MediaQ&A by dot point

Audiences: media effects. Bandura's social learning theory (observation, imitation and vicarious reinforcement) and Gerbner's cultivation theory (long-term exposure, mean world syndrome), and the debate over passive versus active audiences.

Audiences: fandom and participatory culture (Henry Jenkins) and the end of audience (Clay Shirky). Textual poaching, convergence culture, prosumers, user-generated content and the collapse of the producer-audience divide.

Audiences: reception theory (Stuart Hall). The encoding/decoding model, the preferred (dominant), negotiated and oppositional reading positions, and the idea that meaning is completed by the audience, not fixed in the text.

Audiences: targeting, categorising and reaching audiences. Demographics and psychographics, mass and niche audiences, mode of address and positioning, and uses and gratifications as a model of the active audience.

Media contexts: economic and political contexts. How funding models, ownership and the wider economy shape products, and how political ideologies, regulation and the press's political alignment shape representation and meaning.

Media contexts: historical contexts. How the historical period, the state of media technology and the conventions of the time shape products, and how comparing an older and a newer product reveals change in media language, representation and industry.

Media contexts: social and cultural contexts. How the values, attitudes, social groups and cultural moment of a product's time of production and reception shape its media language, representations and meaning.

Media industries: cultural industries (David Hesmondhalgh). The high-risk, high-reward nature of cultural production, and the strategies firms use to manage it: maximising audiences, integration and conglomeration, formatting, stars, genres and franchises.

Media industries: power and media industries (Curran and Seaton). The concentration of ownership in a few conglomerates, the pursuit of profit and power, the resulting narrowing of variety, and the case that diversity and alternative ownership widen creativity and democracy.

Media industries: production, distribution and circulation. Vertical and horizontal integration, conglomerates and synergy, convergence and technological change, and the difference between commercial and public service funding models.

Media industries: regulation (Livingstone and Lunt). The role of regulators (Ofcom, IPSO, the BBFC, the ASA), the tension between protecting citizens and serving consumer choice and freedom of expression, and the difficulty of regulating globalised, converged media.

Media language: genre theory (Steve Neale). Genre as a repertoire of elements, repetition and difference, the role of audience expectation and economic risk, hybridity and the way genres change over time.

Media language: narrative. Todorov's equilibrium, disruption and new equilibrium; Propp's character functions; and Levi-Strauss's binary oppositions as the structural carriers of meaning and ideology.

Media language: the codes and conventions of analysis. Camera, mise-en-scene, editing and sound; layout and typography in print; conventions of each form; intertextuality; and how to build a close analysis.

Media language: semiotics (Roland Barthes). Denotation and connotation, signs and signifiers, codes (the symbolic, technical and written codes) and the way repeated connotations harden into myth and ideology.

Representation: Stuart Hall's representation theory. Representation as construction not reflection, selection and mediation, stereotyping and the exercise of power, and the reinforcing or challenging of dominant ideologies.

Representation: ethnicity and postcolonial theory (Paul Gilroy). The legacy of colonialism, otherness and racial hierarchies, the civilisationism that ranks cultures, and postcolonial melancholia, applied to media representations of ethnicity.

Representation: feminist theory. Liesbet van Zoonen (gender as constructed, the objectification of women, the male gaze) and bell hooks (feminism as a political struggle against patriarchy, intersectionality of race, class and gender).

Representation: theories of identity (David Gauntlett). The greater diversity of representations in modern media, audiences using media as a pick-and-mix resource to construct fluid identities, and the shift from singular role models to negotiated selves.

Representation: social groups and stereotyping. How age, gender, ethnicity, region, sexuality and class are represented; stereotypes and countertypes; selective and constructed representation; and how representations position the audience.

Set products: the close study product method and online, social and participatory media. Building a full-framework fact file per product, handling unseen products, and analysing the online and social extensions of the set products (especially the news brands).

Set products: advertising and marketing (including Score hair cream, Maybelline, Kiss of the Vampire, Galaxy and This Girl Can). Media language and representation across older and newer campaigns, including gender representation and the use of context.

Set products: film (a Disney pairing, studied for media industry only) and long form television drama (one English-language and one non-English-language drama). Industry comparison of Disney across eras, and the full-framework comparative study of two dramas.

Set products: music video (one text from List A and one from List B) and magazines (including GQ, Vogue and Adbusters). Media language and representation across the forms, including genre, gender, identity and the alternative magazine as a challenge to the mainstream.

Set products: news and online media (The Guardian and the Daily Mail). Comparative study across print, websites and social media, covering media language, representation, industry (ownership, funding, regulation) and audience, in their political contexts.

Set products: radio (BBC Radio 1 Breakfast Show) and video games (Minecraft). Industry and audience analysis covering public service broadcasting, regulation, ownership, convergence, participation and the active, productive audience.

The NEA: applying the theoretical framework to production. Using media language deliberately, constructing intended representations, following the industry conventions of each form, and targeting the audience through the products themselves.

The NEA: cross-media linking and assessment. How the two products connect into a coherent cross-media campaign, the AO3-led marking criteria, the role of the Statement of Intent, and how to maximise the NEA mark.

The NEA: the brief and the Statement of Intent. The cross-media production task, choosing one OCR-set brief in two linked forms, the target audience and requirements, and the assessed Statement of Intent (around 500 words).

Theoretical perspectives: applying the audience theories. Choosing and applying Bandura, Gerbner, Hall, Jenkins and Shirky to set products, structuring the active-versus-passive audience debate, and reaching the judgement the essays reward.

Theoretical perspectives: applying the media industries theories. Choosing and applying Curran and Seaton, Hesmondhalgh and Livingstone and Lunt to set products, linking ownership, risk and regulation, and reaching the synoptic judgement the essays reward.

Theoretical perspectives: applying the media language theories. Choosing and applying Barthes, Todorov, Levi-Strauss and Neale to set and unseen products, the named-theory question, and the levels-of-response marking of the extended essay.

Theoretical perspectives: applying the representation theories. Choosing and applying Hall, Gauntlett, van Zoonen, bell hooks and Gilroy to set products, combining constraint and agency theories, and reaching the ideological judgement the essays reward.