1. Unit 1 GCSE Sociology Revision
Mass Media
Unit 1 GCSE Sociology Revision

2. Learning Aims To recap on the mass media key terms
To consider what exam questions may be asked in Fridays exam
To practice writing exam answers using template

3. Mass Media: what we looked at:
1. Introduction
2. Media Representations & Stereotypes
3. ‘The News’
4. The effects of the mass media on audiences

4. Key areas for the exam
The new media and their significance for an understanding of the role of the media in contemporary society
Media representations of age, social class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and disability
The processes of selection and presentation of the content of the news
The relationship between ownership and control of the mass media

5. Exam Questions:

6. Exam Questions:

7. FIRST FOCUS…..
Those means of communication which reach large numbers of people at the same time
What are the mass media?

8. Media Examples of media are…

9. The changing role of the Mass Media
Media saturated society (‘we spend our lives looking at screens’)
The Mass media has radically changed in recent years – it is charcterised by much greater choice and diversity

10. Exam Question: Explain how media technologies have changed since 1945
‘Old Media’
Changed radically since 1945 Refers to analogue or print based media – include newspapers and terrestrial television. In the past there were only 3 channels! Communication is a one way process Production was restricted to media professionals Very little consumer choice

11. Exam Question: Explain how media technologies have changed since 1945
New Media
Refers to digital technology
Interactive digital and screen based media
Much greater choice and diversity, e.g. more channels to watch
Convergence, e.g. using one devise to do lots of things!
Communication is two way process – blogging and citizen journalism (twitter and Facebook)

12. Exam Question: Describe public and private ownership of the media (10)
Public ownership refers to:
The BBC
Not for profit
Programmes should be high quality
For the British people
Funded by the licence fee

13. Exam Question: Describe public and private ownership of the media (10)
Private ownership refers to:
Run for profit
Make money through subscription charges/advertising
Companies pay for logos to appear at beginning and end of programmes
Commercial media companies such as Sky or ITV

14. Ownership and Control: The media giants
The concentration of media ownership refers to a process whereby progressively fewer individuals or organizations control an increasing share of the mass media
Fewer and fewer large companies increasingly own what we see, hear and read. These are known as conglomerates.

15. Does anybody recognise this man?
Rupert Murdoch

16. Who controls the media? Marxist approach (Conflict Theory)
Role of owners:
Direct control and audiences are manipulated by owners
Media content:
Capitalist ideology

17. Who controls the media? Pluralist approach Role of owners:
No direct control and wide range of competing interests
Media content:
Need for circulation and audience figures means content is what audiences – not owners – want

18. Key Term:
Media Representations – language and images used by the media to provide us with particular information. This affects the way we think and interact with others.
1)Under-representation
2)Misrepresentation (myths and stereotypes)
3)Changes in media representations

19. MEDIA REPRESENTATIONS
CLASS C
AGE A
MEDIA REPRESENTATIONS
GENDER
ETHNICITY G E
You could get an exam question on media representations for age (probably youth), gender (probably women), class or ethnicity.

20. Exam question: Describe how young people are represented in the newspaper
The mass media often create a stereotype of young people as a problem group in society
Newspapers often represent youthful misbehaviour in a stereotypical way and provide focus for media led moral panics.
This is historical – think about Stan Cohen and the Mods and Rockers in the 1960s

21. Moral Panics & Youth Culture
1. Young, violent working class males – football hooligans, muggers, vandals, joy riders, ‘hoodies’, knife crime, gangs
2. Wrong drugs used by wrong people at wrong places – e.g. Leah Betts
3. Sex, violence and blaming the media / popular music
Welfare cheats: e.g. single mothers
Islamic terrorism – ‘Islamaphobia’

22. Explain how the mass media may create moral panics
Exaggerated media reaction to a deviant group that is viewed as threatening to morals of society
Term coined by Stan Cohen
Followed exaggerated media coverage of mods & rockers in the 1960s. Media blew small scale scuffles between mods & rockers out of proportion by using headlines such as ‘Town under siege.’
Media can generate a public anxiety
Deviancy amplification
Presents a distorted view of the level of crime – distorted view creates public concern

23. MORAL PANIC Related pieces of crime and deviance are over reported &
given more prominence than
otherwise would have
Media presents a distorted
view of the level of crime
Distorted view creates
public concern
This keeps
the issue
high on the
public
agenda
MORAL PANIC
The police want something
done about the problem
Police records reinforce
the idea there’s more
crime & deviance
The police are more aware
or sensitive to the problem so
they discover more crime

24. "Territorial, hierarchical and incredibly violent, they are mostly composed of young boys,
mainly from dysfunctional homes," was how David Cameron described gangs in the
aftermath of the riots

25. How were young people portrayed during London riots in the summer?

26. Key Words for this question
Stereotypes
Moral Panic
Folk devils – London Riots
Scapegoats
Historical examples are Mods and Rockers
Modern examples are ‘Hoody & chavs’

27. Explain deviancy amplification in the media. [10]
Identify a deviant act by the media
Heavy over-reporting
Reporting suggests there is a lot of similar behaviour
Glamorising the deviant behaviour for some people
Response by other agencies of social control such as the police
Stan Cohen – Mods & rockers

28. MORAL PANIC/ DEVIANCY AMPLIFICATION
Mods & rockers started
separating out
Few groups of bored young
people started throwing
stones at each other
Clacton – small holiday resort
On East coast of England.
Easter Sunday 1964
Windows
broken, some
beach huts
wrecked – 2
unpleasant
days
MORAL PANIC/
DEVIANCY AMPLIFICATION
Next day – sensationalist
headlines in newspapers
Further disturbances –
Public outcry – Further
arrests
Media distorted what was
going on – encouraged other
young people to behave in
the same way.

29. Describe how ethnic minorities are represented in newspapers.
Agbetu: black people stereotyped into three categories: criminality, sport & entertainment
Underrepresented in the media
Media focus on gun & knife crime – made connections to ethnic minority communities
Media less vocal on how ethnic minorities are more likely to be victims of crime than white population
Threat to British values & way of life – immigration
Islamaphobia - terrorism

30. Does the media perpetuate stereotypes of gender?
Media often accused of portraying women in stereotypical ways as housewives, mothers, etc and men as the breadwinners.
Lobban – analysed children’s reading schemes and found that women and female characters were generally shown indoors doing domestic tasks, with little girls helping their mothers around the house. Boys were shown outdoors more, doing more active things like climbing trees, helping their dads repair the car, etc.
McRobbie – studied Jackie magazine and found it was preoccupied with romance and portrayed teenage girls as aiming to get a boy and keep him as their main aim in life rather than to be independent.
Women in adverts tend to be younger than men, less likely to appear in work settings. Etc.

31. Describe how women are represented in newspapers.
Stereotypical
Adverts – Iceland!
Domestic roles
The Sun – Page 3 girls
Women’s sport trivialised – focus on clothes & body rather than skills
Thatcher – newspaper reports on her hair & clothes
Women’s interests – marginalised
McRobbie & Jackie magazine – girls main focus is getting a boyfriend!
Cumberbatch & adverts – women twice as likely to be engaged in household activities

32. Discuss how editors choose which stories to put in the news.
Gatekeepers
Agenda setting
Profit motive
Advertisers
News diary
Financial costs
Time or space available
Type of newspaper – broadsheet or tabloid

33. Discuss whether the mass media are able to influence audiences.
Jamie Bulger & Child’s Play 2
Bandura & Bobo doll
Hypodermic syringe theory
Copycat violence
Voting – politics
Joy – studied effects of the introduction of TV in a small Canadian town. Two years later violent aggression among the children she had studied had increased by 160%.
A Belgian lorry driver carried out the brutal ‘copycat’ murder of a teenage girl, after first withdrawing to another room to put on his Scream costume. He told police that the murder had been premeditated and motivated by the movie.
Socialisation – TV influential on children as in early stages of primary socialisation
Gender socialisation & the media