MediaQ&A by dot point

Audience classification and targeting: demographics and psychographics, how producers categorise and target audiences, mass and niche audiences, and how audiences are constructed and addressed.

Media effects and cultivation: the hypodermic needle model, George Gerbner's cultivation theory, the two-step flow and opinion leaders, and the active versus passive audience debate.

Fandom and participatory culture: Henry Jenkins on textual poachers and participatory culture, Clay Shirky on the end of audience passivity, fan production and the prosumer in the digital age.

Stuart Hall's reception theory: the encoding and decoding model, the preferred, negotiated and oppositional readings, and how social context shapes the meanings audiences take from media products.

Uses and gratifications theory: Blumler and Katz on the active audience, the four gratifications of information, personal identity, social interaction and entertainment, and the active versus passive audience debate.

Ownership and regulation: conglomerate ownership, vertical and horizontal integration, concentration of ownership, the profit motive, and why media industries are regulated.

Production, distribution and circulation: the stages of the production process, distribution and marketing strategies, convergence and the impact of digital technology on how products reach audiences.

Public service broadcasting: the PSB remit to inform, educate and entertain, the funding and role of the BBC, the licence fee, and the debates about PSB in a commercial and digital landscape.

Regulation of media industries: the role of regulators such as Ofcom, the BBFC and IPSO, age classification of film, the arguments for and against regulation, and self-regulation versus statutory regulation.

The set theorists for industries: Curran and Seaton on power, ownership and the press, and David Hesmondhalgh on the cultural industries, risk, vertical integration and the formatting of products.

Genre in media language: codes and conventions, repetition and variation, hybridity, and Steve Neale's view of genre as a process of repetition and difference.

Intertextuality in media language: references, homage, pastiche and parody, and how the relationship between texts shapes audience understanding and pleasure.

Narrative in media language: Todorov's equilibrium model, Propp's character functions, Levi-Strauss and binary oppositions, and how narrative structure is built across media forms.

Semiotics: signs, the signifier and signified, denotation and connotation, codes, anchorage and the construction of meaning in media products.

Technical and stylistic codes: camerawork, editing, sound, lighting, mise-en-scene, and layout and typography, and how these codes construct meaning across media forms.

The set theorists for media language: Roland Barthes on signs, codes, denotation and connotation, and Tzvetan Todorov on narrative equilibrium and disruption.

Audience positioning through representation: preferred readings, point of view, the role of selection and mediation in guiding interpretation, and how audiences may negotiate or reject a representation.

Feminist and postcolonial theory: van Zoonen on gender as constructed and the male gaze, bell hooks on intersectionality, Gilroy on diasporic identity and the postcolonial critique of media representation.

Representation as construction: selection, mediation and re-presentation, the difference between reality and its representation, and how representations carry values and ideology.

Stereotyping and identity: how stereotypes are constructed and used, their function and effects, and how media representations contribute to audiences' sense of identity.

The set theorists for representation: Stuart Hall on the politics of representation and stereotyping, and David Gauntlett on identity, fluidity and the role of media in constructing the self.

Advertising and marketing as a media form: persuasive techniques, brand identity, representation and stereotyping in adverts, audience targeting, and the historical and social context of advertising.

The Close Study Products and media forms: the nine forms studied, how CSPs are set by AQA, applying the whole theoretical framework to set products, and the role of contexts.

Film and video games as media forms: film studied through its industry context, the global film industry and regulation, video game media language and representation, and audience interactivity and participation.

Music video and radio as media forms: the conventions of music video, representation and intertextuality in music video, radio as a public service and commercial form, and their industry and audience contexts.

Newspapers and magazines as media forms: layout and print media language, news values and selection, representation and bias, ownership and regulation, and audience and the decline of print.

Online, social and participatory media as a media form: user-generated content and the prosumer, convergence and the blurring of producer and audience, representation and identity online, and the challenges of regulating online media.