Here are some exam questions and clips for you to practise with. Feel free to send them through to me for marking.
If you do, I will record your marks and add them to your overall score for the year. This means that if you do well in these practises, you have the opportunity to increase your average with better grades.
QUESTION 1: Representation Practise
- watch 4 times through, take notes for 2 mins between each viewing
- 45 minutes for writing the essay
EXPLAIN HOW MEANING IS CREATED IN THE EXTRACT, USING THE 4 TECHNICAL AREAS;
East Enders (UK TV Drama)
E.R. (US TV Drama)
Question 2: Audiences & Institutions
1. Discuss the importance of convergence for institutions. Refer to media areas you have studied.
2. "Audiences are not concerned with where media texts come from." To what extent do you agree with this?
3. In relation to the media area you have studied, discuss the way that audience consumption had changed over time.
4. To what extent is digital distribution vital to the media area you have studied?
5. How do media institutions target national and local audiences in the media area you have studied?
6. How important are media ownership and funding in understanding contemporary media practise? Refer to the media area you have studied.
7. How far have audiences adapted to the changes in the media technologies in recent years? Refer to media areas you have studied.
8. How has cross-media-convergence and synergy played a role in the success of media in the area you have studied?
Audience Research. Please use the links below and answer the questions. Make a blog post under the AUDIENCE label and give it the heading; 'Audience Research'
Questions; 1. How many of the world's population are currently connected to the internet? (slide 6) 2. How many of the world's population are active social media users? (slide 6) 3. What are the top 5 social media sites used globally? (slide 10) 4. What two age-groups have the largest contingent of social media users? (slide 12) 5. What percentage of NZ's population are connected to the internet and what percentage have social media? (slide 15) 6. What are the top 3 devices used to consume media in NZ? (slide 18) 7. How many hours a day are NZ's watching/ streaming online TV services? (slide 19) 8. What percentage of internet users in NZ swatch videos online and what percentage stream content via the internet? (slide 28) 9. What are NZ's top 5 social media sites? (slide 33)
1. Who are considered 'i-gens' (page 3 ) 2. In what ways are i-gens connected and using digital technology? (pg 4) 3. How would you describe the relationship with i-gens with the content of the media they are consuming? (Summarise page 5) 4. In what way does social media play a part in influencing i-gens activity in whether they watch a film or not? (p7) 5. List the emotional motivations that drive i-gens to watch movies at the cinemas and what in general do they like about it? (p8 & 10) 6. Comment on why i-gens opt to watch movies online at home (p 9) 7. What do the i-gens say is negative about the cinema experience? (p11) 8. Use page 13 to write a few sentences about how i-gens should be marketed to if you are trying to get them to watch your film 9. Use pages 14 - 19 to write a few points about the way i-gens prefer to engage with media and what they want out of a media consumption experience
Research audience consumption trends in the following link. Make some notes for your essay on what audience attendance is like in 2022 at cinemas in USA.
Have a look at the next article and make some notes on what they say has kept movie theatres afloat this year... who produced them? How does this information fit in what we believe about the power the Big 5 have in the film industry...
Here is the RECAP for theorists. I want you to write IN YOUR OWN WORDS, a paragraph explaining each of the theories below;
1. David Gauntlett's identity theory
2. Shirky's 'End of Audience' theory
3. Stuart Hall's 'Reception Theory'
Below are some of the resources we used for each theory...
1. David Gauntlett
This theory is simple and a great one to use in your REPRESENTATION essay or in a an essay about ownership, thinking about the older structures of corporations who would have clearer pathways of power to creating representations of different groups in society. The thinking about old media VS. new media, a media where now, many people can represent themselves, is an interesting one to think about and a great one to mention in your essays!
Audience behaviour has changed due to the internet and the ability for audiences to create their own content at home thanks to the lower cost of technology. This new audience doesn’t just consume media, but also produces it – creating the term ‘prosumer’.
Amateur content made this way has different values to professional media producers, in that it promotes a connection between other amateur producers – they both deeply care about the products they make and can help them work together.
When they work together in this way, audiences can make more content than producers – Wikipedia is a good example of this.
What is the advanced version?
In the ‘old’ media, centralised producers addressed atomised consumers; in the ‘new’ media, every consumer is now a producer. Traditional media producers would ‘filter then publish’; as many ‘new’ media producers are not employees, they ‘publish then filter’.
These amateur producers have different motivations to those of professionals – they value autonomy, competence, membership and generosity. User-generated content creates emotional connection between people who care about something. This can generate a cognitive surplus – for example, Wikipedia can aggregate people’s free time and talent to produce value that no traditional medium could match.
‘The Audience’ as a mass of people with predictable behaviour is gone. Now, behaviour is variable across different sites, with some of the audience creating content, some synthesising content and some consuming content. The ‘old’ media created a mass audience. The ‘new’ media provide a platform for people to provide value for each other.
Reception theory as developed by Stuart Hall asserts that media texts are encoded and decoded. The producer encodes messages and values into their media which are then decoded by the audience. However, different audience members will decode the media in different ways and possibly not in the way the producer originally intended.
Stuart Hall states that audience members adopt one of the following three positions when they decode the text:
Dominant, or Preferred Reading - how the producer wants the audience to view the media text. Audience members will take this position if the messages are clear and if the audience member is the same age and culture; if it has an easy to follow narrative and if it deals with themes that are relevant to the audience.
Oppositional Reading - when the audience rejects the preferred reading, and creates their own meaning for the text. This can happen if the media contains controversial themes that the audience member disagrees with. It can also arise when the media has a complex narrative structure perhaps not dealing with themes in modern society. Oppositional reading can also occur if the audience member has different beliefs or is of a different age or a different culture.
Negotiated Reading - a compromise between the dominant and oppositional readings, where the audience accepts parts of the producer's views, but has their own views on parts as well. This can occur if there is a combination of some of the above e.g. audience member likes the media, is of the same age as you and understands some of the messages, but the narrative is complex and this inhibits full understanding.
Many factors could affect whether the audience take the dominant, oppositional or negotiated reading.
Read the following infographic and make notes for your exam based on audience trends And also how technology developments are impacting audience consumption.
NZ's technology use is also an important area to understand. Grab some stats and data from this study based on NZ examples for essays on technology and also audience trends. How companies are choosing to reach audiences is important and based on how connected to technology people are.
