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.

What this dot point is asking

AQA wants you to analyse music video and radio using the framework: the conventions and representations of music video, and radio as both a public service and commercial form with its own industry and audience contexts. Each form is studied across several frameworks, so you must show range.

Music video conventions

Music video has its own conventions. There is usually a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals (illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the words) and between the music and the editing (cuts often fall on the beat to bind sound and image). Videos mix performance and narrative, build the artist's star image, and frequently use intertextuality and bold, stylised media language to stand out. Crucially, music video is a promotional form: every convention also works to sell the artist and the track, so analysis should connect the media language to that commercial purpose.

Representation in music video

Music video is a rich form for studying representation. It often constructs strong representations of gender, ethnicity and lifestyle, which can reinforce or challenge stereotypes and which feminist and postcolonial theories help analyse. Van Zoonen's male gaze and questions of objectification are commonly relevant, as is Gilroy's work on ethnicity and identity. Because the form is promotional and stylised, its representations are often heightened and deliberate, which makes them productive material for analysing how media language constructs gendered and racialised meaning, and whose interests those representations serve.

Radio as a media form

Radio is studied as both a public service form (such as BBC radio, with a remit to inform, educate and entertain) and a commercial form funded by advertising. Radio uses sound-based media language: voice, mode of address, music selection, jingles and sound design, with no visual channel, so the relationship with the listener and the construction of a station identity are central. Its industry context (ownership, funding, regulation by Ofcom) and its audience (often loyal, habitual and sometimes niche) are key, and the public service versus commercial distinction shapes both the output and the mode of address.