Media Analysis

What is this course?

What is this course?

An investigation of visual culture

What is this course?

We will examine how images (broadly understood) circulate in

Anglo-American culture

What is this course?

We will try to understand the mediation process (ie. how media

formalize phenomena)

What will I learn?

What will I learn?

How effects are produced

What will I learn?

How visual media organize their content

What will I learn?

The cultural history of images

Exam!

Warning! Complexity ahead!

For English program students

For English program students

You pass by attending at least five out of six session and participating in the workshops

For English program students

If you fail to attend or participate, you must instead write a six page exam paper

For SIS program students

For SIS students

No matter how often you turn up and how much you participate, you will have to write a seven page exam paper.

Media Analysis Overview

What is our focus?

What is our focus?

EncodingProductionCultural encyclopediaReception

What is social semiotics?

What is social semiotics?

CodeConventionConnotationDenotationAnchorage

Visual language

Visual language

Like any form of conventional systems (ie. texts), images have

meaning potential

Visual language

How is meaning potential different from meaning?

Visual language

Sign -> meaning(simple)

Visual language

Sign -> lexicogrammar -> meaning(complex)

Example

Visual metaphors

Visual metaphors

What are the key terms for visual metaphors?

Visual Discourses

Visual discourses

Visual discourses are visually constructed knowledges about

reality

Visual discourses

Images structure the world for us, and so are a result of ideology

Visual discourses

Images legitimizes social practices

Visual discourses

Images may contain scripts which enculturate us

Visual communication

Visual communication

Define the three components of visual communication