Codes and Conventions

Sam Shaw AS Media Course

Semiotics• Semiotics is the concept that everything used (in a magazine for example)

has a reason for being that specific way (for example a Female based magazine being Pink or a cookery book having a kitchen background).

• These are used in all magazines to subliminally attract the potential buyer of the magazine to actually purchase the mag... one way semiotics is demonstrated is with the "Male Gaze" theory produced by Laura Mulvey.

• The Male Gaze is the theory that women are very effective at maintaining the concentration and focus of heterosexual men due to the sexual desire of the men acting upon the women, thus subliminally attracting the men to the films the women played in. This theory is detailed on the following slide.

Feminism• Over time, views of women in the media have dramatically

changed as in this day and age we see respected female musicians get the gratitude they deserve, however going back 50 years and women were often indirectly scrutinised by male publishers of music magazines, whereas musicians like Adele are commended on their vocal ability and lyrical genius, 50 years ago in comparative to Adele, Marianne Faithful was often compared to cute animals and not given any graduation as a musician in her own right.

• This is just one of many examples of how feminism has altered the view society has on women and how women have used this to their advantage to gain their rightful honour musically.

Moral Panic• Moral Panic is an instance of public anxiety or alarm in response to a problem regarded as

threatening the moral standards of society. for example after the events of September 11th, a fear of middle-eastern people developed known informally as "Islamaphobia".

• This resulted in may middle-eastern people being discriminated against due to their ethnicity and religious preference, on the basis that is was a middle-eastern organisation (Al-Qaeda) who orchestrated, governed, and conducted the attacks. This resulted in the moral constituency being damaged severely, some may say the damage done will never heal.

• Another example of Moral Panic is the supposed affiliation between homosexuals and HIV/AIDS where there is a terrible stigmatism that all gay people have the disease and it was "A curse sent from god for being gay" and the "Gay Plague" which of course is completely incorrect and an outrageous allegation, including asylum seekers the list of stigmatisms towards certain groups of people which causes a public distress grows by the day. This process can also be referred to as "Folk Devil".

Moral Panic• Stanley Cohen (Sociologist) actually observed that the medias impact

upon events through their "Folk Devil" approach to events only ever intensified them and often the media would lie in attempts to sell more papers, however they would indirectly influence the events to follow, often negatively.

• For example in 1972 found that minor fights between Mods and Rockers in beach-side resorts were very much sensationalised by the media.

• One headline was “Wild ones invade seaside town – 97 arrests”. In fact there were only 24 arrests.

• Cohen found that the media reporting led to increased policing which actually intensified the problem.

• More recently moral panics and consequent amplification have occurred about raves, football hooligans, girl gangs and terrorist threats.

Ideology

• The use of ideology is almost semiotic-like in the sense that photos are taken in a specific way to subliminally promote certain themes about a place.

For example the photo above was taken by a school clearly trying to promote the technological side of education and showing that their computer facilitates are of a high standard and superior to other schools, you can see this from the photo, it does not have to say it what so ever, you can quite simply see the ideological influence of the image.

• On the contrary, the image above was taken to promote a more traditional approach to education which would appeal to parents wanting to chose a successful school for their child(ren). But once again, you need not read this, you get it all from the image.

Uses and Gratification Theory• The theory suggests that people use certain media forms to

satisfy their needs, Blumler and Katz believed that the audiences consume the media for different needs and different ways, and the audience rely on the media to provide this information. People use the media for these reasons;

• To ESCAPE• To be INFORMED and EDUCATED• To IDENTIFY with the characters• To be ENTERTAINED• To INTERACT