 175).

Most of us living in Western society at the beginning of the twenty-first century are sophisticated media consumers and will be able to ‘read’ the Diesel advertisement fairly quickly. We would probably normally only glance at it as we skim through a magazine. However, as media students, we now have to distance ourselves from our daily and often unreflective consumption of media texts like this illustration. Our task is to break down or ‘deconstruct’ the illustration into its component parts and fully to ‘reveal’ and understand how the advertisers have used the various signs and codes in their attempt to create a particular meaning or set of meanings.

One of the key theoretical tools to assist us in this process of deconstruction is semiology, or, as it is often called, semiotics.

Semiotics

The word ‘semiology’ is derived from the Greek word semeion, which means sign. Semiology is an attempt to create a science of the study of sign systems and their role in the construction and reconstruction of meaning in media texts. Semiology concentrates primarily on the text itself and the signs and codes that are contained within it.

One of the most influential theorists of the way visual images transmit meanings was Roland Barthes (1913–80). Barthes was influenced by the structuralist work of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913), who first promoted the idea of semiology in his book Course in General Linguistics (1983 [1916]).

Saussure saw language as a cultural creation rather than something innate, and as a social system that was ordered, coherent and governed by sets of rules. The American Charles Peirce (1839–1914) took Saussure’s ideas and expanded them to include not just language but other ‘social constructs’ in society, such as the way society itself is ordered, labelled and governed by sets of rules. Peirce introduced the term ‘semiotics’.

Roland Barthes took these ideas still further and in Mythologies (1993 [1957]) applied them to areas of daily life and popular culture such as the face of the actress Greta Garbo and soap detergent advertising.

What semiotics allows us to do is to look at some of the underlying structures that determine how media texts are constructed. It allows us to explore sign systems that are used within texts and to discover how these make meanings for the audience. Semiotics is part of a broader area of cultural study called structuralism. One of the functions of structuralism is to reveal some of the underlying structures which underpin cultures, for example, to investigate the common elements that different languages have with one another.

For students of the media, semiotic analysis is a useful tool in the analysis of texts as it helps to reveal the underlying meanings that are ‘suspended’ within a text. You can then take this analysis further and consider the ideologies, or belief systems, that underpin texts and their construction.

It is important to be aware that most sign systems, like the Diesel advertisement, do not necessarily have one particular ‘fixed’ meaning. Part of the meaning of the sign is dependent upon the social and cultural background of the ‘reader’ of the particular sign system.

As part of the process of semiotic analysis, we, the audience, are called ‘readers’ because this helps to suggest a greater degree of creativity and involvement in the construction of the text’s meaning. ‘Reading’ is something we learn to do and is influenced to a large extent by our social and cultural background. As the reader of a text, we will bring something of our own cultural and personal experiences to a text. For example, a person who has had bad experiences at the hands of the police will read an episode of The Bill in a very different way to a person who has had positive experiences in dealing with them.

Activity

Choose an advertisement from a magazine and show it to a range of different people. These should include people of different gender, age, ethnic and social background. Ask them what they think the text ‘means’. How might you account for the different readings that you are offered by each reader?

Signs

The Diesel advertisement is a sign. It consists of a signifier, the printed magazine advert itself, and something that is signified, the ‘idea’ or ‘meaning’ behind the set of images used in the advertisement.

Fiske and Hartley in Reading Television (1978) describe the sign as being made up of two components: the signifier and the signified

signifier [+] signified [=] sign

The signifier is a physical object, for example, a sound, printed word, advertisement. The signified is a mental concept or meaning conveyed by the signifier.

Peirce differentiated between three different types of signs: symbolic (or arbitrary); iconic; indexical. A symbol is a sign that represents an object or concept solely by the agreement of the people who use it.

Symbolic signs have no obvious connection between the sign and the object. For example, the word CAT has no obvious link with a small furry animal usually domesticated as a pet. It only works because we understand the rules that say the letters C-A-T, when put into a certain order, mean or ‘signify’ that small furry animal. If it was a different ‘we’, for example, a group of French speakers, then the ‘rules’ would be different and we would use the letters C-H-A-T to signify that small furry animal.

These types of signs Peirce also called ‘arbitrary’ as their ‘meaning’ is the result of agreement amongst their users. These types of signs do not have any direct or intrinsic connection with what is being ‘signified’. This means that some arbitrary signs can have several meanings that are ‘contested’, or about which people might not agree. The Union Jack has a variety of meanings depending upon who is using it – the British monarchy at a national ceremony, the Unionists in Ulster or a Sex pistols’ T-shirt (see http://www.ebtm.com/p-1822-sex-pistols-t-shirt-god-save.aspx).

Figure 1.2

Activity

The symbol

referring to anarchy will have different meanings for different groups of people. Think of other signs that may be arbitrary and then list all the different groups of people and the different readings that they may apply to these signs.

Iconic signs are like the religious paintings, statues and stained-glass windows found in churches. Photographs are a good example of an iconic sign. They have a physical similarity to the objects that they ‘signify’. We are familiar with iconic signs in our everyday lives, for example, the use of a wheelchair to signify facilities for disabled people. Wherever we are in the world, we can usually find the men’s and women’s toilets by looking for the iconic signs on the doors.

Indexical signs are the signs that have some kind of direct connection with what is bein...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• How to use this book
• Introduction
• Part 1: Key Concepts
• Part 2: Investigating Media
• Part 3: Creating Media
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Figure acknowledgements
• Index