Media Theory for A Level

The Essential Revision Guide

Mark Dixon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429626920
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Scienze della comunicazione

Media Theory for A Level provides a comprehensive introduction to the 19 academic theories required for A Level Media study. From Roland Barthes to Clay Shirky, from structuralism to civilisationism, this revision book explains the core academic concepts students need to master to succeed in their exams. Each chapter includes:

• Comprehensive explanations of the academic ideas and theories specified for GCE Media study.

• Practical tasks designed to help students apply theoretical concepts to unseen texts and close study products/set texts.

• Exemplar applications of theories to set texts and close study products for all media specifications (AQA, Eduqas, OCR and WJEC).

• Challenge activities designed to help students secure premium grades.

• Glossaries to explain specialist academic terminology.

• Revision summaries and exam preparation activities for all named theorists.

• Essential knowledge reference tables.

Media Theory for A Level is also accompanied by the essentialmediatheory.com website that contains a wide range of supporting resources. Accompanying online material includes:

• Revision flashcards and worksheets.

• A comprehensive bank of exemplar applications that apply academic theory to current set texts and close study products for all media specifications.

• Classroom ready worksheets that teachers can use alongside the book to help students master essential media theory.

• Help sheets that focus on the application of academic theory to unseen text components of A Level exams.

1 Semiotics

Roland Barthes

Until the 1950s academic study of culture was largely limited to an exploration of high culture. Literature, art, architecture, music, etc. were deemed worthy of study because, supposedly, they articulated sophisticated and nuanced modes of thinking. Popular culture, conversely, was rejected as unworthy of analysis because the stories told by advertising, cinema and the then emerging form of television were thought to be constructed with so little precision, and their effects so simple, that any academic attention was undeserving.

Barthes, however, realised that the mass media ought to be taken seriously, and his 1957 essay collection, Mythologies, stands as one of the first attempts to evaluate the finesse and impact of mass media narratives. Indeed, Barthes Mythologies revels in popular culture, analysing anything and everything from wrestling to horoscopes, from car adverts to political news. Barthes’s writing intuited that mass media forms affected a deep presence within society – an ideological presence whose scope and influence far outstripped the nuanced reach of high culture.

Concept 1: denotation and connotation

Denotation/connotation

Barthes tells us that media products are decoded by their readers – in the first instance, at least – using what he calls a ‘denotative reading’. Denotative readings, he suggests, occur when readers recognise the literal or physical content of media imagery. For example, a denotative reading of the ‘I, Daniel Blake’ poster in Figure 1.1 would simply acknowledge that the photograph depicts an older man who wears dark clothing with his fist raised in the air.

Figure 1.1 ‘I, Daniel Blake’ film poster (2016).

© Sixteen Films.

Barthes tells us that readers quickly move beyond the simple recognition of image content and subsequently engage in what he calls ‘connotative decoding’. Connotation, Barthes argues, ‘makes possible a (limited) dissemination of meanings, spread like gold dust on the surface of the text’ (Barthes, 2007, 9). Connotative readings, he suggests, refer to the deeper understandings prompted by media imagery and to the emotional, symbolic or even ideological significances produced as a result of those readings.

The ‘I, Daniel Blake’ poster in Figure 1.1, for example, signifies various meanings through a range of subtle cues: the raised fist suggests defiance, the character’s costume infers poverty or that he comes from a working class background, while the dark clothing potentially constructs a sombre tone and suggests that the advertised film will deal with serious or tragic themes. In reading the meaning of these subtle cues, and of the multitude of clues that all media products present, audiences use their cultural knowledge and their experience of similar imagery to help them construct an understanding of a product’s significance.

Table 1.1 Connotative effects of photographic imagery

Image makers use a range of strategies to infer meaning within imagery – look out for the following when analysing the meaning making effects of your set texts.
Image features	Look out for
Pose Subject positioning, stance or body language	Fourth wall breaks: where the photographic subject meets the gaze of the audience. This can create a confrontational, aggressive or invitational feel. Off-screen gaze: upward gazes can suggest spirituality; right-frame gazes can suggest adventure or optimism; left-frame gazes can suggest regret or nostalgia. Body language control: might be open or closed, passive or active, strong or weak. Subject positioning: the way that group shots are arranged is usually significant with power conferred on those characters that occupy dominant positions. Proxemics: refers to the distance between subjects – the closer the characters are the closer their relationship. Left-to-right/right-to-left movement: characters who travel from screen left to screen right create positive connotations – they are adventurers and we might feel hopeful about their prospects; right-to-left movements can suggest failure or an impending confrontation.
Mise en scène Props, costume and setting	Symbolic props: props are rarely accidental – their use and placement generally infer symbolic meanings. Pathetic fallacy: settings and scenery often serve further symbolic functions – weather, for example, infers the tone of characters’ thoughts. Costume symbolism: character stereotypes are constructed through costuming, helping us to decipher a character’s narrative function.
Lighting connotations	High-key lighting: removes shadows from a scene, often producing a much lighter, more upbeat feel. Low-key lighting: emphasises shadows and constructs a much more serious set of connotations. Chiaroscuro lighting: high contrast lighting usually created through the use of light beams penetrating pitch darkness and connotes hopelessness or mystery. Ambient lighting: infers realism.
Compositional effects Shot distance, positioning of subjects within the frame	Long shots: imply that a subject is dominated by their environment. Close ups: intensify character emotion or suggest impending drama. Left/right compositions: traditionally the left side of the screen is reserved for characters with whom the audience is meant to empathise and vice versa. Open/closed frames: open framing suggests freedom, while enclosing a character within a closed frame can suggest entrapment. Tilt and eye line: tilt-ups and high eyelines convey power, while tilt-downs and low eyelines connote powerlessness and vulnerability.
Post-production effects	Colour control: colours are often exaggerated for specific connotative effect – red: anger; white: innocence; blue: sadness and so on. High saturation: colour levels are increased creating a cheerier, upbeat feel. Desaturation: taking colour out of an image generates a serious or sombre tone.

Text and image

Barthes, of course, understood that photographic imagery does not construct meaning by itself. Imagery, in print-based products, works alongside text-based components. Headers and taglines give meaning to photos, while photos themselves provide an accompanying visual explanation for news copy. The interplay between text and image, Barthes tells us, is determined by the positioning of textual components and by the relative size of each element. Barthes also details the use of text to ‘anchor’ image meanings in advertisements and print news. Photo captions, headers and taglines, Barthes tells us, guide readers towards defined significations.

Within the ‘Tide’ advertisement depicted in Figure 1.2, for instance, readers are encouraged to question why the woman is holding the box of washing powder in what looks, to all intents and purposes, to be a romantic embrace. The image presented could connote a whole range of meanings, from the surreal to the nonsensical. Has the woman actually fallen in love with a box of washing powder? Has she found real love as a result of the product? Perhaps, we might conclude, the woman has a strange washing powder fetish.

It is not until we read the strapline at the bottom of the advert, ‘Tide gets clothes cleaner than any other washday product’, that the meaning of the image is explicated. The woman loves Tide as a result of its cleaning powers. In the sense, the text component anchors the meaning of imagery. Without anchorage, Barthes suggests, media imagery is likely to produce polysemic connotations or multiple meanings. Anchorage, Barthes tells us, constructs, ‘a vice which holds the connoted meanings from proliferating’ (Barthes, 2007, 39).

Figure 1.2 Tide washing powder advert (1950).

Source: image courtesy of Advertising Archive.

Box 1.1 Apply it: diagnose the connotations constructed by media set texts

Use the following questions to help you construct a detailed analysis of the media language effects of relevant set texts:

Pose ...