Uses & Gratifications Theory - Audience are active individuals rather than passive ones. They will select what they watch, will consume in different ways and believe 

different things. (Katz and Blumler

The Hypodermic Needle Model - Suggests that people just take in media passively (believing everything)

Gerbner - Cultivation Theory. People who watch a lot of TV over estimate the amount of crime in the real world (Mean World Syndrome). One text has little effect whilst when the media show the same thing again and again it has a large effect. 

Two-Step Flow Theory - Being influenced by opinion leaders

Reception Theory - Based on Stuart Halls encoding/decoding theory. The text is encoded by the producer and decoded by the reader. There may be differences between two readings of a text based on different audiences.

Saussure (1983) - "Audience can look at a media text from a syntactic point of view, just describing what they see, or from a representational or symbolic point of view where the attribute meaning to what they see"

Barthes (1967)  - An audience's understanding of media texts comes from their understanding and knowledge of frequently told myths or stories. He argues that the organisation of signs encodes particular messages and ideologies

Stuart Hall - Argued that meaning is not fixed by the producer, and the audience is not passive, gave us different readings, the preferred reading is where the audience reads it the way you wanted them to.

David Buckingham – “media do not just offer us a transparent ‘window on the world’ but a mediated version of the world. They don’t just present reality, they re-present it”

- “Identity is complicated/complex.”

- "A focus on identity requires us to pay closer attention to the ways in which media and technologies are used in everyday life and their consequences for social groups”

Gramsci – Hegemony – Those in power want to keep the order.

David Gauntlett - "Identity is now consciously constructed and the media provides some of the tools to help us construct our identities. The media contains a huge number of messages about identity and acceptable lifestyles.

At the same time the public have their own set of feelings. The media and media consumers are in a dialogue in which neither over powers the other"

Anthony Giddens - "There is a social structure that which shapes our lives (traditions, institutions, moral codes, established ways of doing things), but it relies on individuals following these structures" - Changing social structure over time (Structuration)

Hebdidge - A subculture is a group of like-minded individuals who feel neglected by societal standards and who develop a sense of identity, which differs to the dominant on to which they belong.

Acland - Media representations of youth maintain social order/hegemony (the ones in control have the most influence)

Giroux - Youth becomes an empty category in representation and reflects adult concern

Steve Anderson - Younger people are becoming a lot more empowered because of social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and Blogging.

Wilkins - Deviancy Amplification Spiral (1964) -

a cycle of increasing numbers of reports on a category of antisocial behaviour or some other 'undesirable' event, leading to a moral panic.

Stan Cohen - Moral Panic/Folk Devils (1972)

Althusser - Ideological State Apparatus. Dominant ideology reinforced through different groups including media.

Laura Mulvey (1975) - Male Gaze - Audiences are positioned to view characters from the perspective of a heterosexual male, such as through the extensive use of focusing particularly on the curvature of the female body. - Leads to the objectification of women. Women viewers are made to view the product secondarily.

Jonathan Schroader - the gaze is more than just a look, it implies a psychological relationship where the gaze is superior to the object.

Gaylyn Studlar – Female Gaze

Branston and Stafford (2001) - Soaps rely on archetypal characters and stereotypes - ensure ready accessibility because stories have universal appeal about families and communities

Dyer (1979) - "Stereotypes are always about power: those with power stereotype those without power"

Baudrillard - The media presents a simulation of the world that is artificial and 'hyperreal'
- Some audiences consider this hyperreality to be reality - leading to hypersexuality etc

 Semiotics - The study of sign and symbols

There is a sign, an object that is called the signifier

The meaning that is given to that is called the signified. This is nor fixed and can change with time or the society or culture that it is shown to.

Mediation - The process of electing and shaping, creating meaning from an original event. An event which is mediated within the systems of values of an institution e.g. (News of the World, CH4 News). Their view is represented to the public. - Selection vs Rejection, Focussing, Organisation 

Collective Identity: The individual sense of belonging to a group who share a set of traditions of traditions and values (part of identity)

 - Not just representation of the mainstream media but also from the self-representations of media users.

Structuration is the process where human agency and social structure are in a constant relationship and the social structure is reproduced by the repetition of acts by individual people (and therefore can change).

Scopophilia - deriving pleasure from looking. As an expression of sexuality, it refers to sexual pleasure derived from looking at erotic objects: erotic photographs, pornography, naked bodies, etc.

Genderfuck - Refers to the self-conscious effort to play with traditional of gender roles.

Patriarchy is a social system in which males hold primary power, predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of property; in the domain of the family, fathers or father-figures hold authority over women and children.

Archetype : a very typical example of a certain person or thing

Gender Binary: Describes a system where a society splits its members of male and female sexes into gender roles, gender identities and attributes.

 Genre Theory

Steve Neale - It is easy to underplay the differences within a genre. Steve Neale declares that:

"Genres are instances of repetition and difference" (Neale 1980, 48)

"Difference is absolutely essential to the economy of genre" (Neale 1980)

Toderov - "Any instances of genre will be necessarily different" (Toderov - cited in Gledhell, 1985, 60), Narrative Theory - Equilibrium theory

Lacey - There are repertoires of elements that work together to suggest genre, which are a useful framework to use for analysis

Setting

Character

Narrative

Iconography

Style

Gledhill - "There are no rules of inclusion and exclusion" (Gledhill, 1985)

"Genres are not discrete systems consisting of a fixed number of listable items (Gledhill, 1985)

Chandler - It is difficult to make clear cut distinctions between one genre and another: genres overlap, and there are 'mixed genres' such as comedy thrillers (Chandler 2000) 

Burton - Each text in a given genre shares particular key elements to make up the generic formula:

- Protagonists

- Stock characters

- Plots/Stock Situations

- Icons

- Background and Décor

- Themes