key media concepts:

• Audiences:
  Mass media organisations exist to attract audiences and make money. We need to consider the way the audience interprets a text, this may depend upon race, gender, age or the class of the individual. 
  Another factor is the context in which the individual consumes the text (e.g. at home or school). Media industries may construct texts, control their circulation and target certain groups but the audience also constructs the text as they take their own meanings and control their own consumption.
• Representation:
  When we look at media texts we will consider the way in which individuals, groups and ideas are presented by the mass media.  Attitudes and beliefs might be reinforced or challenged by representations.  The mass media have a powerful influence on the way a society thinks about particular groups or issues because they present over and over again certain images and assumptions while excluding others.
• Ideology:
  An ideology is an often unconscious set of ideas, which influence the way we think about the world.  We often describe them as common sense ideas that make life workable but this should not disguise their ideological function: the formation of limits on ideas.  When we look at texts we will consider the dominant ideologies that are conveyed and identify where a dominant ideology is being challenged.
• Institutions:
  Institutions that create media texts must be considered.  A film produced by Warner Brothers will have different opportunities and resources to a small film company.  A local newspaper will have a different focus to a national newspaper.  It is important to consider the social, political and cultural context in which the organisation operates.

Forms and Conventions:

• Language:
  When we deconstruct a text we look at the language: the codes and conventions through which the various media texts convey their meaning.
• Narrative:
  Different media texts tell stories in different ways.  The study of narrative is concerned with how the story gets told.  Who is telling the story, to whom, for what reason and with what techniques?  We will be looking at patterns of narrative.
• Genre:
  The concept of genre is concerned with an audience’s expectations and understanding of the construction, style and content of a particular media text.