1. MS1: Media Representations
AS Media Studies
MS1: Media Representations
and Responses
Please have your folders, paper and a pen out ready to start the session.

2. Deskwork Homework and Development
Can you all get out your Anchorage homework.
You should have completed task 1. (writing an appropriate headline ‘that suggests one of the following events’…)
Task 2 was on Moodle, if you didn’t look at the letter there are some copies on the desk in front of you.
Read the letter and complete task 2.
Once you have finished I will collect them in for checking – please make sure your NAME and BLOCK is on the top of the page.

3. Starter Activity
Quiz

4. Question 1.
How long is the MS1 exam?

5. Question 2
There will be 3 questions in the exam that you have to answer. What will these questions be about?

6. What does the construction of media texts mean?
Question 3.
What does the construction of media texts mean?
The production, distribution and exhibition of media texts.
The way an audience for a media text is targeted
The way the media put together texts for audiences.

7. Question 4. Which ones are media texts?
A newspaper
A film
A magazine
A radio show
A video game

8. Question 5. What is media saturation?
The way a media text is put together by producers.
The extent to which our experience of the world is dominated by the media.
The business of creating media texts.

9. Question 6. Which ones are media industries?
The BBC
Microsoft
Rockstar Games
20th Century Fox BT

10. Question 7. What do we mean when talking about selection in media texts?
The process of choosing what to include or leave out of a media text.
The way an audience for a media text is targeted.
The extent to which our experience of the world is dominated by the media.

11. Question 8 What are polysemic images?
Images that can be interpreted in different ways.
Images that have a caption or headline
Images that have been taken by a professional media producer.

12. Question 9 What is anchorage?
The production, distribution and exhibition of media texts.
The process of ‘fixing’ meaning in media texts.
The process of choosing what to include or leave out of a media text.

13. Audience positioning is...
Question 10
Audience positioning is...
Where audiences choose to sit in the cinema.
The way the media producers use camera shots or sound to make audiences view texts in a particular way.
The description of the audience for a particular media product.

14. Mark the answers using the mark scheme provided.
How did you do?
Swap answer sheets
Mark the answers using the mark scheme provided.
Anyone with less than 8/10 needs to learn key terms and look back through initial information in the booklet.

15. MS1: Representations and Responses
Introduction to Analysis

16. Introduction to Semiotic Analysis

17. To identify key terms used in semiotic analysis.
Learning outcomes
To identify key terms used in semiotic analysis.
To apply these key terms when analysing media texts.

18. Sign (symbol/icon/index) Codes (visual/technical/audio/ written)
Semiotics – Key Terms
Sign (symbol/icon/index)
Codes (visual/technical/audio/ written)
Denotation
Connotation

19. Semiotics – The Study of Signs
EVERYTHING is a sign.
Everything means something to us – we are able to interpret what signs mean because we learn them as we are socialised.
Signs tend to be culturally specific.
If we don’t know what something means it’s because we do not recognise the sign.
Simple example: how do you know that we’re in a classroom? What are the signs that suggest this?
Simple example: How do you know that we’re in a classroom? What are the signs that suggest this?

20. Look at this road sign. Do you recognise it
Look at this road sign. Do you recognise it? What do you think that it signifies? Why?
The Torch of Learning used to signify schools in the 1920s

21. Key Term - Sign
Sign – this is the word used to describe something that produces meaning. Can be separated into:
a signifier - the form which the sign takes; and
the signified - the concept it represents.

22. Signifier/Signified
Signifier
Signified?
A tree!
Signified: A tree

23. Semiotics Key Terms Task
Read the information you have been given about semiotic key terms.
Discuss the information in your groups and come up with at least 1 example that is different to the examples given. Become experts.
Use the handout to make notes on your key term and be prepared to explain it to other groups.
When you have swapped groups, use the handout to make notes on the key terms that others explain to you.
Jigsaw-type activity. All groups get a different key term. They read it, discuss it and develop their own examples. They are the ‘experts’ on this key term. Then change the groups so that there are different ‘experts’ in each group to explain their key term to the others. (See How2:Jigsaw without all the presentations at the end. They just complete the handout with the 4 areas on it).

24. Icon, Index or Symbol? Why?
Icon – resemblance to actual sheep

25. Icon, Index or Symbol? Why?
Symbol – culturally linked with love and romance

26. Icon, Index or Symbol? Why?
Index – footprints are directly linked to the fact that there has been a person about but we can’t see them.

27. All signs are culturally learnt.
Signs and Context
All signs are culturally learnt.
All signs have the potential to be polysemic and may mean different things in different contexts.

28. If so, what different meanings could it have?
What is it?
Is it polysemic?
If so, what different meanings could it have?
Table task – make notes on possible meanings – 5 minutes

29. What are its connotations? Is it polysemic?
1. Classic romance, 2. Goth/vampire, 3. tattoo with thorns, 4. skulls – death, Goth etc, 5. Lancashire, 6. England Rugby, 7. Politics, 8.Chocolate

30. What’s the connection to media studies?
Media texts use complex systems of signs – codes – to create meaning for the audience.
When we analyse texts we are examining these codes to see how the text is constructed.
We need to be familiar with the technical, visual, audio and written codes used by media texts.
It’s not enough to simply identify signs, we need to explain their meanings – their connotations.
It’s not enough to simply identify signs, we need to explain their meanings – their connotations.

31. Key Term - Connotation
Connotation - the meaning that the audience give to the sign according to its context and the cultural experiences of the audience.
We understand things around us (including media texts) because we are very skilled at interpreting the connotations of what we are seeing and hearing.

32. Analysis Task
In pairs or individually choose to analyse the poster for Winter’s Bone or Unknown. (page 8)
Make notes on the connotations of the signs. What do you interpret from the images/words?

33. Plenary
Choose 3 statements from the list to respond to and write on the paper provided.

34. Homework: Audiences for Advertising Reading
Read the information about Young & Rubicam’s audience categories on Moodle: There are 7 Kinds of People in the World.
Extension task
Take the Young & Rubicam questionnaire and find out which category you would be.
The website address is: