Comms. + Media Studies vocab

Media studies

The study of how media shapes and reflects society, impacts audiences’ perceptions, examines the representation of different groups, and how media is produced

Communications

The study of how humans exchange information, interpret messages, and the role of technology in effective/ineffective communication

Media history

A written record of different aspects of media

Media historiography

The act of writing, analyzing, and theorizing media history

History

A narrative construction of past events and their retelling in chronological fashion drawn systematically from reliable sources

Historiography

The way in which history is written and further analyzed

Aesthetic histories

Tracks issues of content, style and expression, and strives to understand how conventions form and change over time

Political economic histories

Explores the role of media as a business within a capitalist system, and analyzes the facts of institutional circumstances over time

Technological histories

Focuses on how technology plays a central role in the unfolding of media history from the perspective of communication

Socio-cultural histories

Concerned with media within a social context where aesthetics, economics, and technologies arise; articulates how media operates as a factor in everyday life

Media text

Any piece of media that can be “read” or interpreted for meaning and uses cultural codes & symbols to convey deeper meanings or influence perceptions; includes a wide range of media that conveys information, stories, and messages

Mediation

The process through which reality represented, interpreted, and constructed by the media; how media serves as an intermediary between the world and our perception

Mise en scene

The visual composition of a scene; everything that appears before the camera eg. sets, props, costumes, lighting, etc

Rhetorical analysis

Analyzing all the elements of a rhetorical situations—audience, purpose, medium, context—within a communication that was generated to make an argument about that communication

Rhetorical situation

Identifies the relationship among elements of any communication; audience, author, purpose, medium, context, content

Structuralism

An approach to critical analysis which emphasizes universal structures underlying the surface differences and randomness of cultures, stories, and media texts

Semiotics

The theory and study of how signs and symbols (language, images, gestures) create and communicate meaning

Saussure’s model of the sign

A basic unit meaning with 2 parts—the signifier, which is the form the sign takes and what we perceive; the signified, which is the mental concept that the signifier refers to

Denotation

The literal, surface-level meaning of a sign; the objective, dictionary definition

Connotation

The secondary, cultural, or emotional associations linked to the sign; subjective and culturally dependent

Intertextuality

The idea that texts/media refer to or are shaped by other texts

Hybrid genre

A mix of different genres (ex. romantic comedies)

Low culture

Forms of popular culture that appeal to the masses (eg. blockbuster films, reality TV, etc)

High culture

Cultural products considered of high aesthetic or intellectual value (eg. Shakespearean drama, classical music, etc)

Media representation

How individuals, groups, events, and ideas are portrayed in media

Shapes our understanding of reality and social norms, involves selection, construction, and presentation of reality

“The production of meaning through language”

Encoding/decoding model (created by Stuart Hall, developed by Morley)

Framework to understand how media messages are produced, circulated, and interpreted by audiences

Challenges the idea that media audiences passively accept intended messages

Encoding

The process by which media producers embed messages and meanings into media content

Influenced by creators’ ideologies and cultural norms which shape stereotype shown on screen

Decoding

The process by which audiences interpret or ‘decode’ the media messages

Audience brings own cultural backgrounds and experiences when interpreting content

Dominant reading

Audience interprets message exactly as it was encoded, aligning with intended meaning and cultural norms

Negotiated reading

Audience partly accepts the encoded message but also modifies it based on personal beliefs

Oppositional reading

Audience completely rejects intended meaning and decodes message in contradictory way

Stereotypes

Oversimplified and generalized portrayals of individuals or groups, often based on race, gender, sexuality, nationality, and class