Consumers often participate in the design and production process to customise mass-produced goods. They become prosumers.| Media Studies
Explore Stuart Hall and Paddy Whannel's classification of advertisements| Media Studies
Analysis of the close study product, including genre and representation, to help you prepare for your AQA Media Studies exam.| Media Studies
Develop your understanding of the key concepts in identity by analysing this magazine cover featuring Billie Eilish.| Media Studies
What is the difference between a consumer and a fan? Find out in our introduction to fandoms and participatory culture.| Media Studies
A guide to the two step flow theory of communication, including definitions and examples of opinion leaders and opinion followers.| Media Studies
Explore why advertisers use sophisticated fantasies to attract the consumer's attention in our guide to Dyer's lines of appeal.| Media Studies
Read our guide to the hypodermic needle theory of communication, including examples of how the media injects their messages to the audience.| Media Studies
Shirky argued audience behaviour has changed from the passive consumption of media texts to a much more interactive experience.| Media Studies
Explore the bardic function of television and how broadcasts reflect and reinforce culture through the messages communicated to the audience.| Media Studies
Our guides to audience theories will help you develop your understanding of the key concepts needed to analyse media texts and their impact.| Media Studies
A guide to Stuart Hall's systems of representation and the different approaches to understanding the representation process.| Media Studies
The best way to develop your understanding of the representation of masculinity is to analyse a variety of media texts.| Media Studies
A guide to Alison Bechdel's test and her measurement of the representation of women in mainstream films, including definition and examples.| Media Studies
An introduction to Vladimir Propp's narrative theory, 7 character types and the spheres of action, with definitions and examples.| Media Studies
Learn about mythemes and how culturally important myths can reveal our values and ideology in our guide to Claude Lévi-Strauss' theory.| Media Studies
Have you ever noticed models on magazine covers share very similar poses? That is because they are following some tried and tested looks.| Media Studies
Develop your understanding of the relationship between imperialism and identity by exploring cultural representations in media texts.| Media Studies
Want to improve your approach to analysing a media text? Our guides and definitions will help you uncover the meaning behind the signs.| Media Studies
Explore the science of language and how meaning is determined by the relationships between signs in our guide to langue and parole.| Media Studies
Develop your understanding of how advertising messages influence consumer behaviour with our easy to read guide to the AIDA principle.| Media Studies
Learn more about demographics and the very blunt division of people into broad and easily measurable segments.| Media Studies
An introduction to David Hesmondhalgh’s The Cultural Industries, including definitions of the key terms and concepts.| Media Studies
Media Effects Theory Practice| Media Studies
Media Effects Theory| Media Studies
Develop your understanding of Charles Peirce's sign categories (icons, symbols and indexes) with out worked examples from various media texts.| Media Studies
An introduction to Todorov's narrative theory, including examples and definitions of equilibrium, disequilibrium, disruption and repair.| Media Studies
An introduction to Propp's constant elements that underline all narratives in our summary of his 31 functions.| Media Studies
Explore the cultural importance of the chosen one character trope and why it appeals to producers and the audience.| Media Studies
Develop your understanding of Vladimir Propp's character types by investigating the spheres of action in this popular computer game.| Media Studies
Learn more about the importance of causality in narrative structure with our simple guide to this media studies concept.| Media Studies
Do media texts have a powerful influence on our behaviour? Discover more with our introduction to Bandura's famous bobo doll experiment.| Media Studies
Our guides to representation will help you develop your understanding of the most important theories and key concepts for analysing media texts.| Media Studies
An introduction to how the intersectionality of race, gender and class influences the representation of people and communities in the media.| Media Studies
Learn about how moral entrepreneurs exaggerate the threat posed by groups of people and label them as folk devils and create a moral panic.| Media Studies
Introduction to Gauntlett's ideas on the representation of gender and identity in the media - fluid, constructed, negotiated and collective.| Media Studies
Read our guide to the cultivation theory, including definitions and examples of enculturation, mainstreaming, resonance and socialisation.| Media Studies
An introduction to Liesbet Van Zoonen's influential review of liberal, radical and socialist feminist discourse.| Media Studies
Learn more about the structuralist approach to understanding media texts with our introduction to this important concept.| Media Studies
Explore Mulvey's influential film theory which describes how women are reduced to objects for the gaze of the protagonist and male audience.| Media Studies
Develop your knowledge and understanding of this close study product with our analysis of media representations, genre and narrative,| Media Studies
Feature-length films and 30-second advertisements are mainly driven by two narrative codes. This brief guide will take you through both.| Media Studies
Media Production and Control| Media Studies
Develop your knowledge and understanding of the 30-degree rule of classical film editing with our definition and examples.| Media Studies
Learn how we use stereotypes to help shape our own identity with our guide to this important social theory.| Media Studies
Explore how gender is determined by society and our performance of those roles with our guide to Judith Butler's "Gender Trouble".| Media Studies
Develop your understanding of how editors influence the audience’s interpretation of cinema with our introduction to the Kuleshov effect.| Media Studies
Develop your understanding of how films construct meaning through their structure with our introduction to "La Grand Syntagmatique".| Media Studies
This guide is essential reading for anyone who needs help with continuity editing for their media studies coursework.| Media Studies
Explore Sergei Eisenstein's approach to montages and how the collision of shots create meanings with our introduction of his key concepts.| Media Studies
Gender as Theatre| Media Studies
Explore the genre that helped shape the gaming Industry and keeps on jumping with our introduction to platform games.| Media Studies
Develop your knowledge and understanding of the this famous plot device with a look at its meaning and function.| Media Studies
An introduction to the methods news organisations use to frame a story and influence the audience's opinion of important issues.| Media Studies
To what extent does mass media influence the audience and set the news agenda by controlling which stories should hit the headlines?| Media Studies
Get some exam practice and develop your understanding of Charles Peirce's sign theory with this classroom activity.| Media Studies
Find out more about the codes and conventions of different media forms.| Media Studies
This guide will take you through a list of shots and camera angles with great examples from the world of cinema and television. Essential reading.| Media Studies
The Uses and Gratifications Theory attempts to explain why we deliberately choose to engage with certain texts and the gratifications they provide.| Media Studies
Easy to understand definition and examples of key intertextuality concepts: homage, parody, satire, pastiche, and Easter eggs.| Media Studies
An introduction to one of cinema’s most popular and enduring genres, including analysis of its iconography and filmmaking techniques.| Media Studies
Find out more about the important structuralist theory of binary opposition with our definition and examples from the media.| Media Studies
An introduction to this important principle of efficient and effective storytelling with definitions and examples from popular media texts.| Media Studies
Explore how filmmakers use signs to construct meanings with our introduction to this important concept in photography and filmmaking.| Media Studies
Explore the different features of the social media platform with our guide to carousels, stories, reels and live broadcasts.| Media Studies
Get some exam practice and develop your understanding of Ferdinand de Saussure's sign theory, including paradigm and syntagm.| Media Studies
Explore how producers fix the meaning of texts through anchorage, such as captions, so the audience will decode the preferred reading.| Media Studies
Find out more about Baudrillard's concepts of simulacra, simulation, implosion and hyperreality with our examples and analysis.| Media Studies
A beginner's guide to Charles Peirce's triadic model for analysing signs, including definitions of representamen, mental concept and object.| Media Studies
Revising media studies? Find out more about the importance of codes in the study of signs with our definition and examples.| Media Studies
Semiotics is the study of the signs and codes we use to communicate with each other and the world. Find out more with our useful guides.| Media Studies
With examples and practice questions, our guide will help develop your understanding of Saussure's sign theory.| Media Studies
Introduction to Stuart Hall's reception theory, including definitions and examples of encoding/decoding and framework of knowledge.| Media Studies
Our guide to Charles Peirce's sign categories will help develop your understanding of this semiotic theory.| Media Studies
Get some exam practice and develop your understanding of Barthes' signification process and the key concept of myth.| Media Studies
Find out more about ideology and how values and beliefs are encoded into media texts with our guide to this semiotic concept.| Media Studies
Learn more about Roland Barthes's five narrative codes: hermeneutic, proairetic, semantic, symbolic and cultural codes.| Media Studies
Find out more about narrative theory with our guides and examples to this key concept in media studies.| Media Studies
An introduction to how signs derive their meaning from their relationship to other signs in a language system, or code.| Media Studies
Our introduction to this key concept will develop your understanding of how signs are used in media texts to construct meaning.| Media Studies
Understanding the difference between the referent and other aspects of sign systems is essential for close analysis of any media text.| Media Studies
With examples and practice questions, our guide to Barthes sign systems, including myth, will help develop your awareness of this key concept.| Media Studies
Definitions and examples of Roland Barthes' two fundamental themes of photography (the studium and punctum) from Camera Lucida.| Media Studies