Representation and Identities and the Media
Henry Jenkins - Participatory Culture
Henry Jenkins – genre breaks rules and commonly hybridizes
Taijfel and Turner – intergroup discrimination, useful for studying Identities and the Media and the idea of a collective group.
Angela McRobbie – post feminist icon theory suggesting female character are determined, strong, independent and in control but also utilize their sexuality e.g. Lara Croft, Lady Gaga…
Laura Mulvey – male gaze/female gaze. Although Mulvey herself has rejected the male gaze theory in recent years there are still strong arguments suggesting the female form is still objectified in a range of media. The female subverts the theory suggesting male performers/actors are objectified.
Tessa Perkins – stereotyping has elements of truth and are based on repeated representations, both in society and within the media. "Stereotypes are a good thing and have an element of truth to them".
Andy Medhurst – stereotyping is shorthand for identification. "Stereotypes are a media shorthand"
Richard Dyer - Stereotype legitimize inequality by marginalizing certain individuals and social groups. "Media institutions with power make stereotypes of those will less power"
Stuart Hall – oppositional, negotiated and dominant reading of representations.
Levi-Strauss - binary oppositions
David Buckingham – we have increasing fragmented identities and can no longer be said to be part of a collective identity.
David Gauntlett – “identity is complicated, everyone’s got one”. Pluralism but within a hegemonic framework.
Carol Clover – last girl theory: useful if analysing representation in horror films but mainly the sub genre of slasher horror.
Baudrillard – representations are hyper real, often copies of copies and have lost meaning as a result.
Judith Butler – queer theory. Gender is not the result of nature but is socially constructed through media and culture. Queer theory challenges the assumption that there is a binary divide between gay and heterosexual suggesting in mainstream media heterosexuality is represented as normal.
Zygmunt Bauman – identity as a reflection of society is problematic, there are too many variables.
Erving Goffman – studying the nature of social interaction e.g. notions of ‘performance’ reflecting a certain identity.
Anthony Giddens – self-reflexivity and developing own biographical narratives. Useful for looking at Facebook and studying how identity is represented in digital social media.
Sherry Turkle - Digital Dystopian. argues that replacing face-to-face communication with smartphones is diminishing people’s capacity for empathy. Argues that humans are at a “robotic moment” in history.
Henry Jenkins – genre breaks rules and commonly hybridizes
Taijfel and Turner – intergroup discrimination, useful for studying Identities and the Media and the idea of a collective group.
Angela McRobbie – post feminist icon theory suggesting female character are determined, strong, independent and in control but also utilize their sexuality e.g. Lara Croft, Lady Gaga…
Laura Mulvey – male gaze/female gaze. Although Mulvey herself has rejected the male gaze theory in recent years there are still strong arguments suggesting the female form is still objectified in a range of media. The female subverts the theory suggesting male performers/actors are objectified.
Tessa Perkins – stereotyping has elements of truth and are based on repeated representations, both in society and within the media. "Stereotypes are a good thing and have an element of truth to them".
Andy Medhurst – stereotyping is shorthand for identification. "Stereotypes are a media shorthand"
Richard Dyer - Stereotype legitimize inequality by marginalizing certain individuals and social groups. "Media institutions with power make stereotypes of those will less power"
Stuart Hall – oppositional, negotiated and dominant reading of representations.
Levi-Strauss - binary oppositions
David Buckingham – we have increasing fragmented identities and can no longer be said to be part of a collective identity.
David Gauntlett – “identity is complicated, everyone’s got one”. Pluralism but within a hegemonic framework.
Carol Clover – last girl theory: useful if analysing representation in horror films but mainly the sub genre of slasher horror.
Baudrillard – representations are hyper real, often copies of copies and have lost meaning as a result.
Judith Butler – queer theory. Gender is not the result of nature but is socially constructed through media and culture. Queer theory challenges the assumption that there is a binary divide between gay and heterosexual suggesting in mainstream media heterosexuality is represented as normal.
Zygmunt Bauman – identity as a reflection of society is problematic, there are too many variables.
Erving Goffman – studying the nature of social interaction e.g. notions of ‘performance’ reflecting a certain identity.
Anthony Giddens – self-reflexivity and developing own biographical narratives. Useful for looking at Facebook and studying how identity is represented in digital social media.
Sherry Turkle - Digital Dystopian. argues that replacing face-to-face communication with smartphones is diminishing people’s capacity for empathy. Argues that humans are at a “robotic moment” in history.
Audience
Blumler and Katz – Uses and Gratifications theory, useful for studying the range of different pleasures active audience gain from media texts i.e. Diversion (escapism), Personal Relationships (talking about or sharing media with others e.g. on social networks), Personal Identity (with media performers) and Surveillance (information on the world).
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – 5 levels of a pyramid. From Psychology can be mapped onto other media: Physical Needs, Safety Needs, Communal Needs, Esteem Needs, Self-Actualization.
Katz and Larzasfeld – Two Step Flow: opinion leaders take on a belief and ideology and develop or discuss its content.
Frankfurt School - Passive consumption/Hypodermic model. Old fashioned but still relevant – vulnerable audiences will always be passively affected by media texts.
David Gauntlett – Producer as Consumer (Prosumer): thanks to digital media, many consumers of media as also producers e.g. YouTube as cultural phenomenon.
Stanley Cohen/Martin Barker – Moral Panics in the media e.g. aggressive Daily Mail headlines often with the intention of marginalizing a social group. “Moral panics - a condition, episode, person or group of persons [who] become defined as a threat to societal values and interests. There are five stages of moral panic; concern, hostility, consensus, disproportionality and volatility (moral panic becomes volatile and public demand action to stop the moral panic)."
Stuart Hall – audience positioning and dominant/negotiated/oppositional readings. Audiences can be positioned into a shared dominant reading in a number of ways e.g. by technical composition and mise-en-scene.
Institutional Theory Including New Technologies
Henry Jenkins – video game effects research suggests instead of audiences being passive they are active and engaged in multiple communications.
David Gauntlett – the prosumer creates a world of independent media producers.
Andrew Keen – the prosumer creates a world of ‘amateurs’.
Daniel Chandler – online genre proliferation: new media has increasingly led to the questioning of the boundaries and conventions of genre as traditionally studied.
Michael Wesch – YouTube as cultural phenomenon: here the value of YouTube is being acknowledged with the availability and access to resources it provides being taken for granted despite it origination in recent history, 2006.
Charlie Brooker – blurred boundaries, representation of ‘the real’. Brooker is suggesting that many texts and their availability on a number of interactive platforms has made people question what is real as what is not.
Dan Gillmor – makes key points about the relationship between technology and ‘We Media’
Stuart Price – critical of global media and ownership
Noam Chomsky – Marxist readings on media ownership. Media aim is to make money. This affects their news values, and ideology. Can lead to bias.
Nick Lacey – on synergy, ownership and institution referencing the concepts of synergy and convergence as crucial to modern media.