RoM – Newspapers

The three tasks we were working on in class today were as follows:

TASK 1:

Read through your group’s newspaper and mark stories / features / etc with the appropriate letter:

• N for Needs
• B for behaviour/attitudes
• P for purpose

Refer to the boxes above to help you, and be prepared to justify your annotation. As a reminder, there can be more than one for each story, and you should drill down into the role (eg: Meeting needs? Which need… information, education and/or entertainment?)

TASK 2:

Take one story that you think is a perfect illustration for each role and see how it links to one (or more) of the more complex roles or purposes of the media outlined in the Spielberg Key Aspects book.

TASK 3:

Q: How does coverage of BREXIT from elsewhere differ from UK coverage?

As homework, use the internet to investigate how another European / EU country is reporting BREXIT. Ireland is an obvious starting point, but many European newspapers have English
language editions/versions (as opposed to Google translate!)

A good starting point is here:

http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/european-newspapers.htm

And a smart tactic would be to take a story in the news here (eg: BREXIT and the Irish border), and look at how a UK paper and another such as Ireland (The Irish Times) or Gibralter (Gibralter Chronicle) or any other…

Redtop 2017 – Part 1

Click the ‘super, soaraway, Sun’ to download the slides.

As promised, here’s the PDF of the first part of the Redtops slides. As I (hope I) stressed in class, these give you the numbers and facts and sundry ‘dry’ bits and pieces… you should be making your extra notes based on the examples and illustrations I give in my commentary in class. 🙂

RoM – Full Slides

Here is the full slidedeck/handout for the role of media we’ve been talking about in class. Feel free to ask questions, and apply what is in the slides to the pop videos we have looked at … (Click on the beard to download the slides!)

Use the weekend to prepare for attempting to answer a RoM question on Monday. You can find more information about what is looked for on the SQA website here. (Question Paper / Marking Scheme)

Role Of Media

For the SQA, there are three aspects in particular that underpin what we consider when studying the Role of Media. Hopefully this wee video will help you understand the relationship between the three…

In essence, media companies (institutions) have purposes (profit/promotion/public service). In order to fulfil this purpose, they produce media content. An audience uses and/or interacts with this content to satisfy their need for entertainment, education or information. In consuming this media content, and audience will be influenced with regards their attitudes and behaviours. This influence may be intentional on the part of the media company, but can also have unintentional results.

For example: In order to make a profit (£), a publisher (?) produces a newspaper (?). This newspaper carries a story about refugees fleeing a middle eastern conflict in order to meet the audience need to be informed. Their intention is to influence attitudes and behaviours, specifically, they want their audience to think that refugees are illegal immigrants, to believe that they are only coming to take jobs, and that our feelings towards them should be hate-filled. This is the intentional purpose, but the unintentional purpose is to make potential readers see the newspaper as a right-wing, xenophobic hateful rag. If enough people buy the paper, this influences the publisher to produce more of the same…

Hopefully, this makes sense, but if not leave a comment or ask in class. 🙂

Oops… Mind The Gap!

Just a quick one… Gap have pulled an advert because of “passive racism”. I know, I didn’t know it was a thing either. Mind you, given that Gap don’t have to go too far to find their problems, this is probably an unwelcome (or possibly very welcome) diversion.

Anyway… here’s the link: Oopsie!

RoM Questions To Consider

Gratuitous Cheesecake Shot of Elvis. No need to thank me… Though, you do need to wonder if this is a hint! 😉

We almost made it! Here are the questions from the last slide that I’d like you to consider:

When considering all the videos we looked at (links are in the slides in THIS post), you should be thinking about the following:

1. How do companies (institutions) profit?
2. What is being promoted?
3. Is there any sense of ‘public service’?
4. Which audience need(s) are being met?
5. What intentional and unintentional affects on attitudes & behaviours are created by the videos?

There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ answer here… and you are free to be selective in the examples/evidence you use to support your points. What I will say is, as far as the SQA are concerned, you will need to mention theorists (such as Mulvey, Kilborne and Butler), you will need to consider at least two points-of-view/approaches to reading the texts, and you should aim to persuade the reader of your own opinions of the portrayal of femininity in music videos.

Feel free to include your own examples as well… just remember to include live links!

We’ll be trying to write an answer to these questions in class tomorrow (though, when I say ‘we’, I really mean ‘you’… I’m going to discuss your assignments with you for the rest of the week.)

As ever, enjoy!

Protected: Pop Videos RoM

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A Little Light Reading…

You may wish to read up a little more on this:

• How are women portrayed in music videos?
• Sex in pop music: what do other female pop stars think?
• Are music videos too sexual or do they represent power in women?

And I’ll leave you with this, the opening statement from the wikipedia entry:

Sexuality in music videos has become more widespread since the 1980s. Because of its commercial function, music videos must attract the audience’s attention and convey a message quickly. The sexual attraction provides a means of both drawing attention and conveying a message quickly.

(PS: I may be pointing out the obvious, but music videos as we understand them did not exist before the 1980s… but that should not detract from the point it is making)

 

 

It Woz The Sun Wot Done It…

Just a quickie that fits in with our consideration of the role of the media. Which of the three roles do you think The Sun’s actions were based on?

Click the pic to go to the report on the Huffington Post.

Attitudes And Behaviours

Attitudes & Behaviours come under the Role of Media part of the course (Q2 in the exam). It is the area that considers some of the arguments surrounding whether, and to what extent, the media influence our attitudes and subsequent behaviour. For example, do violent films reduce our sensitivity to violence… or even encourage us to become more violent ourselves? If this is the case, what are we to make of the constant barrage of violence we see on TV in films, programmes or the 10 o’clock news?

And what about our attitudes to others? Are they refugees or migrants or terrorists? Are women portrayed as equal to men, or are they merely objects to be looked at? Are men allowed to have emotions, or are they always meant to be ‘strong’? And what values are shown as the ‘norm’?

In considering these points, it is important to be aware of the dominant ideology of a text. This can be summed up as an understanding of the core values it holds, the view of the world it portrays, and the value it bestows on the people it represents. It also can be seen as a reflection of the society within which the media is produced… the media epouses the values of that society — perhaps traditional views of family or law and order.

As a final thought, what are we to make of this performance of ‘Kiss Me’ by Olly Murs on The X-Factor. What is the function of the women in the performance, and what do you think of it? Is it just harmless entertainment, or a misogynistic throwback to a less enlightened point of view?

http://sendvid.com/9xz694lt