MediaQ&A by dot point

Cultivation theory (George Gerbner): repeated, long-term exposure to consistent patterns of representation cultivates audiences' beliefs about the world; this gradual shaping tends to reinforce mainstream, hegemonic values rather than change behaviour suddenly.

End of audience (Clay Shirky): digital and networked media have changed the relationship between media and audiences; consumers are no longer only passive receivers but have become producers who 'speak back' to the media, creating and sharing content with one another.

Fandom (Henry Jenkins): fans are active participants, not passive spectators; through textual poaching they appropriate and rework media texts in ways not fully intended by producers, and they build social identity and community around shared cultural materials.

Media effects (Albert Bandura): media can influence audiences directly; audiences acquire attitudes, emotional responses and behaviours by observing and imitating behaviours modelled in media products, so represented behaviour such as aggression can be learned and reproduced.

Reception theory (Stuart Hall): communication is a process of encoding by producers and decoding by audiences; audiences decode the encoded message through a preferred (dominant-hegemonic), negotiated or oppositional reading, shaped by their social position.

The non-exam assessment (Component 3): an individual cross-media production in two media forms, made in response to a WJEC-set brief, applying the theoretical framework and digital convergence, with a statement of aims and intentions; it is marked by the centre and moderated by WJEC and is not examined in the written papers.

Cultural industries (David Hesmondhalgh): culture and industry are in tension; to manage the high risk of cultural production, companies use vertical and horizontal integration, and they standardise and format products through stars, genres and serials, while the largest conglomerates operate across many cultural industries.

Power and media industries (James Curran and Jean Seaton): the media are controlled by a small number of large, profit-driven companies; concentration of ownership tends to reduce variety, creativity and quality, and more diverse, democratic patterns of ownership would produce more adventurous media.

Regulation (Sonia Livingstone and Peter Lunt): there is a tension in regulation between the need to protect the interests of citizens and the need to serve the interests of consumers; the rise of global, convergent and digital media puts traditional, nationally based regulation under strain.

Genre theory (Steve Neale): genres are processes of repetition and difference, defined by audience and industry expectation, and they change over time through hybridity and the play between convention and variation.

Narratology (Tzvetan Todorov): media narratives tend to move through equilibrium, disruption and a new equilibrium; the structure of disruption and resolution carries meaning and ideology.

Postmodernism (Jean Baudrillard): in a media-saturated culture, simulations and simulacra replace reality, producing hyperreality where the distinction between the real and its representation collapses.

Semiotics (Roland Barthes): media products communicate meaning through signs; analysis works through denotation and connotation, and ideological myth naturalises constructed meanings as common sense.

Structuralism (Claude Levi-Strauss): meaning depends on binary oppositions; the conflicts a media text is built around (good or evil, nature or culture) reveal its underlying structure and ideological values.

Ethnicity and post-colonial theory (Paul Gilroy): media representations of race can perpetuate colonial discourse and binary othering, but post-colonial and diasporic identities also offer ways of challenging and rethinking those representations.

Feminist theory (bell hooks): feminism is the struggle to end sexist oppression; that oppression is intersectional, shaped by the interlocking of gender, race and class, so media representation must be read across these axes together.

Feminist theory (Liesbet van Zoonen): gender is constructed through discourse and varies with context; in patriarchal media, women's bodies are often used as spectacle and objectified through the codes of representation.

Gender performativity (Judith Butler): gender is not a fixed, natural essence but is constructed through the repeated performance of conventional acts; media circulate and can also disrupt these performances and the gender binary.

Theories of identity (David Gauntlett): media offer a diverse and contradictory range of representations that audiences actively use as a 'pick and mix' of resources to construct and negotiate their own fluid identities.

Theories of representation (Stuart Hall): representation is the production of meaning through language and shared codes; it is constructive rather than reflective, and stereotyping fixes difference and reduces people to a few traits, often to maintain power.