Media syllabus, dot point by dot point

Audiences: how digital technology has turned audiences into producers (prosumers), the rise of user-generated content and participatory culture, fan communities and online participation, and how producers respond to and use audience participation.

Audiences: debates about media effects, the difference between passive-audience models (the hypodermic needle) and active-audience models, concerns about the influence of the media, and a balanced understanding that effects are contested and audiences are not simply passive.

Audiences: how audiences interpret media products, the idea of the preferred reading and the active audience, Hall's reception theory (dominant, negotiated and oppositional readings), and why audiences respond differently depending on their values, experience and social context.

Audiences: how media products target and reach audiences, the ways audiences are categorised (demographics, psychographics, age, gender, lifestyle and interests), how producers use audience profiles to make and market products, and how products are designed to appeal to a target audience.

Audiences: the uses and gratifications theory (Blumler and Katz), the idea that audiences actively use media to meet needs, the main gratifications (information, personal identity, social interaction and integration, entertainment and diversion), and how products are designed to offer these gratifications.

Component 3: applying the theoretical framework to your own production, using media language to communicate meaning, constructing representations, following the conventions of the form and genre, and addressing the target audience, so the product demonstrates the AO3 skill.

Component 3: creating the media product to a high technical and creative standard using your own original material, meeting every requirement of the brief, and reflecting on how well the finished product applies the framework, meets the brief and targets its audience.

Component 3: the research and planning that underpin a strong production, researching existing products in the chosen form and genre, planning the concept and content, organising the practical work (storyboards, drafts, shot lists), and ensuring the plan meets every requirement of the brief.

Component 3: the Creating Media Products NEA, responding to one Eduqas-set brief to create a media product for an intended audience, understanding the brief's requirements (form, genre, audience), and writing the assessed Statement of Aims and Intentions that explains how the production will apply the framework.

Media industries: technological change and convergence, how digital technology has changed production, distribution and consumption, the convergence of media forms and devices, the importance of cross-media products and synergy, and how technology has shifted power between producers and audiences.

Media industries: the regulation of media products, why regulation exists (protecting audiences, standards, harm), the main UK regulators and systems (the BBFC for film, Ofcom for broadcast, the press complaints system, PEGI age ratings for games), and the debate between regulation and freedom.

Media industries: ownership and funding, including conglomerates and concentration of ownership, the difference between public service media and commercial media, the main funding models (advertising, subscription, sales, licence fee, public funding), and how ownership and funding shape products.

Media industries: the processes of production, distribution and circulation, including how products are made and marketed, the role of distribution and exhibition platforms, the importance of marketing and promotion, and how digital distribution has changed how products reach audiences.

Media industries set products: applying the industries framework to the Component 1 Section B forms (newspapers, radio, video games and the film industry), understanding their ownership, funding, production, distribution and regulation, and building an industry fact file on each set product.

Media language: the codes (technical, visual, audio and written) and the conventions of a form or genre that producers select and combine to communicate meaning, and how reading these features lets you analyse the meaning a product makes for its audience.

Media language: narrative structure (equilibrium, disruption and resolution, and character roles) and genre (the shared conventions that group products and create audience expectations), and how producers use and play with narrative and genre to make meaning (Todorov, Propp).

Media language in practice: applying the four code types to read a print product (layout, mise-en-scene in a photograph, typography, copy) and a moving-image product (camerawork, editing, sound, mise-en-scene), and structuring the analytical chain from feature to meaning to audience for the exam.

Media language: semiotics and the study of signs, the difference between denotation (the literal meaning) and connotation (the associated meaning), and how audiences read the signs in a media product to construct its meaning (Barthes).

Media language: genre as a repertoire of recognisable elements (iconography, settings, character types, narrative patterns), how genres are identified and develop, and why producers and audiences rely on genre, including how products combine and play with genre conventions.

Representation: how the media re-present events, people, places and social groups through the processes of selection, construction and mediation, the idea that every representation is constructed and carries a viewpoint, and how audiences accept, negotiate or reject a representation (Hall).

Representation: how the media represent events, issues and places, especially in news and factual products, the role of selection, bias and viewpoint, and how the same event or place can be represented very differently to encode different values.

Representation: how gender is represented in the media, the codes through which masculinity and femininity are constructed, the use of and challenge to gender stereotypes, and the idea that media representations contribute to audiences' sense of identity (Gauntlett).

Representation: how selection and mediation construct a preferred reading, the idea that representations carry values and viewpoints (and can naturalise them), and how a producer positions the audience to accept an intended meaning, which audiences may then negotiate or reject.

Representation: how social groups (defined by age, gender, ethnicity, region, class, ability and other characteristics) are represented in the media, what a stereotype is, and how products reinforce, challenge or subvert stereotypes and the values this carries.

Component 2 Section A television: analysing the media language of television, including camera, editing, sound and mise-en-scene, the conventions of the genre (often crime drama), narrative structure, and how these construct meaning and signal genre for the audience.

Component 2: applying the whole theoretical framework (media language, representation, industries, audiences) and contexts in depth to a set product, comparing the historic and contemporary or paired products, and structuring an in-depth, framework-led extended response.

Component 2 Section B music: the in-depth study of the set online media (artist websites and social media), how artists use online and participatory media to build a brand, promote themselves and engage audiences, and how convergence and audience participation shape music in the digital age.

Component 2 Section A television: analysing representation in the set television products, how the programmes represent people, social groups, gender and places, the values these representations carry, and how representations differ between the historic and contemporary products in their contexts.

Component 2 Section B music: the in-depth study of the set music videos, analysing their media language (performance and narrative conventions, visual style, editing to the beat) and representation, and how the music video promotes the artist and appeals to the audience.

Component 2 Section A television: the in-depth study of the set television products (a historic and a contemporary programme, often crime drama), studied across the whole framework (media language, representation, industries, audiences) and their contexts, and how to build a full fact file on each set product.