· Introduction

· Past Questions

· What to answer

· How to answer:

Key Words Or the lack of them

"Not theory but the application of theory" -Using Examples

Writing an introduction- making your agenda obvious.

How not to over-simplify -using qualifying statements

Compare and Contrast

· How to revise:

General theory and revising examples

Revision notes checklist(induction handbook)

Some key theoretical terms

Revision Checklist

· In the Exam

Things to remember

Marking grid

Unseens

You are now about to start revision for the two final examination papers for Media Studies A level. Together these are worth 60% of your final grade. You may have done extremely well on the project and essay but it is certainly not safe to assume that you can now go on to get the same sort of grade in the subject as a whole without really trying. Many students come down heavily in the exam papers and more particularly in paper two- the essay paper. The intention of this booklet is to help you to prepare for these two papers and to avoid the kinds of mistakes you may possibly have just made In the mock exams.

For the purposes of this booklet, we are assuming that you have developed a good essay writing style and so there isn’t much advice here about structure and use of language. Instead the idea of the booklet is to give you ideas about what to include in your essays and unseens.

First of all, it is probably worth looking at what you are up against: here are the questions from last years’ exam paper and the AQA board’s sample questions.

a) Estimate the influence of the public relations industry upon the British Media.

What do you understand by "marketing"? What influences have the principles and practices of marketing had upon the advertising of products and services in the media? Illustrate your answer with specific examples.

c) With reference to specific examples, describe some of the ways in which products, services and people are promoted within either television programmes or newspaper and magazine articles. Why has there been a recent growth in this kind of promotional activity?

d) What characteristics are observable in media which are funded mainly, or entirely, by advertising revenue? Give examples of, and account for, these characteristics.

a) Describe and account for the stereotyping of any one group of your choice across a range of media. Describe any work which is being done (or which you think might be done) to counteract such stereotyping.

b) "Few opportunities exist within the media for minority or marginalised views to be expressed." Do you agree with this statement? Describe any two media texts which offer such opportunities and assess their effectiveness in communicating their point of view.

c) Describe some of the techniques which may be used within the media to marginalise the views and experiences of any one group of your choice. Give examples of these techniques in action wherever possible.

d) Describe the difficulties which face anyone who wishes to give an accurate media representation of any one group of your choice. What advice would you offer to help him/her produce a more accurate picture?

a) Account for the appeal of any one broadcast of visual genre to both producers and audiences at the present time. Illustrate your answer with reference to the marketing and reception of a recent example of the genre.

b) Outline the dominant codes, conventions, themes and values of one visual or broadcast genre. Answer with reference to at least two examples of the genre you choose. Are their any further examples of this genre which use its conventions in a different or particularly interesting way? Illustrate your answer.

c) Taking one media text, analyse the ways in which it draws upon ands diverges from the conventions of its genre.

d) How useful have you found the concept of genre in making sense of either present-day films or present-day television programmes? Illustrate your answer with reference to at least two films or television programmes of your choice.

a) Describe and evaluate the success of a film or television fictional narrative which challenges dominant forms of narrative

b) Apply Propp’s theory of narrative to either a film or broadcast fictional narrative and assess how useful a tool the theory is in analysing narrative.

c) Compare and contrast the openings of two fictional films in terms of their narrative functions, and the expectations they provoke in their audiences.

d) Describe ands illustrate the major differences which exist between the narrative structures of fictional series, serials and soap operas on television. Discuss the dramatic possibilities and limitations of each of these forms.

e) With reference to one film or broadcast fictional text of your choice show the extent to which its narrative characteristics may have been influenced by the contexts and conditions in which audiences will receive it.

a) Describe any two media texts in which members of the public are encouraged to play a dominant role. What can be said for the idea that in these texts "You, the public, are the stars"?

How valid is the theory that the media are "the new opium of the people, a drug for manipulating the masses"?

c) Describe three different forms of direct public involvement or participation in the media. What can be said for the and against each of these forms of public access to the media?

d) Media audiences have been described by media professionals as

Largely passive

Discriminating consumers

Democratic citizens

Products to be sold to advertisers

Briefly describe what is meant by each of these views of the media audience. To what extent do you think each description is accurate and justifiable? What implication does each have for the kind of material produced by media professionals?

a) Examine the ways in which cable and satellite television companies attempt to win audiences. Evaluate the effects of these on audiences of the BBC and ITV?

What are the main differences in the content of satellite television compared with that of the existing terrestrial services provided by the BBC and ITV?

c) What advice would you give to someone thinking of subscribing to either a cable or satellite television service at the present time. What are the major factors which should be considered in making such a decision?

d) Describe and discuss some of the more important issues raised by satellite/cable television’s coverage of

a) What are the major criteria for the selection of news for British television? Illustrate at least six criteria from news stories which you have studied.

b) What or who are the major sources of news presented in the British Media? Estimate the influence which these sources have exerted on the production and presentation of news.

Many of these questions may fill you with horror, while many others may seem a piece of cake. These are both potential traps:

Some of these questions may seem more alarming than they actually are and you must not reject a question out of hand because it looks difficult. Take this question for example:

How valid is the theory that the media are "the new opium of the people, a drug for manipulating the masses"?

The quote about opium may seem vaguely familiar and your first instinct might be to avoid it because you are not sure what it means but in fact the last few words explain what they are getting at. Never dismiss a question without thinking carefully about what it is asking for, the examiner is not trying to trick you. On the other hand there are questions that are generally more difficult to answer than others:

Anything on a study in depth you have not covered in class- This may sound obvious but it is an easy trap to fall into. There are often questions on other topics which seem to cover things you have studied, media Studies is after all a subject where everything fits together. the problem is that while the wording of the question may seem simple, there may be all kinds of things not mentioned in the title, which students who have followed the study in depth would know all about. You risk looking very stupid!

At the same time, there are certain questions that are deceptively simple. Take this one for example:

Imagine yourself seeing this question in the exam- you have studied and revised Pulp Fiction in detail and you happily launch into an account of the ways that Tarantino tells his story. However, it is easy to completely miss the other part of the question- evaluate the success. They are not just asking you how the story is told, but also how well it works as a narrative. Both parts of the question are equally important.

Many questions will require you like this to cover a number of points. This is such an important potential pitfall that there is an entire section later in the booklet on the key words used by the examiners.

Go through all of these questions and put marks by what seem to you to be the five easiest questions and the five hardest. You will come back to the five easiest later, but for now concentrate on the difficult ones.

· Choose one of the questions and make notes on what you think it is asking for.

· You may feel it is helpful at this point to look through your notes or a textbook for ideas.

· When you feel a bit more confident about this, make an essay plan

· Compare your plan if possible with someone else’s.

· You may find that your answer is very similar, or very different. It is quite possible for some of these questions to be answered in very different ways which is something the exam board call agenda setting. Something which will be dealt with in a later section.

· DON’T THROW AWAY YOUR NOTES- YOU CAN REFER TO THEM LATER WHEN YOU READ THE EXAMINERS’ REPORTS

What exactly is the question about?

As was mentioned earlier, one of the biggest risks in the exam is that you will end up just waffling- not specifically addressing what the examiners are asking of you in each question.

In order to stop you from doing this, they phrase the questions very carefully including what they call key words which they feel you need to address.

For example, look at this question:

Describe and evaluate the success of a film or television fictional narrative which challenges dominant forms of narrative.

Here one key word is "evaluate." Think about the exact meaning of that word: "work out the value of."

If your answer simply goes through the narrative structure of your chosen film, it won’t get a good grade- what is being asked of you is that as well as doing this, you actually decide how effective this narrative is - to give some kind of value judgement.

Now consider this question:

What do you understand by the term ‘documentary’ as it is applied to film and/or television? Illustrate your answer with reference to a range of documentary material.

Here "range" is a key word. It suggests that not only should you have a number of examples, but that they should be of different kinds that you can use to make comparisons and contrasts. In fact as will be pointed out later in the section on comparing and contrasting you should be trying to do this in all your essays when you choose examples.

You may find that there are some questions which seem to be more open ended and which do not have such obvious key words. Take this question, for example:

What do you understand by ‘marketing’? What influence have the principles and practices of marketing had upon the advertising of products and services in the media? Illustrate your answer with specific examples.

Here the word evaluate isn’t actually included, but it is implied. The question is still asking you to evaluate- to decide how important these different things are and make comparisons. If you can try to bring the idea of evaluation into all of your essays, you will always gain marks.

Once again, you will find more help on this in the later section on comparing and contrasting.

The essay paper is not just a theory paper. You are not expected just to trot out for example the different theories on media effects in an essay. What is being asked of you is that you use the theory and apply it to your chosen examples. Some questions, such as the one about texts where members of the public are encouraged to play a prominent role, tell you what examples to use, but in fact you should treat any question in this way, finding two or three preferably contrasting examples and using them to show how your theoretical ideas work in practice.

If you look at this question :

How valid is the theory that the media are ‘the new opium of the people, a drug for manipulating the masses’?

It would be very wrong to launch into a simply theoretical essay on the different theories about media effects. Instead, you could very easily write a large part of this essay by using the examples of an intelligent man reading the Sun and the amount of influence it might have on him in comparison with an impressionable child watching and misunderstanding a film. If your examples were detailed enough and interesting enough they would enhance your essay no end. Moreover, when you brought theory in it would have much more relevance and carry more weight. Also if your examples are different from everybody else’s it will give that little extra chance of keeping the examiner awake!

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TASK

· Go back to what you thought were the easiest questions from the past papers choose two and decide on three contrasting examples for each.

· Make notes on what you would be able to say about these examples

How much detail to use in examples

One of the biggest problems with students essays in exams is that there is not

enough detail in the way that you use examples. If you think about the way that

you write about an unseen piece you are able to bring in lots of wonderful ideas about the ways that media language is used, but when you are referring to a media text in an essay, you often seem to rely simply on a few points about narrative or character.

Imagine for example you were tackling this essay:

Outline the dominant codes, conventions, themes and values of one visual or broadcast genre. Answer with reference to at least two examples of the genre you choose. Are there any further examples of this genre which use its conventions In a different or particularly interesting way? Illustrate your answer.

You have decided to use as your genre T.V. quiz shows and have used the examples of Mastermind and The Price is Right to make several contrasts across the genre. For the final example which "use(s) its conventions In a different or particularly interesting way" you have decided to use the example of Reeves and Mortimer’s alternative game show Shooting stars. Here is what you could write:

The producers of shooting stars are obviously aware of all of the conventions of the quiz show genre which I have outlined, and they intentionally refer to them in a mocking way. For example while the convention of the genre is to have a glamorous assistant minding the scores, Shooting stars have the intentionally hideous figure of George Doors a grown man dressed in a romper suit and carrying a dummy- provoking the catch-phrase: "he’s just a great big baby" While the camera shots in the Price is Right are used to accentuate the glamour of the assistant’s looks, here sudden extreme close-ups are used to make his appearance more alarming. Similarly, the women in the traditional quiz show are represented as being mindless "bimbos" and once again George Dawes parodies this part of the assistant’s role by shouting inane comments at the camera. In all of these ways the programme’s makers are using the conventions of this genre and turning them on their head. This results in us being surprised but also seems to make all quiz shows seem slightly more ludicrous in retrospect.

Using examples in this kind of detail by concentrating on the exact nature of the media language used allows you to make a theoretical point: that Shooting stars subverts genre expectations and give that point some real substance. It also allows the examiner to see how observant you are!

There is a later section in the booklet on how to choose examples when you are revising.

TASK

Looking back at the last task choose two of your examples and write them up in as much detail as possible. Bear in mind the exact title of the essay.

It is possible to spend a lot of time trying to think of a good introduction and forgetting to write the essay itself. In fact, if you have decided already on your what you want to write about- your agenda for the essay, your introduction should write itself.

With all essays you will be choosing an agenda- your version of what the question is about and what examples you are choosing to use. In the introduction, you should clearly and briefly set out your agenda for the question and nothing more- here are a few examples of essays (with key words underlined) and agenda-setting introductions

"‘The camera never lies.’ To what extent do you consider this to be true?"

It is often said that people today trust journalists less than ever before, but while the reputation of the written word has maybe never been lower, the public still seem to put a lot of faith in visual images. In this essay I will start by looking at the various ways that images can be manipulated on computers and how the meanings of images can be anchored through captions, selection and cropping. I will then briefly consider why it is that such dishonesty in the creation of pictures can be ignored by the general public.

How valid is the theory that the media are "the new opium of the people, a drug for manipulating the masses"?

Since the second world war when Hitler used the mass media as a tool of propaganda critics of the Media have talked much about its potential to manipulate peoples’ attitudes and behaviour. In this essay I will look at the theories of the potential effects of the media on audiences and attempt to use the examples of a front page of the Sun covering an Asian national lottery winner and an advert for Gold blend in order to look at the possible reality of these effects on contrasting individuals.

What are the main criticisms which have been made of the British tabloid press? Illustrate with specific examples, and estimate the validity of such criticisms.

Imagined key word- contrasting

British tabloids have frequently been criticised from all sides. Politicians have complained about bias in reporting and individuals about invasions in privacy. Moreover in recent years there has been increasing concern about the ownership of the newspapers. In this essay I intend to cover all of these points and also to use examples of recent reporting of the government’s privatisation sell offs and of Fergie’s latest boyfriend to question whether there are any difference in the approaches of the different papers.

These may not have been the introductions that you would have written, but in each case their purpose is the same- to set out the agenda clearly, showing how key words are being addressed and then leaving the writer ready to move on to the rest of the essay.

When you are attempting to answer a question in a Media Studies exam, you naturally want to show that you have a full understanding of everything you are writing about. If anything seems difficult or confusing, it is natural for you to want to brush over the confusion and simplify what you are saying by making a generalisation. However, Media is a complicated subject and if you do this in your answers they will not be simple, but simplistic! The examiners want to mark your work positively, and you can help them by avoiding over-simplification.

Here is an example where just one word lets a student down:

‘Always?’ -words like that are a challenge to anyone reading your work to find exceptions. ‘Often’ would probably work better.

Sometimes it is not just the words that you use, but your use of examples which can let you down. Here is an example from an essay about ideology in Soaps, the student is discussing whether soaps present the dominant ideology of marriage as an ideal of supportive relationships:

If you watch Eastenders regularly (and examiners don’t spend all of their time making communication models) you will know that this is a simplification of the truth about these characters. Perhaps the truth is closer to this:

This second example is full of qualifying statements, phrases that try to show the complexity of what you are examining. If you can learn to use these properly they will not make your work look confused, but instead show that you understand the confusion that exists in the world around you.

Here is an example of a student tackling the same question who does this well:

‘For example in the soap opera Eastenders, one of the characters has A.I.D.S. The entrance of this character both reinforced and undermined society’s dominant ideology. At this time, society was still ignorant of the details of the disease and believed falsely that it was restricted to the homosexual community. The introduction, therefore of a heterosexual character with the disease was both controversial and served to undermine the public’s dominant ideology. However, the family’s reaction of disbelief and, in the case of one family member, disgust, reinforced the dominant ideology of the time.'

It would have been quite easy to have just said that having a heterosexual character in the series with A.I.D.S. challenges the dominant ideology, but this student qualifies this by showing the other side to the presentation of the character.

Each of the following examples, again from the same set of essays, seems in need of qualification. See if you can improve them. In each case, decide whether just a few words need changing or if the use of examples or ideas is simplistic. In some cases you may have to write a paragraph for their sentence.

1. ‘All soaps agree or disagree with dominant ideology’

2. ‘People in England believe that the it is up to any individual to create their own life and that social pressures do not determine it.’

3. ‘The case of the Jordaches in Brookside challenged the dominant ideology because all of the problems came from within the family’

4. ‘In Australian soaps such as Neighbours families are supportive and children can rely on their parents.’

5. ‘The producers of soaps have the same ideas as everyone else and this comes out in the series’

6. ‘Brookside is a left-wing soap which always challenges dominant ideology.’

7. ‘The directors of T.V. soaps always try to persuade us of their point of view.’

8. ‘Cindy in Eastenders is a slag!’

9. ‘We take our ideology from what we see on the television.’

10. ‘While Brookside shows the bad side of life, everything in Neighbours is cheerful.’

Compare and contrast

You may well have tackled before questions which ask you to compare and contrast two different examples of texts. Questions such as this give you an excellent chance to demonstrate your complex understanding of how Media theories actually work in reality. you need to explore the differences between the texts in order to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of your theoretical ideas.

Questions that ask you openly like this to compare and contrast are a gift, but in fact to achieve a good mark on any of the essay questions you need to do this anyway. Whenever the examiner asks you about an area of the theory, he doesn't want you to tell him a load of facts that he knows anyway- instead he wants you to test out in your essay how well those theories fit in practice and to do that you will need to compare and contrast how they work with different examples.

Here's a typical essay question:

"The camera never lies." To what extent do you consider this to be true?

To answer this question properly you would need to find some examples of pictures which appear to be honest representations (e.g. family snaps) and then compare and contrast them with pictures where more dishonesty is involved. On the way you might find a number of ways in which even the innocent photo in the family album is not to be trusted (people who can't stand each other smiling/ Auntie Ethel asking you to photograph her good side etc.) This kind of detailed comment is what gets you marks. You are not just describing examples but evaluating how well they fit the theories.

Here are some more examples of real questions. Choose three and with each one make a list of examples that would be good to compare and contrast.

I could have included notes about every area of the media that you might end up covering in an exam, but one thing that seems to provoke a lot of errors is representation. If you are writing about the representation of people in the media a few things are worth bearing in mind:

Most of the time when we are thinking about Media Studies it is very easy to fall into the trap of concentrating on the sender of messages and not the receivers. However, it is very important that you should consider the audience in everything you write in the exam, not just when you are answering a question for that study in depth but throughout the two papers. This means in practice that when you are talking about a film or a newspaper article you should not just consider the messages that are being encoded by the producers of the text, but also the ways these might be decoded by a possible audience.

Equally importantly, when I say audience, I don’t mean you. When you are considering any text you should try to think your way into the target audience’s minds and the contexts in which they receive the text and write about what you expect their experience of the text will be. REMEMBER the encoder and decoder share in the creation of meaning.

If you think about it, this idea was central to your project where you had a series of messages which you needed to encode. You therefore studied various other examples of media texts in your research to give you ideas of how to encode them and then in your evaluation looked at the ways the audience had decoded.

If you concentrate on this idea of audience and producers working together to create meaning it will help you to write about the ideology (the meaning they end up with) and will help you to a high grade in the process.

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Consider a question like this one:

· Describe and account for the stereotyping of any one group of your choice across a range of media. Describe any work which is being done (or which you think might be done) to counteract such stereotyping.

This question never mentions the word audience and the natural thing to do when answering it would be to go on about how media producers go about the business of producing stereotypes. However, the key- words "account for" should make you question why stereotypes are so popular and that is a question which can only be tackled by including something about the audience and why they like stereotypes so much. (Maybe using implicit personality theory to explain?)

Go back to the past questions and choose any five at random and make notes on how you could include the audience in essays on this subject. You should find the concept is vital whatever the essay.

Title

How to include the audience

Title

How to include the audience

Title

How to include the audience

If you can look at all theory in this way and make notes on how the nature of the audience affects the workings of the media you will have prepared yourself wonderfully for the exam. REMEMBER, don't just concentrate on what is being produced, but how the audience respond and create their own meaning for it.

Just as with representation and audiences, you should be thinking about ideology all the time. A couple of things to remember:

You will not find a media text without an ideology although you will probably be able to think of ones where you can’t spot what the ideology is. Unfortunately, the examiner will notice if you don’t mention ideology

One reason why you might miss the ideology in a text is if it is part of the dominant ideology. If a text only seems to be saying what "everyone takes for granted" it might not seem worth pointing out -but it is.

A good way of spotting ideology is through looking at things like the representation of main characters as you did with Fatal Attraction, or at the narrative. If you look at the problematic, for example you will often be able to make an ideological point- the problem in Jaws is a shark- Jaws is about the dangerous side of nature, the problem in Fatal Attraction is Alex, Fatal Attraction is saying that single women are evil.

Once you have spotted the problematic, you should be able to look in more detail at how this is produced. Once again, remember how we did this in Fatal Attraction, looking at the mise en scene, the shots used, the editing, the soundtrack and so on -all of which reinforced the idea that Alex was evil and Beth good and therefore helped produce the film’s ideology.

Finally- remember ideology is probably the most difficult thing you will write about. The examiner will not be looking for a "right answer." Instead s/he will simply be impressed to see that you are thinking ideologically and that whatever point of view you take, you are able to back it up with the detail of your analysis.

It is impossible to give you a detailed account of exactly what you should spend longest revising- you will need to make your own revision plan depending on your own strengths, weaknesses and interests. To do this you will find it very useful to use the study skills booklet which you were given by your personal tutor. However, a few points on how to treat theory revision are important:

· For everything you revise you need to make detailed notes of examples that you can fit to the theory.

By detailed notes, I don’t just mean deciding that you could use The Price is Right to talk about ideology in television. What you need to do is to flesh out your example with the detail of how the ideology is conveyed to the audience with notes on the visual and sound images, the language and behaviour of the presenter and contestants and the connotations of all of these things. Similarly, you may decide that an advert for Tango will be useful for you in tackling questions on advertising and marketing, but once again you will need to take detailed notes on the mise-en-scene, mode of address etc.

Making these kinds of detailed notes of examples has the following advantages:

1. You will understand the theory in practical sense- the only way that matters!

2. It will bring to life the strengths and weaknesses of the theory

3. If you learn the examples thoroughly, you will be able to save time thinking about them in the exam.

You can also help yourself by considering how these examples might fit other studies in depth and noting that as well. For example the Tango ad might be just as useful to consider as part of audiences or representation.

To help you to make these kinds of detailed notes we have included a few checklist sheets. Don’t limit yourself to just using these.

· You need to make sure that you understand everything fully or not at all! It is actually better for you to ignore a piece of theory, than to have a confused idea of it when you come to the exam.

· To help with your understanding, work with a friend to make sure there are no gaps in your notes.

You should understand the following terms and be happy to use them in essays:

Connotation

Denotation

Anchorage

Encoding

Decoding

Postmodernist

Codes

Icons

Protagonist

Stock characters

Problematic

Function

Plot point

Stereotype

Prototype

Countertype

Dominant ideology

Deviancy amplification

Mediation

News Values

Gatekeeping

Hypodermic Syringe

Uses and gratifications

Audience labour

· The best, but also most painful, way of learning the theories is to practice writing frequent essays. Be strict with yourself and do this as often as possible. Use the ideas in this booklet to make sure that you have included agenda setting openings, good examples, a clear structure and have addressed the key words in the title.

Things to remember

· Choose your questions carefully- don’t ignore apparently difficult ones and jump for deceptively easy ones

· Highlight key words

· If necessary set your own agenda for the question

· Make a plan including the examples you are going to use and the structure of the paragraphs

· Check that your plan fits your agenda and what the key words in the question are asking you to do. Make sure you have considered all parts of the encoding/decoding process.

· Make sure that you know how the examples you are going to use will carry the argument of the essay forward.

· Write your opening paragraph and check that you have explained clearly how you intend to tackle the question.

· Write the essay

· Check it!

This makes it look as if you will hardly have time to write the essay, but if you spend a short amount of time going through all of the early stages, you will find the essay writes itself much more quickly!

On the following page you will find the exam board’s mark scheme. Following it are a number of self assessment sheets which you can use to chart your progress when writing practice essays.

In questions for the essay paper, the biggest problem that students often have is in lack of detail. In the unseen you often find it easy to include lots of detail, but here the problem can be that this detail is about the wrong things:

Most of you are very good at talking about Media language in unseens- Looking at the mise-en-scene and the mode of address, the camera shots and the lighting etc. You also move quite happily on to talking about the connotations of the images that you see and hear.

Where you are often weaker is in talking about the implications at a deeper level of the text- the representations and in particular the ideologies that are presented.

These two areas should receive as much comment as the more straightforward elements of media language.

In the following example I have attempted to balance out these different features of the text. To help me do this I have adopted a structure: I separated the various features into an order as follows:

This allowed me to start, as the producers do, with their idea of what they are producing and how it attracts an audience. Then, once I had done this, I was able to move on to the issues of what meanings there are beneath the surface of this text.

Don’t worry if this seems longer or more detailed than you could manage- I cheated considerably in the time I gave myself to think and write.

While it would probably be a good idea for you to attempt to follow a similar structure, don’t be completely tied down by it- make sure that your points about ideology and representation arise out your analysis of the visual and written language of the text.