A Level Media Studies Q&A Bundle

Structuralism A body of study or theory that discusses how societies, cultural practices and artefacts (such as media texts) can be analysed as signifying systems or languages (how different media texts are presented to a consumer) Semiotics the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpret...

Pastiche (postmodernism) a cinematic device that honors the cinematography of another filmmaker through the imitation of specific scenes or iconic moments in the movie Spectacle (postmodernism) watching someone do something we didn't know humans could do (something impressive or striking). Media t...

Effects Theory A group of social scientists called the Frankfurt School that studied the power of the mass media. Hypodermic Needle Theory Audiences passively receive information from media texts without any attempt on their part to process or challenge it. Moral Panic The intensity of feeling exp...

What is Mise-en-scene? And what is the acronym to remember it? Mise-en-scene is the action of putting on to stage. We remember Mise-en-scene by using the acronym CLAMPS. Costume, Lighting, Actors, Makeup, Props and Setting. What is a Multi-Strand narrative? Multi-strand is telling a story from seve...

Semiotics The study of signs Signifier The signifier is any material thing that signifies, e.g., words on a page, a facial expression, an image. The part of the sign that signposts the object (Saussure) Signified The signified is the concept, the meaning, the thing indicated by the signifier. Th...

Steve Neale's Genre Theory A theory which suggests two things about genre. 1) Audiences enjoy specific texts because of "repetition and difference" of the repertoires of genre elements used. For example an audience might enjoy a film because it is a typical action film which uses all the normal a...

Epochs An important period of time (McLuhan) What are McLuhan's four periods of "media?" - Oral world - Literate world - Gutenberg Galaxy - Electronic Media Media Ecology The study of media as environments and environments as media (Strate 2017) Primary Orality (Ong 1982) A world where the bal...

Consumption Explores the way in which the media text is used by audiences for pleasure but also explores the rise of user generated content across several platforms. Distribution This refers to all processes linked to delivering the media product to audiences both through tangible (disc) and digita...