Reading 4 - Genre: Textual meaning, producers and audiences

In this week’s lecture and related reading, we covered the topic of Genre and its textual meaning. Genre is the French word for “kind, category or type” (Long & Wall (2012) p.72) and it helps producers and audience distinguish the difference between two products. Genre allows us as a media producers or audience to pick out different characteristics or of a media product category them into specific groups. This is generally referred to as codes and conventions of a media product. Taking for example a horror film, the codes and conventions that would help an audience to distinguish the different between a horror film to other genres would be darker rooms, tense music, screaming, blood, zombies, vampires etc. “Any generic media text is both similar to and different from all other of its type” (Long & Wall (2012) p.72), this refers to each media text having features which comply to the codes and conventions of a genre, however make them different to the rest, which in essence, refers to as a subgenre which is more specific.

In the lecture, the 3c’s is a subject which is touched upon and they consist of Codes, conventions and context.  Codes are referred to as a system of signs which create meaning, these are broken down into three kinds of signs, technical, symbolic and written. Technical refers to the way in which the equipment is used in terms of the lighting, framing and depth of field to add effect. Symbolic refers more to the way objects or settings are used and the body language or clothing of the character. As oppose to written codes which discusses the way headlines are laid out, captions are displayed and the language style in which the piece is written.

The reading I found was a journal article piece on Visual Digital Culture: Surface play and spectacle in new media genres by Andrew Darley.  In this journal article, Andrew discusses video games and goes through the history of them. He discusses the visual element of the early arcade games and how many of the games have a similar layout with most of the games having a “flat geometric figures of dots or vectors lines, action which took place against a flat two dimensional background” (Darley (2000) p.26).    

Reference:

P.Long & T.Wall (2012). Media Studies: Texts, Production, Context. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. 

Andrew Darley. (2000). Visual Digital Culture. Surface play and spectacle in new media genres. 1 (1), Routledge.

Reading 3 - Globalisation

This week’s lecture and set reading explores the concept of globalisation. Globalisation revolves the expansion of business and growing from a small local venture into an international brand. More specifically, in the book, Media Studies Text Production Context, sociologist Anthony Giddens refers to globalisation as “intensification of world-wide social relations, which link distinct localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa” (Long & Wall (2012) p.245). However, globalisation is not just an economic occurrence and the reading and lectures explore the idea of media globalisation. Media globalisation is referred to as a “phenomena like the worldwide distribution of identical programme content or global interchangeable programme formats, and distribution of special interest information targeting a globally dispersed minority audience” (Long & Wall (2012) p.245).

A reading I have acquired for this week and this module investigates the ideas of the digital divide and what the digital divide is, this is also a topic that was briefly discussed with the lecture, however, the reading provides a more in depth analogy and discussion of the digital divide. The digital divide is referred to as “a whole series of interlocking “divides”- the gap that separate segments of society as well as whole nations into those who are able to take advantage of ICT opportunities and those who are not” (Panayiota Tsatsou (2011) Media Culture & Society, Digital Divides, 33(2), P.317). This is a topic in which the lecture covers discussing a similar concept of digital divide and differentiating a difference between the people who can access ICT and does who cant. 

In the lecture, the idea digital divide is explored regarding different continents of the world and their use of the internet and accessing information. In continents such as Africa who are poor and far less educated have 11% of their population accessing the internet as opposed to North America who are richer and far more educated have 77% population using the internet. (P.Long & T.Wall (2012) p.238 Table 7.1)

Through reading and listening into what media globalisation is, I personally believe that I can take further research into understanding how certain aspects of new media have influenced and changed peoples lives and perceptions on the world, exploring areas such as social media sites in the form of Twitter and Facebook and sites like YouTube in ways peoples lives have changed.

Reference:

P.Long & T.Wall (2012). Media Studies: Texts, Production, Context. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. 

Panayiota Tsatsou. (2011). Digital divides. Media Culture & Society. 33 (2).

Reading 2 - Industry & Institution - Regulation Part 2

In this week’s lecture and set reading, we explored further into industry, institution and looked into regulation. We looked into exploring how regulation relates to political economy from the previous week, to understand the concept of moral panic and to be able to research regulations within the media. Regulation “concerns legal or self imposed controls or restrictions of media organisations, involving their ownership, production, processes and output, as a means to achieve a policy goal.” (Long & Wall (2012) p.209) It could be argued whether the media should be regulated, however, I personally believe that it should simply because content could be potentially harming emotionally and mentally, therefore the regulations help to keep content within a fine line. It can prohibit the notion of freedom of speech, however, if certain information or messages which cross that fine line and do reach viewers then certain media corporations or individual themselves would risk legal actions.

The reading then talks further about regulations and policies and discusses the meanings behind policies. As opposed to regulations which effects the media industry as a whole, policies are “deliberate plans of action that set out what is to be achieved in directing or influencing decisions made by media companies.” (Long & Wall (2012) p.208)       

As the lecture and set reading only briefly touched on moral panic, I decided to explore the concept in the reading I found myself. The reading I found was a piece called Moral panics: The social construction of deviance by Erich Goode. From the text Erich Goode cited “In a moral panic, a group or category engages, or is said to engage in unacceptable, immoral behaviour…. And is therefore seen as a threat to the well being, basic values and interests of the society.” (E Goode (2009) p.35) This concept of moral panic can be explored in many ways in relation to new media as there is a wide range of new media areas to consider. Looking at the idea of moral panics in regards to social media as this is operated by a wide range of age groups from young to old, therefore there is a topic of discussion when discussing moral panics. A common occurrence on social media that is a topic of discussion for moral panic is cyber-bullying, this tends to be quite a common occurrence on social media it causes a moral panic on such sites like Facebook and Twitter as cyber bullying can cause a large amount of emotional and psychological damage and these do have policies which have been put in place to counter act these actions.   

 Reference:

P.Long & T.Wall (2012). Media Studies: Texts, Production, Context. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. 

Erich Goode (2009). Moral Panics: The social construction of deviance. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.