Glossary

Glossary

Anchorage - Fixing of meaning e.g. the copy text anchors (i.e. fixes to one spot) the meaning of an image

Media - The main means of mass communication

Media Text  - Any media product we wish to examine 

Banners – Typically found at the top or bottom of a print media text.

Broadsheet - Large format newspapers that report news in depth, often with a serious tone and higher level language. News is dominated by national and international events, politics, business, with less emphasis on celebrities and gossip. Examples: The Independent, The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph

Byline - A journalist's name at the beginning of a story.

Captions – Text below an image that describes the image or informs the audience who took the image.

Copy - Main text of a story.

Coverlines – Captions on a magazine front cover

Emotive Language – the use of language to generate specific emotional reactions in the target audience

Headlines – The text highlighting the main story being given priority by the producers of the print media text. Often designed to be eye-catching.

Inverted pyramid structure - Newspaper stories start with the main events. Then they give more details and eyewitness comments in short paragraphs. The paragraphs at the end of the story are less important than those at the beginning. This allows sub-editors to shorten stories by cutting paragraphs from the end.

Layout – How the print media text has been designed and formatted.

Masthead - The top section of a newspaper which gives the paper’s title, price and date

Sans Serif font – Font type which does not have lines perpendicular to the ends of letters e.g. Comic Sans – often seen as more contemporary. Think of Apple’s advertising. e.g. P E T

Serif font – Font type which does have lines perpendicular to the ends of letters e.g. Times New Roman – generally seen as more traditional or higher class.

Splash – The front page story

Sub-headings – Smaller, typically one line headlines for other stories.

Tabloid - Smaller newspapers aimed at a large audience. News is reported in less depth and emphasises human interest stories. The language level is lower, paragraphs and stories shorter, with more use of images. Content often includes more celebrities, media news and gossip. Examples: The Sun, The Mail, The Mirror, The Express

Text to image ratio – This involves considering how weighted the print media text is with regards to text and image – you need to ask yourself why the ratio exists.

Typography – The collective term when considering elements of print media relating to the style of the text such as the font, colour, serif, sans serif etc. 

Saturated Colour: The term hue refers to the color of the image itself, while saturation describes the intensity (purity) of that hue. When color is fully saturated, the color is considered in purest (truest) version. Primary colors red, blue and yellow are considered truest version color as they are fully saturated.

Media language: how the media through their forms, codes, conventions and techniques communicate meanings

Media representations: how the media portray events, issues, individuals and social groups

Media industries: how the media industries’ processes of production, distribution and circulation affect media forms and platforms

Media audiences: how media forms target, reach and address audiences, how audiences interpret and respond to them and how members of audiences become producers themselves.

Media product: refers to media texts, such as television programmes, newspapers, radio programmes etc., as well as to online, social and participatory media platforms

Intertextuality: refers to the way aspects of a particular media product relate to another and thus accrue additional significance.

Low key lighting - predominantly dull

high key lighting - predominantly bright

Analogous colours - groups of three colours that are next to each other on the colour wheel, sharing a common colour, with one being the dominant colour, which tends to be a primary or secondary colour, and a tertiary. Red, orange, and red-orange are examples. (harmonious).

Complimentary colours - Colours that stand out next to each other because of their great contrast.

Versimilitude - The appearance of being true or not. 

DECODING = understanding a media text.  

CODES can be visual (you can see them) or aural (you can hear them). Codes have symbolic value. For example in our society wearing a pair of glasses (glasses are the code) symbolises, or connotates, that you are clever. TV drama, magazines and videogames use these symbolic codes to generate character types and character archetypes.

Diegetic sound is any sound presented as originated from source within the film's world.

Non-diegetic sound is represented as coming from the a source outside story space.

Glossary - Refers to the construction in any medium (especially the mass media) of aspects of ‘reality’ such as people, places, objects, events, cultural identities and other abstract concepts. Such representations may be in speech or writing as well as still or moving pictures.

Allegory: A story, play, poem, picture, or other work in which the characters and events represent particular qualities or ideas that relate to morals, religion, or politics.

A stereotype may be defined as a popular belief about specific social/ethnic groups or types of individuals and it is broadly standardised or simplified conceptions of groups based on some prior assumptions.

Production - The making of a film; pre-production and funding; shoot (format); post-production (SFX).

Marketing - The process of raising awareness; targeting an audience; creating publicity through various methods. A distributor is responsible for marketing a film.

Exhibition - The way we view; getting the film to a paying audience. 

Cross Media Ownership is the ownership of multiple media businesses by a person or corporation. These businesses can include broadcast and cable television, film, radio, newspaper, magazine, book publishing, music, video games, and various online entities.

Horizontal integration: Walt Disney owns many studio entertainment, consumer product companies, and media networks.

Vertical integration:  Walt Disney plans, produces, advertises, and distributes all of its products on its own.

conglomerate - a large company composed of a number of smaller companies (subsidiaries) engaged in seemingly unrelated businesses.

media conglomerate - a company that owns large numbers of companies in various mass media such as television, radio, publishing, movies, and the Internet.

Circulation: the total number of copies of a magazine, newspaper, newsletter, or catalog that are distributed via direct mail or other channels. In terms of film it can relate to the amount of times somebody has been to see it. 

Synergy works when different elements within a media conglomerate promote (e.g. film studio, record label, video game division) create linked products (e.g. film, soundtrack, video game)

"public service broadcasting" refers to broadcasting intended for public benefit rather than to serve purely commercial interests.

Audience segmentation is a key activity within an audience analysis. It is the process of dividing a large audience into smaller groups of people - or segments - who have similar needs, values or characteristics.

Direct mode of address: The model looks directly at the audience, or the writing speaks to ‘you’.

Indirect mode of address: The model looks away, or the writing refers to ‘people’ or ‘the public’.

Formal mode of address: Using formal phrasing and terminology.

Informal mode of address: Using more conversational language and slang.

Red-top definition: a tabloid newspaper characterized by sensationalism 

Sensationalism: Sensationalism is a type of editorial bias in mass media in which events and topics in news stories and pieces are overhyped to present biased impressions on events, which may cause a manipulation to the truth of a story.

Digitally convergent media: Video games consoles are an excellent example of a digitally convergent device, you can not only play games but access social media, surf the internet, stream films and TV content and upload content into cloud based servers. Cross-media content helps maximise profits and also improve reach to new customers.

Drama:  What is TV drama? TV drama is a broad genre. At its simplest, it is fictionalised action in narrative form.

Long form TV drama: Long Form Drama is a term coined to describe the recent shift of interest towards television series of high quality that many consider to have replaced the cinema as a locus of serious adult entertainment. Unfolding over multiple episodes, hours, and even years, these TV shows are seen to provide a content, often dark and difficult, and an innovative style that strain against the conventions of cinema as well as network television.

Media convention:  A code is a system of signs which can be decoded to create meaning.In media texts, we look at a range of different signs that can be loosely grouped into the following:technical codes - all to do with the way a text is technically constructed - camera angles, framing, typography etc. verbal codes ...

A code is a system of signs which can be decoded to create meaning.

In media texts, we look at a range of different signs that can be loosely grouped into the following:

•technical codes – all to do with the way a text is technically constructed – camera angles, framing, typography etc

•verbal codes – everything to do with language -either written or spoken

•symbolic codes – codes that can be decoded on a mainly connotational level

verbal codes ..

Genre: A genre is basically the category of any type of art or literature, for example categories of movie would be comedy, horror, thriller etc.

Genre Hybridity Some media texts are hybrid genres, which means they share the conventions of more than one genre. For example Dr. Who is a sci-fi action-adventure drama and Strictly Come Dancing is a talent, reality and entertainment show.

verbal codes ...

Synopsis  -   A brief summary of the major points of a written work

A semantic code - symbolic. for example a red rode connotes: love, commitment, england, tango dancing, war of roses, jeremy corbyn.

Textual analysis/codal analysis - Is a systematic methodology for analysing moving image and print media text.