4 Key Concepts in Media

 Audience

the key issue here is to explore, who is being represented and why, and by whom and how? 

Fairness of representation has always been a critical area of enquiry in Media Studies. 

The key questions are: who are the target audience, what is missing and why?

 Every media text is made with someone in mind so we have to think who do you think the 

preferred audience is for this text and how do you think they are expected to interpret it?  if its 

an ad, will they buy the product? if it's a title sequence, will they keep watching?

Institution

Issues of ownership and control, marketing, advertising, commercial influence on products,

regulatory bodies, gate keeping, etc.

media institutions arrange, create, illustrate, design, put together, print or broadcast, advertise 

and distribute media products to the masses. it's important to understand how these media

 institutions work and how the work can influence the media products. how a text is influenced 

by various institutions? your next steo is to consider who constructed the text. was it a big,

 powerful company with millions or dollars to command, or was it a small, local production?

Language

Media messages are encoded and then interpreted by audience. Encoding is the process

by which a source performs conversion of information into data. interpreting is the reverse

process of converting data into information understandable by a receiver. Encoding

is the process of expressing messages, that is, person's skill of using language to carry messages. 

Decoding is the process of analysing the message, that is, a person's skill of understanding

language. Language is a code established through rules and regulations.

These rules gorvern the meaning and usage of the code. The understanding (decoding) and 

production (encoding) of the code is also based on mutual agreement of these rules.

This process of communication requires the use of media language. News and information

analysis and interpretation, education, public relations, sales and advertising are mass messages.

It is for these messages that we pay attention to media

Representation

representation is the construction of ideas of reality which is presented through media. 

These ideas could be stereotypes.

For example: cultural identities, race, gender, and class.