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Writing Maps
Alternative
Outside or on the edge of the mainstream. Independent film and music are examples of alternative media.
Antagonist
The opposition to a hero. Usually, the antagonist is a character, probably a villain, but they may also be a force of nature or an abstract concept. The antagonist is the force that disrupts the equilibrium of the narrative.
Archetype (Proppian)
Propp. A type, which most other examples of that type may be seen to be facets of. For example, the heroic archetype may be seen in Superman, Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, and many more characters. Archetypes are easily recognised, much like stereotypes. Princess, hero, anti-hero, helper etc.
Auteur / Authorship
An auteur (French, author) is a singular artist who controls all aspects of a collaborative creative work, a person equivalent to the author of a novel or a play. The term is commonly referenced to filmmakers or directors with a recognizable style.
Binary Opposition (Lévi-Strauss)
The construction of a text around opposing values, such as black or white, good and evil, or Star Wars' Jedi and Sith.
Block Booking
One of the techniques used to support the studio system was block booking, a system of selling multiple films to a theater as a unit. Such a unit (five films was the standard practice for most of the 1940s) typically included only one particularly attractive film, the rest a mix of A-budget pictures of lesser quality and B movies.
Blockbuster
A high-budget production aimed at mass markets, with associated merchandising, on which the financial fortunes of a film studio or a distributor depend. It was defined by its production budget and marketing effort rather than its success and popularity, and is essentially a tag which a film's marketing gives itself.
Brand Values
Brand values are the idealistic connotations brands and products aspire to be known by. They are the set of associations every institution aims to project in their audience's mind.
Broadsheet
Serious newspapers associated with hard news and reporting important events at home and abroad.
Conglomerate
A media conglomerate, media group, or media institution is a company that owns numerous companies involved in mass media enterprises, such as television, radio, publishing, cinema, or technology. Media conglomerates strive for control of the markets around the world.
Connotation
Meaning created through association. For example, fig leaves have connotations of modesty, horns have connotations of demons and the colour red has connotations of passion and rage.
Conventions
Expectations. Unwritten rules in mainstream texts. (For example, low key lighting and jump scares used in horror. Main characters will always survive to the end etc.)
Convergence
The ‘coming together’ of older media technologies into new forms. The process where different technological systems or media platforms evolve toward performing similar or related tasks. The moving away from singular purposes or functions, to devices or platforms that perform a range of functions. For example, smartphones can do all sorts of things beside simply telephoning people - they can send texts, or play music, or take photo, etc. The ultimate example is probably the internet - practically every form of traditional media has an online equivalent.
Demographics
Grouping audiences into groups/categories, according to quantifiable attributes, such as gender, race, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, class, geographics, age, social status, economic status. Usually result in stereotypes. Used to formulate mainstream target audience assumptions.
Digital Divide
Refers to the growing contrast between the "information haves," those who can afford to purchase computers and pay for internet services, and the "information have-nots," those who may not be able to afford a computer or pay for internet services.
Effects Model
The idea that the media can be blamed for society’s problems. Computer games make people violent or Marilyn Manson was to blame for Columbine murders.
Emotional Transfer
Creating a set of emotions that the advertiser is trying to map onto their product or service. The process of generating emotions in order to transfer them to a product. For example, a Coke ad shows happy, beautiful people but tells us nothing about the product. The point is to make you feel good and to transfer that feeling to the brand or product. This is the number one and most important process of media manipulation.
Mediation
Someone’s version of events. The process by which a media text represents an idea, issue or event to us. This word can be used to highlight the way things change after being represented by the media.
Mise en scène
Pretty much everything you see on screen. It includes properties, costumes, lighting, actors, position, body language, setting, location, diegetic sound.
Mode of Address
The way a media text talks to its audience. Women’s magazines address readers as friends would.
Monopoly
A situation in which a single company or group owns all or nearly all of the market for a given type of product or service. Such as the 'Big' Majors in Hollywood. Apple in the smart phone market.
Montage
A narrative device that compresses, or denotes passage of time. Usually used to inform the audience. Gives them information they need to know in order to understand what is to come. Possibly backstory, or something that happened off screen. Also used as 'previously on' in TV shows, or as the 'best bits' in a highlights package or as the 'sob story' in reality TV shows. All movie trailers are montages. Often overused, and audiences can become desensitise to them. Can be seen as 'lazy' storytelling.
Narrowcasting
Gearing advertising to a niche market.
Negotiated Reading (Stuart Hall)
This position is a mixture of accepting and rejecting elements. Readers are acknowledging the dominant message, but are not willing to completely accept as it. The reader to a certain extent generally accepts the preferred meaning, but is simultaneously resisting or modifying it in a way which reflects their own experiences and interests.
New Media
Smart phone, internet (social networking, web 2.0), video games, personal music devices.
Niche Market
A small target audience with specific interests, for example, gardeners who watch gardening programmes.
Post Modernism
Postmodernist works are typically characterised by their frequent referencing of earlier works and their playing around with the conventions of their genre. Pulp fiction is an example of a postmodern work. Intertextuality, satire, parody etc.
Post Structuralism
Rejects the idea of a text having a single purpose or single meaning. The author's intended meaning is secondary to the meaning that the reader perceives. Every individual reader creates an individual meaning for a given text. The text has the meaning that the audience chooses to give it. This is referred to as the "destabilizing" or "decentering" of the author. Without an audience, a text has no meaning.
Stuart Hall (encoding/decoding) Blumler and Katz (uses and gratifications)
Preferred / Dominant Reading (Stuart Hall)
The way in which the creator of a text intends it to be read. This position is one where the consumer takes the actual meaning directly, and decodes it exactly the way it was encoded. They interpret the text exactly as intended producer intends them to..
Prosumer
Merging of the producers and the consumers
Red Tops or Tabloids
The Sun and Mirror, lowbrow papers full of soft news, gossip and opinion.
Shock Tactics
Shock tactics deliberately attempt to startle or offend audiences by subverting or violating social norms or expectations. Graphic imagery and blunt slogans are used to capture attention and create buzz, and to attract an audience to a certain brand or bring awareness to a certain health issue, or cause. It is often controversial or disturbing.
Structuralism
Suggests we understand texts according to structures. An understanding of the ‘rules.’ Assumes that the meaning behind the text was put there by the author or producer. From their POV, it is already there and always was. The 'meaning' pre-exists and infers there is a dominant reading of how the text will be interpreted.
A high-budget production aimed at mass markets, with associated merchandising, on which the financial fortunes of a film studio or a distributor depend. It was defined by its production budget and marketing effort rather than its success and popularity, and is essentially a tag which a film's marketing gives itself.
Brand Values
Brand values are the idealistic connotations brands and products aspire to be known by. They are the set of associations every institution aims to project in their audience's mind.
Broadsheet
Serious newspapers associated with hard news and reporting important events at home and abroad.
Conglomerate
A media conglomerate, media group, or media institution is a company that owns numerous companies involved in mass media enterprises, such as television, radio, publishing, cinema, or technology. Media conglomerates strive for control of the markets around the world.
Connotation
Meaning created through association. For example, fig leaves have connotations of modesty, horns have connotations of demons and the colour red has connotations of passion and rage.
Conventions
Expectations. Unwritten rules in mainstream texts. (For example, low key lighting and jump scares used in horror. Main characters will always survive to the end etc.)
Convergence
Demographics
Grouping audiences into groups/categories, according to quantifiable attributes, such as gender, race, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, class, geographics, age, social status, economic status. Usually result in stereotypes. Used to formulate mainstream target audience assumptions.
Digital Divide
Refers to the growing contrast between the "information haves," those who can afford to purchase computers and pay for internet services, and the "information have-nots," those who may not be able to afford a computer or pay for internet services.
Effects Model
The idea that the media can be blamed for society’s problems. Computer games make people violent or Marilyn Manson was to blame for Columbine murders.
Emotional Transfer
Creating a set of emotions that the advertiser is trying to map onto their product or service. The process of generating emotions in order to transfer them to a product. For example, a Coke ad shows happy, beautiful people but tells us nothing about the product. The point is to make you feel good and to transfer that feeling to the brand or product. This is the number one and most important process of media manipulation.
Enigma Codes
A narrative device that teases the audience by presenting a question or mystery to be solved. Often uses 'Easter eggs' to provide ABC1 audiences with rewards.
Equilibrium (Todorov)
Stability within a story. Over the course of the narrative, equilibrium is disrupted, and restored by the end of the story.
Escapism / Diversion
Also known as Diversion. To seek distraction / relief from reality, especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy. One of the four Audience Gratifications, identified by Blulmer & Katz.
Exclusive Appeal (aka Symbolic Positioning)
Self-image enhancement, ego identification, belongingness and social meaningfulness, effective fulfilment. The suggestion that the use of the product makes the customer part of an elite group with a luxurious and glamorous lifestyle. A coffee manufacturer shows people dressed in formal gowns and tuxedos drinking their brand at an art gallery.
Experiential Positioning
An advertising technique that conveys the experience of a product. Allows you to feel the danger, or excitement, or adrenaline etc.
Hegemony
The practice among powerful groups of dominating the media, asserting their ideology and dissuading audiences from other ideologies, through use of propaganda.
Hybrid
The fusion of two or more genres to create a new sub-genre. Docu-soap, which fuses elements of documentary and soap opera.
Hype
Generating anticipation, excitement for a film using different marketing techniques.
Hypodermic Needle
An audience theory which holds that when an audience views a media text, they will act in a manner that is directly influenced by it. For example, according to this theory, watching a film about being nice to people might cause the viewer to do an act of kindness in imitation of that film. This theory has been criticised because it assumes that audiences will passively consume whatever text is thrown at them, without possibility of (e.g.) Switching off the television, or even disliking the programme.
Immersion
Immersion occurs when audience members become invested in a media product (film, TV show, video game). The greater the suspension of disbelief, the more immersive the experience is. Usually links to escapism.
Institution
Collection of individuals sharing a common ideology or beliefs, for a shared purpose.
Iconography
Ideology
The beliefs and ideals of an institution. What they believe in, what they want you to believe in. Their brand values, and their characteristics will be evident in the texts they produce.
Intertextuality
This is where one media text references another. A text within a text. Takes advantage of Popular Culture references.
Narrative
A story. "our media institutions are basically in the narrative- or storytelling- business."
Media Meshing
Conducting activities or communicating via other devices while consuming media products that are related to the TV/film/game being watched. Using multiple platforms simultaneously to enhance the experience of a media product (e.g. interacting or communicating on a smartphone about TV content being viewed)
Media Stacking
Conducting activities or communicating via other devices while consuming media products that are unrelated to the TV/film/game being watched. Using multiple platforms simultaneously to conduct additional media tasks while consuming a media product.
A narrative device that teases the audience by presenting a question or mystery to be solved. Often uses 'Easter eggs' to provide ABC1 audiences with rewards.
Equilibrium (Todorov)
Stability within a story. Over the course of the narrative, equilibrium is disrupted, and restored by the end of the story.
Escapism / Diversion
Exclusive Appeal (aka Symbolic Positioning)
Self-image enhancement, ego identification, belongingness and social meaningfulness, effective fulfilment. The suggestion that the use of the product makes the customer part of an elite group with a luxurious and glamorous lifestyle. A coffee manufacturer shows people dressed in formal gowns and tuxedos drinking their brand at an art gallery.
Experiential Positioning
An advertising technique that conveys the experience of a product. Allows you to feel the danger, or excitement, or adrenaline etc.
Hegemony
The practice among powerful groups of dominating the media, asserting their ideology and dissuading audiences from other ideologies, through use of propaganda.
Hybrid
The fusion of two or more genres to create a new sub-genre. Docu-soap, which fuses elements of documentary and soap opera.
Hype
Generating anticipation, excitement for a film using different marketing techniques.
Hypodermic Needle
An audience theory which holds that when an audience views a media text, they will act in a manner that is directly influenced by it. For example, according to this theory, watching a film about being nice to people might cause the viewer to do an act of kindness in imitation of that film. This theory has been criticised because it assumes that audiences will passively consume whatever text is thrown at them, without possibility of (e.g.) Switching off the television, or even disliking the programme.
Immersion
Immersion occurs when audience members become invested in a media product (film, TV show, video game). The greater the suspension of disbelief, the more immersive the experience is. Usually links to escapism.
Institution
Collection of individuals sharing a common ideology or beliefs, for a shared purpose.
Iconography
Signs associated with a particular genre. The blood, bats, and crucifixes are part of the iconography of the vampire sub-genre.
Ideology
The beliefs and ideals of an institution. What they believe in, what they want you to believe in. Their brand values, and their characteristics will be evident in the texts they produce.
Intertextuality
This is where one media text references another. A text within a text. Takes advantage of Popular Culture references.
Narrative
A story. "our media institutions are basically in the narrative- or storytelling- business."
Media Meshing
Conducting activities or communicating via other devices while consuming media products that are related to the TV/film/game being watched. Using multiple platforms simultaneously to enhance the experience of a media product (e.g. interacting or communicating on a smartphone about TV content being viewed)
Media Stacking
Conducting activities or communicating via other devices while consuming media products that are unrelated to the TV/film/game being watched. Using multiple platforms simultaneously to conduct additional media tasks while consuming a media product.
Media Multitasking
Simultaneously ‘stacking’ and ‘meshing’
Mediation
Someone’s version of events. The process by which a media text represents an idea, issue or event to us. This word can be used to highlight the way things change after being represented by the media.
Mise en scène
Pretty much everything you see on screen. It includes properties, costumes, lighting, actors, position, body language, setting, location, diegetic sound.
Mode of Address
The way a media text talks to its audience. Women’s magazines address readers as friends would.
Monopoly
A situation in which a single company or group owns all or nearly all of the market for a given type of product or service. Such as the 'Big' Majors in Hollywood. Apple in the smart phone market.
Montage
A narrative device that compresses, or denotes passage of time. Usually used to inform the audience. Gives them information they need to know in order to understand what is to come. Possibly backstory, or something that happened off screen. Also used as 'previously on' in TV shows, or as the 'best bits' in a highlights package or as the 'sob story' in reality TV shows. All movie trailers are montages. Often overused, and audiences can become desensitise to them. Can be seen as 'lazy' storytelling.
Moral Panic (Stan Cohen)
A hyped overreaction from the media causing people to believe society’s values have collapsed. Put simply, a lot of fuss. Something (rock 'n' roll, communism, gun crime, etc.) Is perceived to be a threat to today's society. Consequently, the significance of the problem is blown out of proportion by the media, which provokes widespread hysteria. Stan Cohen refers to them as 'folk devils.'
Narrative
The correct subject terminology for 'story' which means an account of connected events.
A hyped overreaction from the media causing people to believe society’s values have collapsed. Put simply, a lot of fuss. Something (rock 'n' roll, communism, gun crime, etc.) Is perceived to be a threat to today's society. Consequently, the significance of the problem is blown out of proportion by the media, which provokes widespread hysteria. Stan Cohen refers to them as 'folk devils.'
Narrative
Narrowcasting
Gearing advertising to a niche market.
Negotiated Reading (Stuart Hall)
This position is a mixture of accepting and rejecting elements. Readers are acknowledging the dominant message, but are not willing to completely accept as it. The reader to a certain extent generally accepts the preferred meaning, but is simultaneously resisting or modifying it in a way which reflects their own experiences and interests.
New Media
Smart phone, internet (social networking, web 2.0), video games, personal music devices.
Niche Market
A small target audience with specific interests, for example, gardeners who watch gardening programmes.
Oppositional/Alternate (Stuart Hall)
A consumer understands the meaning, but due to individual circumstances, the audience’s situation has placed them in an opposing position in relation to the producers intended meaning, and although they understand the intended meaning they do not agree and ultimately reject it.
A consumer understands the meaning, but due to individual circumstances, the audience’s situation has placed them in an opposing position in relation to the producers intended meaning, and although they understand the intended meaning they do not agree and ultimately reject it.
Post Modernism
Postmodernist works are typically characterised by their frequent referencing of earlier works and their playing around with the conventions of their genre. Pulp fiction is an example of a postmodern work. Intertextuality, satire, parody etc.
Post Structuralism
Rejects the idea of a text having a single purpose or single meaning. The author's intended meaning is secondary to the meaning that the reader perceives. Every individual reader creates an individual meaning for a given text. The text has the meaning that the audience chooses to give it. This is referred to as the "destabilizing" or "decentering" of the author. Without an audience, a text has no meaning.
Stuart Hall (encoding/decoding) Blumler and Katz (uses and gratifications)
Preferred / Dominant Reading (Stuart Hall)
The way in which the creator of a text intends it to be read. This position is one where the consumer takes the actual meaning directly, and decodes it exactly the way it was encoded. They interpret the text exactly as intended producer intends them to..
Prosumer
Merging of the producers and the consumers
Red Tops or Tabloids
The Sun and Mirror, lowbrow papers full of soft news, gossip and opinion.
Shock Tactics
Shock tactics deliberately attempt to startle or offend audiences by subverting or violating social norms or expectations. Graphic imagery and blunt slogans are used to capture attention and create buzz, and to attract an audience to a certain brand or bring awareness to a certain health issue, or cause. It is often controversial or disturbing.
Skeptics
Those who worry that the effects of new media on society may be detrimental.
Stereotype
Oversimplified generalised, or exaggerated representation of a person or group.
"Stereotypes are a media shorthand" - Medhusrt (1995)
"Those with power stereotype over those with less power" - Dyer (1979)
"Stereotypes are a good thing and have an element of truth to them" - Perkins (1979)
Star Theory (Dyer)
Richard Dyer's star theory is the idea that icons and celebrities are manufactured by institutions for financial gain. He believes that stars are constructed to represent 'real people' experiencing real emotions. Stars are manufactured as a 'brand' or media product, and every action in the public domain is geared towards maintaining that brand.
Those who worry that the effects of new media on society may be detrimental.
Stereotype
Oversimplified generalised, or exaggerated representation of a person or group.
"Stereotypes are a media shorthand" - Medhusrt (1995)
"Those with power stereotype over those with less power" - Dyer (1979)
"Stereotypes are a good thing and have an element of truth to them" - Perkins (1979)
Star Theory (Dyer)
Richard Dyer's star theory is the idea that icons and celebrities are manufactured by institutions for financial gain. He believes that stars are constructed to represent 'real people' experiencing real emotions. Stars are manufactured as a 'brand' or media product, and every action in the public domain is geared towards maintaining that brand.
"A star is a constructed images, represented across a range of media and mediums."
Structuralism
Suggests we understand texts according to structures. An understanding of the ‘rules.’ Assumes that the meaning behind the text was put there by the author or producer. From their POV, it is already there and always was. The 'meaning' pre-exists and infers there is a dominant reading of how the text will be interpreted.
Levi Strauss (Binary opposites, Good/Evil, Man/Woman etc) Todorov (narrative structure, equilibrium/disequilibrium) Vladimir Propp (character archetypes) Barthes (Narrative and enigma Codes).
Synergy
The use of one product to make another more successful. Like the film? Buy the toothpaste! Common in large franchises such as Star Wars, The Hobbit, Marvel films, Doctor Who, The Simpsons and Harry Potter.
Unique Selling Point (USP)
A factor that differentiates a product from its competitors, such as the lowest cost, the highest quality or the first-ever product of its kind. Something to stand out from the crowd in a media saturated world. Something your competitors don't have.
User Generated Content
Due to technological convergence, audiences are no longer passive consumers of media. They can be considered 'prosumer's who are able to create their own content. Could include blogs, YouTube videos, parodies, memes, etc and often take advantage of intertextuality and popular culture references.
Uses and Gratifications (Blulmer & Katz)
An audience theory which suggests that, rather than passively absorbing media, audiences will seek out and respond to texts that meet their needs, and make active choices.
Personal Identity, Personal Relationship, Diversion, Surveillance.
Vertical Integration
When a company own several stages of production within the same industry. For example, a Hollywood company owning the means to control the production, distribution and exhibition of a film. This gives the company control and power, allows them to make economic savings and more profit, which lead to monopolies over an industry.
Viral Marketing
Advertising that relies on word-of-mouth to spread the news of a product, commonly using the internet. Examples include Deadpool, Cloverfield, District 9, Lost or Breaking Bad. Benefits are that it is usually FAST and FREE/CHEAP, and that most of the hard work is done by the Target Audience.
Young and Rubicam's
Marketing firm’s attempt to pigeon hole consumers. Seven Kinds of People.
Synergy
The use of one product to make another more successful. Like the film? Buy the toothpaste! Common in large franchises such as Star Wars, The Hobbit, Marvel films, Doctor Who, The Simpsons and Harry Potter.
Unique Selling Point (USP)
A factor that differentiates a product from its competitors, such as the lowest cost, the highest quality or the first-ever product of its kind. Something to stand out from the crowd in a media saturated world. Something your competitors don't have.
User Generated Content
Due to technological convergence, audiences are no longer passive consumers of media. They can be considered 'prosumer's who are able to create their own content. Could include blogs, YouTube videos, parodies, memes, etc and often take advantage of intertextuality and popular culture references.
Uses and Gratifications (Blulmer & Katz)
An audience theory which suggests that, rather than passively absorbing media, audiences will seek out and respond to texts that meet their needs, and make active choices.
Personal Identity, Personal Relationship, Diversion, Surveillance.
Vertical Integration
When a company own several stages of production within the same industry. For example, a Hollywood company owning the means to control the production, distribution and exhibition of a film. This gives the company control and power, allows them to make economic savings and more profit, which lead to monopolies over an industry.
Viral Marketing
Advertising that relies on word-of-mouth to spread the news of a product, commonly using the internet. Examples include Deadpool, Cloverfield, District 9, Lost or Breaking Bad. Benefits are that it is usually FAST and FREE/CHEAP, and that most of the hard work is done by the Target Audience.
Young and Rubicam's
Marketing firm’s attempt to pigeon hole consumers. Seven Kinds of People.
