Representation in Media.

Individual people are often represented badly in the media depending on the situation it is and how much power they have. A good example is the football managers, if he is in the wrong then he is normally slandered in the most ways possible.

As you can see from the source to the left, the article about football is large on the front page, as apposed to being on the back or maybe further into the paper.




Social groups vary on how they are represented mostly on films and soap operas. If represented badly then it can then reflect on those groups. For example the Democrats could be represented badly on the news on television with accusations that they haven't made, when they deny these it normally conspires in argument and debate.

Social issues are normally slipped into soap operas to result in entertainment, things like racism, sexism or violence are normally used. For example, in Eastenders there was conflict between a character named 'Denise' and a character named 'Phil' debating on whether he was racist towards her, and this lasted at least 4 episodes.




Places are normally represented in textual media and is most of the time true they depict what the area is like and how most of us think of it. For example, Croydon has been seen badly due to the riots on the 8th August 2011, this has now lead to Croydon not receiving as much funds as it would normally.



Stereotypes often consist of races, cultures, sexuality, or sub-culture. It is normally shown in soaps and puts an image into all of our heads of what the rest of 'them' are like as well. For example, in Eastenders the character named 'Christian' is a homosexual, he acts feminine at times and is muscle bound. This gives us an image of what homosexuals are like unless you do know one of course, but this apples to what country you're from, what music you like or how you live your life.

Meaning Created through Techniques

Cropping is used to sharpen clips if they are too long and make them flow thoroughly. This helps the audience feel as if they was watching a realistic film. For example, if there was a few seconds at the end of a two way conversion for every time someone spoke, it would seem really artificial.

Sizing is important if you are making a particular type of audio visual content, the size will depend on what is is you are doing. For example, a film will be around 1hour 30minutes whilst a documentary will be around 30-45minutes. You get the sizing wrong you might end up putting in too much information or sometimes not enough.

Camera angles can be tricky if done wrong, when you create a piece of audio visual the camera angles and shots are important to give the right feel to the type of video you're making. For example, if you had a close up shot in a car chase would prove useless unless followed up by a tracking shot, because you wouldn't know what was going on.




One of the most important elements to a drama or a film is the theme music without this, the code is sometimes not understood. For example, if a character was to walk into a bar without any music it would be hard to distinguish what the deal is with him/her, but if evil, eerie music plays it tells us that this character is bad.


Captions are used to add another message to usually pictures, normally in newspapers you will find added information underneath telling you more about whatever is going on. For example, if there was a picture of just a boy, the captions could say "Boy killed at age thirteen".

Font  helps distinguish the way you mentally read a passage of text. For example, 'The Sun' has quite bold rounded text for a more eye-catching look but 'The Times' has quite formal text for quite sophisticated people.





Stars can prove to be viable in certain pieces, mostly due to the fact that some actors are especially good at playing certain roles. For example, Jason Statham is always playing a killer, because his acting abilities and appearances are suited to the role.

Meaning Created in Media pt.2

Connotation helps a piece of media become more intellectual because it gives a word or phrase a back meaning that you have to think about for example, a cross is a symbol of a religion. Connotation relates to anything that may be associated with the word or phrase for example, an implied judgement feelings or value.

Denotation does the opposite to what a connotation does, it literally gives you what you're looking for or at. It sometimes helps if the audience isn't capable of understanding the connotation. For example, a simple cartoon hearts denotation is an actual heart, as the connotation is love and affection.    








Signification sets its purpose to help the audience know certain things without them literally being in sight,  to signify something with another action. For example, if a character is having morning sickness, it suggests that she is pregnant.










Iconography is used to gives characters iconic attributes and helps the audience figure out what type of person or place it is. For example, in the old westerns, if someone rode in on a black horse wearing all black, it is trying to tell us that this type of person is bad. 








Anchorage is used in media to attach meaning to something through either the juxtaposition of two images which construct a meaning or the matching of words to images.
For example in advertising, an image alone is polysemic- open to a range of interpretations. To clarify what the image means and so to make the image relevant to the purpose of the advert, text can be added.

Content For Print

Hard news is news that is more serious for example, politcs is hard news.

soft news is news that is not as serious for example, new born puppies.

The Gutter, also known as an alley is the small space between the articles to let binding take place.

Camera angles

When shooting a short film or an extended piece of media you have a vast majority of shots to choose from.

Firstly you have the close-ups. Close-ups are used to condense a person or object into a magnifying shot drawing attention to it. Close-ups range differently, you can also use extreme close-ups which enhances the view on the object by great proportions.

Here is an example of a close up.

POV means point of view, so when you have a POV shot, you have the camera acting as a persons view. Normally you would have something called a head cam on someones head and then he/she would walk around as you see everything that they would see. It is a great way of putting the audience into the actor/actresses shoes. Here is a photo from a T.V. show called 'Peep Show' they talk to camera as they would the actor, making it look like he is talking to the audience.

Like the close-up there are a few different shots linked in with distance. There is the medium shot which covers the head to shoulders area and and a long shot covers the whole body and of course the extreme long shot is just further than a normal long shot.

The cutaway shot shot is when you purposely cut from the subject at matter for a short period of time to reveal something else concerning the subject. Similar to the 'cutaway', the cut-in shot normally cuts to close up of an object of importance, normally it is something a character is holding or something they don't know about.



A panning shot is when the camera rotates normally on a tri-pod) left to right or vies versa. The tilt shot is like the panning shot but works vertically.

A 'dolly shot' is often referred to as a tracking shot, it consists of the camera moving along a tack of some fashion, it then stays focused on a particular subject whether it be living thing or a vehicle.
To the right is picture of tracking shot in progress, you can see the track they use and how much it takes to set up this shot.

A crane shot is similar to the dolly shot as it is on a large pivoting device, it is used to swoop down onto a certain subject normally from a higher view.

Ensemble shots are simply shots of a group of 3-6 people often used to show a hierarchy in the group if a character is backed up with other characters behind her/him.

Media Terms

Cultural Changes (print)

The newspaper has changed dramatically over the last few years, firstly our culture affects it increasingly over time. For example, when newspapers and magazines used to publish their issues they used to be really different, things like articles never used to be about homosexuality but as it is a more modern lifestyle people don't feel compelled to hide it. So this issue is often discussed in the newspapers when they stretch the lifestyle of being a homosexual, such things as marriage or adoption become a big issue that probably wouldn't have been discussed many years ago.

Racism is also something we did not think needed to be discussed years ago. This became more of an issue when our country became more of a multi-cultural society. We often press the issue that racism is portrayed as an extreme crime, and that most crimes are linked into racism. There is even a BBC Asian network for the radio, just as there is sections devoted to people with different cultures in the newspapers/magazines. 

There was also not as much talk of Islam, as there was only talk of Anglo Saxon protestants. But as a post 9/11 society we naturally have focused more attention onto the Islamic society just as we did with homosexuals, by we have made an issue with whatever thing has an impact on our lifestyles for example, building another mosque in a christian neighbourhood.

Audience needs and lifestyles (soaps)

">

Economic Reasons (soaps)

Reasons for film directors and producers to cut back would be the recent recession causes them to have a lower budget. This dramatically effects the quality and production value of the soap.


Having a low budget causes the shows to not broadcast live because there is too much production work involved to do there and then. Films budgets are normally a lot higher than soaps due to the income that films make. For example 'Spiderman 3' cost around 258 million to make in 2007, when an average soap opera would of spent around 30 million. This shows for a fact how much films have to spend money on stunts and various action scenes, whilst soaps often need to give the impression of something happening rather than actually show it. Eastenders is only aloud to have 16 speaking characters per episode to remain within their budget. All together  the BBC spent around 102 million on six T.V. soaps. Eastenders got an bonus of 500,000 pounds for the live episodes they did.


The actors/actresses of Coronation Street are said to be getting pay cuts. This is all to do with the show not making enough money and the recession combined to make the shows struggle a lot. Some Coronation street characters have had to been cut from the show recently due to                                        budget cuts.

Advances in technology (print)

Offset printing is a popular printing style which the image that is inked is transferred from a plate to a sheet made of rubber, then to the printing surface. When combined with the lithographic procedure, the offset technique employs a smooth flat image carrier on which the image obtains ink from the rollers they used, while the non-printing area attracts a water-based film, keeping the non-printing areas free of ink. This technique was used since 1875 and was proved most useful and efficient










There was many types of printing after that such as mimeograph, screen printing, laser printing and thermal printing. but whats been most successful recently has been the digital press. Digital printing is printing from a digital based source image directly to a selection of media. Digital printing has a down side, it has a higher cost per page than basic offset printing but this price is usually offset by the saving in cancelling out all the technical steps between to make printing plates.








Now something is slowly taking over, it is newspaper articles on the internet published by the companies running the papers. These individual websites are proving to be more efficient to produce and easier for their audiences to view. This has the same effect that the material paper has, but is easier to use. There is full articles and there are still adverts on the sides and occasionally on banners in the middle.  

Audience needs and lifestyles (print)

Before the internet people only used to get the regular newspaper occasionally if they were out or they would have to go out specifically for it. This seemed liked the most efficient way to do things and seemed like we didn't need to change it. Then Tim B L came along and invented the internet, this had changed things in following years, things like books, movies, pictures and in fact newspapers.


As people started to adapt to computers it didn't seem necessary to buy as many material goods, this affected many industries especially the newspapers. When people discovered that they could read newspapers online, less issues were sold of each newspapers. So the newspapers did something smart, they made it so you had to pay a subscription fee monthly to view their paper.


Although this didn't appeal to some people because they didn't always want to read every paper, so they thought that they weren't getting their moneys worth. It was only newspapers like the Metro that earnt their money from the advertisements that gave their newspaper away for free at train stations and public places, they soon started giving their newspapers away online for free as well because you can have advertisements on the side and on the top or have banners across half way down the page.

People then started to use smart phones and tablets to access the internet and use applications of their favourite websites. The newspapers then caught on and offered the same deals for the access to view their newspaper via smart phone or tablet. This was extremely useful because it combined the freedom to take the newspaper anywhere and not having to actually go to a hop and buy it.   

Cultural Changes in content(soaps)

In the few starting episodes of Coronation Street there were mostly only white people on set because Britain wasn't that much of a multi-cultural society. Money was tough at this time, most people were working class. The main age group was middle age men/women, because that's who it was aimed at. How women were treated was different because they were treated at second class citizens, it were aimed at mostly men of working class which is seen as sexism now. The only issue really was arguments between men and women and married life.

In newer episodes there were more people coming out and being gay, not caring what people thought of them and be equals. Although they were viewed as quite immature and clean, though this was not always true. There was quite a lot of people actually listening the show passively watching it, whilst most people actively watch it all depending on what they think about the show.

In the newest episodes there are more people from different cultures and different sexualities compared to the first episodes because before there wasn't as many foreign people in our country to act. The fact that Coronation Street is more multi-cultural it seems more realistic and true to England. With more diverse people in the show it would relate to more viewers. Now we would get younger viewers due to the fact that there are young actors in the show, so that more people have a section that they will seem familiar to their life.

Economic Reasons, (print)

There are many ways in which the newspapers have changed due to the economy. Firstly, there is a major rise in price for ink, this then has a major effect on the prices of the actual newspaper. For example, in the 1980s the paper was said to be around 20p but now it is recently been priced at 50p, that's over double! This is mainly because it costs more for the companies to print of each issue.

 There are also high rises in advertisements over the past few years, this would also have an impact on how much the newspaper charges, depending on their view of the situation. For example, 'The Sun' charges for their issues of the newspaper this is their main source of money, although there is some newspapers like, 'The Metro' that offer the newspaper for free for people that are in a hurry on the trains, but wait! how do they make their money? They make all their money solely on advertising.