Media Notes.

The media is called a media text. E.g. Poster, Video, Film, Books and T.V. programmes. In the media, there are two different groups of people. The first group is the Producers, these are the people who create the media text. The second group is the Consumers, these are the people who use the media. The Gateway keeper, is in control of what is shown and revealed through the media and what is not.

Communication Theory:
In the media, there are three different ways in which the Audience would read the media placed in front of them. These ways are;

• Hypodermic needle - The audience are known to be passive as they consume what the media gives out and accept this. 

• Uses and gratifications - The audience choose what they would like to consume from the media. This audience are made up of individuals who would consume the text in different ways for different reasons. The following functions used for this are; 

- Diversion: Escape from reality of everyday life and problems. 

- Personal relationship: Relate emotions and problems with the action shown on the t.v. e.g. Soap operas. 

- Personal Identity: Comparing one's own existence with what they see on the media. 

- Surveillance: Finding out about the action going on around the world. - Voyeurism.

• Two step flow - The audience would choose an active Opinion Leader who they would believe as telling the 'truth' to interpret the media for them. 

Reception theory:

In the 1970's, Stuart Hall proposed the theory of Encoding and Decoding alongside the theory of Mode of address.

- Encoding: Placing a message inside of the text transmitted in the media.

- Decoding: Processing the text to work out the message.

- Mode of Address: The way the 'text' speaks to the audience. E.g. News readers are formal and direct while constantly looking at the camera 'to the audience'. This is all to do with the construction using the number of codes and technical codes. 

The Encoders are known to be the Producers. The text the producer chooses, is encoded into the media before being transmitted to the audience. After this text is transmitted to the audience to the audience, the audience are expected to decode the text to then realise what the media is trying to say. If the producer positions the audience and creates a certain amount of agreement of what the message is, this is known to be a preferred reading. -

The method the Producers use is:
-Create the message.
-En-code. 
-Transmits.
-Receiver receives it.
-Receiver decodes it. 

This preferred reading does not come out correctly all the time. Sometimes the audience can interpret the wrong reading of this message. This then leads to the fact that the preferred reading is not preferred anymore. The way these interpretations can go wrong is; 

- Oppositional reading: The audience create a conscious rejection as they do not agree with the producer's message or setting. 

- Negotiated reading: The audience understands the meaning in the text, but partly rejects this as there is no real relation between the message and the individual.

- Aberrant reading: When someone misreads or misunderstands the messages the producers are trying to betray. 

Semiology:
Semiology also known as Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols. This is divided into three branches.

• Semantics - The semantics is the study of the meaning of the language provided in the media. Advertisers use certain words that have no real meaning at all, to convey certain impressions.

• Syntactics  - The syntactics deals with the formal properties of languages and systems of symbols and the relationships of signs to each other.

• Pragmatics - The pragmatics deals with the causal and other relations between words, expressions, or symbols and their users.