KEY CONCEPTS: REPRESENTATION

'The media do not just offer us a transparent 'window on the world' but a mediated version of the world. They don't just present reality; they re-present it.' (Buckingham, 2003:58)

• Media representations are always constructs, that is, they are made by someone for consumption by an audience. All representations are 'mediated'.
• Studying media involves analysing how representations are made to seem natural or 'true'.
• However realistic a representation may seem - even a photograph - it is a construction not a representation of reality. Think of holiday snaps, wedding photos, celebrity shots, estate agents' photos, cover girls, film posters, advertising material.
• Meaning is made as much by what is excluded as what is included. Some things are more prominent (foregrounded), some less prominent. Composing a shot involves deliberate selection, choice of angles, lighting and so on.
• Writing can anchor (fix) meaning: captions, for example.
• The meaning of a visual media text (moving image, photo etc) is not fixed and contingent; its meaning also depends on the viewer who assigns meanings and interprets the text. Literature students encounter this post-structuralist notion in Roland Barthes's The Death of the Author (1977). 
• "To give a text an Author is to imposes a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final significance, to close the writing." (Barthes 1977)
• Viewers bring with them a set of assumptions and values with which they make judgements. For example, would different cultures think differently about some of the media that you have looked at in class, ranging from Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis to films about cultural identity (such as East Is East and perfume adverts?

The Times 12.09.2011: As New York remembers 9/11, a father mourns his lost son.

Analyse the photographs above and below taken at the 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero in the light of what you have discussed.

Former president George W. Bush, the First Lady and President Barak Obama  pay their respects at the North Pool of the National September 11 Memorial

Now is the time to start widening your media consumption and dipping into media that you might not normally use. Try online newspapers to familiarize yourself with different approaches and to see different representations. Today we used The Times newspaper at this site here.

Definition of Representation

AS MEDIA STUDIES

 Our AS Media Studies course is OCR H140. We do two modules: a portfolio of creative work and an examination.

YOUR EVALUATION

Here are the 7 questions you must answer in your evaluation:

1.  In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

AUDIENCE RECEPTION THEORY

Introduction to two models of audience theory:

Media Effects model: the idea that people will simply copy things that the have seen in the media.

1. The hypodermic syringe model
2. Two-step flow theory

Read Media Knowall on audience theory

Read 'Ten Things Wrong with the Effects Model' by David Gauntlett Professor of Media and Communications at the school of Media, Arts and Design at The University of Westminster

Read Ruination once again - case studies in the media effects

Read Role models and personal identity

Uses and Gratifications model: McQuail, Blumler and Brown (1972) identified four needs that audiences seek to have gratified by the mass media :

1. diversion (we enjoy escapism, entertainment, release)
2. surveillance (we need information about what is happening in the world
3. personal relationships (we like feeling part of a social group; we feel companionship)
4. personal identity (we explore and reinforce our values through comparison with others)

SECRET CLAREMONT

Challenge: take digital photos of the buildings or grounds from a fresh angle.
Explore PhotoShop's capabilities in order to present these photographs with a twist.

TELEVISION DRAMA

Analysis of five-minute extract of 'Waterloo Road': representations of age, gender, location and social class.

Use BBCiPlayer to explore TV Drama to select a two-minute extract of your own choice to analyse.

PHOTOJOURNALISM

Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima is a historic photograph taken on February 23, 1945, by Joe Rosenthal. It depicts five United States Marines and a U.S. Navy corpsman raising the flag of the United States atop Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II.

We have been discussing how media is mediated, that is, re-presented. Even photography is mediated. However 'true' or 'natural'  a the subject in a shot may appear to be, it has been blocked, framed and cropped. It is important to note this because claims for truth are made about photography as it appears to be the most scientific and transparent of all media.

It may be captioned in order to anchor its meaning.

The particular subject of a photo has been selected as significant whilst another subject has not. The lighting has been chosen for a specific effect: think of how lighting might be used in wedding photos, estate agents' photos and advertising.

A photo may be placed within a collection that also confers meaning: think of police 'mug shots' as opposed to school prospectuses . It may be placed in a location that confers status (an exhibition or museum) or makes claims for historical truth. It may be reproduced for other purposes.


We pay a virtual visit to the Newseum in Washington in order to view its Pulitzer Prize Photographers Gallery and discuss why Rosenthal's photograph has enduring appeal, why its status as an eye-witness account imbues it with special significance and why it became a potent symbol. You should research what uses have been made of this photograph and relate your conclusions to the framework above. It became one of the most famous single photos ever taken; it mobilised the support of the American people that Franklin D.Roosevelt  needed to finish the war against Japan and it enabled the Treasury to raise 220 million dollars in war bonds when it was used as the symbol of the seventh war loan drive.

When accusations were made that Rosenthal had staged the photo, it caused great controversy. Why would this be? Fifty Years Later, Rosenthal Fights His Own Battle: AP News

The Newseum, Washington DC Award-Winning Images and Photographers Who Took Them

Marines Raise the Flag on Iwo Jima

Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal took this photograph of U.S. Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima during World War II. Rosenthal won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for photography.