Learning objective:
To apply key questions about representation to specific media texts
Key terms:
Mediation - This is the way in which a media text is constructed in order to represent the producer of the text's vision of reality. This is constructed through selection organisation and focus.
Window on the world - This is the idea that media texts, particularly those that present aspects of reality, for example news programmes, are showing the audience the real world as it happens.
Ethnocentric - If a newspaper is ethnocentric then it tends to be concerned with issues that are close to home and will more directly interest the readers. For example, a local newspaper may only run a national story if a local person is involved.
Understanding the concept of representation is essential, this understanding must be developed at A2 and must go beyond a simplistic discussion of, for example, how stereotypes can be harmful.
In order to analyse representation in media texts you must be aware of both the context and the purpose of the representation contained within the text.
These are some of the key questions you need to consider:
Task 1: Write a paragraph about the selected representation that is Educating Essex (below).
Consider:
How the cameras have been positioned.
What characters have the creators focused on? Why focus on these types of characters?
To what extent are we seeing a reality?
To what extent are we seeing a re-presentation?
The producers of a media text encode ideas and messages within the text through representations. The aim of the producers of the text will be to communicate their ideology to the audience.
Audiences then decode the messages and respond to them in different ways.
All media texts are constructed and all representations contained within the texts are constructed. This gives an illusion of reality which some audiences will accept as the truth without challenge.
Representations are constructed through technical and audio codes, layout and design and language and mode of address.
The context and purpose of the representation is important. The representation of young people in The Inbetweeners is constructed to make an audience laugh because it is a situation comedy.
Stereotypes are constructions which are made up of over exaggerated and easily recognisable character traits. They are used to convey information rapidly as audiences will have expectations of how certain stereotypical characters will behave.
Not all stereotypes are negative.
Stereotypes and prejudices need not necessarily be negative.
People who are in any way different from the majority – ‘them’ rather than ‘us’ – are frequently exposed to [a] binary form of representation. They seem to be represented through sharply opposed, polarized, binary extremes – good/bad, civilized/primitive, ugly/excessively attractive, repelling-because different/ compelling because strange and exotic. And they are often required
to be both things at the same time!
(Hall 1997: 17)
To apply key questions about representation to specific media texts
Key terms:
Mediation - This is the way in which a media text is constructed in order to represent the producer of the text's vision of reality. This is constructed through selection organisation and focus.
Window on the world - This is the idea that media texts, particularly those that present aspects of reality, for example news programmes, are showing the audience the real world as it happens.
Ethnocentric - If a newspaper is ethnocentric then it tends to be concerned with issues that are close to home and will more directly interest the readers. For example, a local newspaper may only run a national story if a local person is involved.
Understanding the concept of representation is essential, this understanding must be developed at A2 and must go beyond a simplistic discussion of, for example, how stereotypes can be harmful.
In order to analyse representation in media texts you must be aware of both the context and the purpose of the representation contained within the text.
These are some of the key questions you need to consider:
- How is the world represented in the media text constructed?
- Who is in control of the text and how are their ideas and values communicated in the text?
- Who is the target audience of the text?
- How may different audiences respond to the representations contained within the text?
- Who would accept and who would challenge?
- What messages are contained within the text?
- How might these messages impact upon the audience?
- For example, lifestyle magazines represent women as thin, beautiful and desirable. What effect might that representation have upon a young female reader?
1. The aspects that make up any media text will have been constructed to achieve an effect. This finished construction, particularly in factual texts, gives an illusion of reality that becomes accepted by the audience as the truth.
The documentary, fly on the wall section of a programme like Strictly Come Dancing constructs a narrative that positions the audience through the editing of the film footage. The hours of film have been edited down to present a particular view of a character or situation in order to manipulate the emotions of the audience .
Task 1: Write a paragraph about the selected representation that is Educating Essex (below).
How the cameras have been positioned.
What characters have the creators focused on? Why focus on these types of characters?
To what extent are we seeing a reality?
To what extent are we seeing a re-presentation?
**********************************************************
More related key words and terms:
Idealism of youth - The unrealistic belief in or pursuit of perfection.
Hedonism - the pursuit of pleasure; sensual self-indulgence.
Representation as a media concept
The producers of a media text encode ideas and messages within the text through representations. The aim of the producers of the text will be to communicate their ideology to the audience.
Audiences then decode the messages and respond to them in different ways.
All media texts are constructed and all representations contained within the texts are constructed. This gives an illusion of reality which some audiences will accept as the truth without challenge.
Representations are constructed through technical and audio codes, layout and design and language and mode of address.
The context and purpose of the representation is important. The representation of young people in The Inbetweeners is constructed to make an audience laugh because it is a situation comedy.
Not all stereotypes are negative.
Stereotypes and prejudices need not necessarily be negative.
Many stereotypes attribute positive qualities to an entire group, such as the ‘athleticism of Black people’, or the ‘warmth and charm of the Irish’, or – in the case of young people – the ‘idealism of youth’.
Often such stereotypes can be seen to ‘romanticise’ the group in question. While this might seem harmless enough, it still amounts to a simplification of a complex social reality, and in many cases is patronising in tone and disempowering in effect.
Stuart Hall stated:
People who are in any way different from the majority – ‘them’ rather than ‘us’ – are frequently exposed to [a] binary form of representation. They seem to be represented through sharply opposed, polarized, binary extremes – good/bad, civilized/primitive, ugly/excessively attractive, repelling-because different/ compelling because strange and exotic. And they are often required
to be both things at the same time!
(Hall 1997: 17)
Task 1:
Watch the above trailer for The Inbetweeners 2 movie.
Indicate how audiences identify and recognise the representation of young British men in the clip.
Task 2:
Read the article from The Telegraph (9/7/2015) and the comments thread that follows.
Answer the following question:
To what extent are the characters in the film The Inbetweeners 2 a true reflection of young, British men today.
Consider how versions of the real world have been re-presented.
Task 3:
Give an example of a positive stereotype and write a paragraph about it.
Consider:
How the stereotype has been constructed. Consider behaviour and appearance.
Who benefits from the stereotyping?
All media texts go through a process of mediation.
They are not windows on the world. Through construction and selection the texts are interpreted for us and the representation of the issue, event and social group is presented in a particular way through this process.
Mediation - Relates to construction and selection and is the process that a text may go through before it is consumed by an audience.
In the riots of 2011, the news of events came from different sources and then appeared on the front page of newspapers. With a story like this, the audience at home have to rely on how the event is represented and mediated as they cannot witness it first hand.
Mediation processes: The London riots 2011.
Aspects of the event are captured by a camera and this immediately gives a focus through what is included and what is left out.
One of the main front page images used was that of a youth wearing a track suit with a hood in front of a burning car, this was then anchored by the caption suggesting how the audience should view this image.
A headline gave further interpretation, in this case through the use of emotive and hyperbolic language, including lexis like yobs, feral and mob rule.
Within the newspaper, the editorial may offer further opinion offering a representation of the event.
The way in which the event was mediated through the images, text and representation of young people affects the way in which the audience may respond.
Give an example of a positive stereotype and write a paragraph about it.
Consider:
How the stereotype has been constructed. Consider behaviour and appearance.
Who benefits from the stereotyping?
************************************************************
All media texts go through a process of mediation.
They are not windows on the world. Through construction and selection the texts are interpreted for us and the representation of the issue, event and social group is presented in a particular way through this process.
Mediation - Relates to construction and selection and is the process that a text may go through before it is consumed by an audience.
In the riots of 2011, the news of events came from different sources and then appeared on the front page of newspapers. With a story like this, the audience at home have to rely on how the event is represented and mediated as they cannot witness it first hand.
Mediation processes: The London riots 2011.
Aspects of the event are captured by a camera and this immediately gives a focus through what is included and what is left out.
One of the main front page images used was that of a youth wearing a track suit with a hood in front of a burning car, this was then anchored by the caption suggesting how the audience should view this image.
A headline gave further interpretation, in this case through the use of emotive and hyperbolic language, including lexis like yobs, feral and mob rule.
Within the newspaper, the editorial may offer further opinion offering a representation of the event.
The way in which the event was mediated through the images, text and representation of young people affects the way in which the audience may respond.
Representation A2
Ideology
Ideology
Task 3: How does the construction of these texts suggest an audience should respond to this event?
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