Recommended OCRAS and A2 Media Studies Theorists

Narrative, Genre, Audience, Media Language and Representation theory can also be mapped onto G325 Section A: Q1 and 1b but dependent on the question areas and dependent on the production work completed by the pupil/student. Below also are suggested theorists whose work can be explored when studying topics offered for G325 Section B: Contemporary Media Issues – it is recommended between 4-6 are referenced in the exam resonse.

KEY – Theorists that will help you with your exam. It is essential you research these theorists and add them to your blog. You could also speak to Mrs Rolfe about the theorists for Contemporary Media Regulation.

Narrative:

Levi-Strauss: Binary oppositions Todorov – Four Act Structure Roland Barthes – Cultural, Semantic, Symbolic, Hermeneutic, Proairetic Real

media texts addressing audience. Goodwin – useful for analysing music Videos – 6 key features Propp – 8 character roles Lyotard – post modern theory against meta narratives, pro micro narratives and

fragmentation Joseph Campbell – monomyths and journeys

Genre:

John Fiske – genre as ‘convenience’ for producers and audiences Henry Jenkins – genre constantly ‘breaks rules’ e.g. evolving hybridization John Hartley – genre is interpreted culturally Daniel Chandler – genre is too restricting Steve Neale – genre as repetition and difference David Buckingham – genre in constant process of negotiation and change Jason Mittel – industry uses genre commercially Barry Keith Grant - on sub genres Rick Altman – genre offers audiences a ‘set of pleasures’

Audience:

Jeremy Tunstall – primary, secondary, tertiary audience engagement Blumler and Katz – uses and gratifications theory Katz and Larzasfeld – two Step Flowtheoty Adorno – passive consumption, hypodermic model (Frankfurt School) David Gauntlett – producer as consumer (Prosumer) Stuart Hall – audience positioning and dominant, negotiated, oppositional

readings Stanley Cohen – moral panics Martin Barker – challenging moral panics George Gerbner – cultivation theory

Representation:

Angela McRobbie – post feminist icon theory Laura Mulvey – male gaze/female gaze Carol Clover – last girl theory (horror) Stuart Hall – dominant, oppositional and negotiated readings of representation Richard Dyer – stereotypes legitimize inequality Levi-Strauss – binary oppositions and subordinate groups (see Dyer) David Buckingham – representation and fragmented identity David Gauntlett – “identity is complicated, everyone’s got one” (pluralism but

within a hegemonic framework) Baudrillard – hyper realism Taijfel and Turner – intergroup discrimination and stereotyping (also useful for

youth and collective identity) Andy Medhurst – stereotyping is shorthand for identification Tessa Perkins – stereotyping has elements of truth Judith Butler – Queer Theory

G325 Section B: Contemporary Media Issues

Collective Media Identity (Also Good for Representation Question 1b)

David Gauntlett – in depth work on this topic including ‘Making is Connecting’ and Lego Project

David Buckingham – identity as a unique marker of a person Zygmunt Bauman – identity as a reflection of society is problematic Erving Goffman – the nature of social interaction Anthony Giddens – self reflexivity and developing own biographical narratives Antonio Gramsci – shifting nature of dominant ideology Taijfel and Turner – intergroup discrimination and stereotyping Dick Hebdige – youth sub culture maintains divisions in society Jacques Lacan – the Mirror Stage (must be fully understood before applying) Michel Maffesoli – ‘The Time of Tribes’ Laura Mulvey – male gaze mapped onto the female gaze Judith Butler – gender is what you do, not who you are Janice Winship – on magazines Marjorie Ferguson – on magazines

Global Media:

Nick Lacey – on synergy, ownership and institution Zygmunt Bauman – globalization contributes to a sense of ‘fragmentation’ Michael Salwen – on cultural imperialism Oliver Boyd-Barrett – on media imperialism Stuart Price – global media and ownership TerhiRantanen – consequences of globalization is homogenization and

heterogenization David Hesmondhalgh – understanding global, cultural industries

PradipThomas and ZaharomNain – ownership of the media Noam Chomsky – Marxist readings on media ownership

We Media and Democracy:

Dan Gillmor – ‘We the Media’ author Charles Leadbetter - see YouTube ‘We Think’ Clay Shirky – collaboration and communal values Mapping Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – We Media, status and self respect UshaHidi – democratizing information/software, crowdsourcing, political

activism Henry Jenkins – fan writers and textual poaching Jacque Derrida – death of the author Simon Reynolds – rave music and dance culture as democratizing Graham Roberts – ‘Movie Making in the New Media Age’

Contemporary Media Regulation:

Dan Gillmor – Citizen Journalism David Gauntlett – opposes the vulnerability stereotype, youth as active and

literate (see ‘Moving Experiences’) Mary Whitehouse – against liberalism Henry Jenkins – video game effects research Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams – 5 points on media and the internet Professor Julian Petley – censorship is a class based issue Richard Berger – Ofcom will subsume the BBFC, future regulation = video games Stephen Abell (ex PCC Chairman) – online proliferation against statutory

regulation Collins – against statutory press regulation Stokes and Reading – newspapers use freedom of the press to legitimize

intrusion Solevay and Reed – self regulation means no regulation Robertson an Nichol – the PCC is an ineffective regulator Stuart Hall – newspapers as the fourth estate, Marxist readings

Media in the Online Age:

David Gauntlett– the prosumer Andrew Keen – the prosumer creates a world of ‘amateurs’ Daniel Chandler – online genre proliferation Henry Jenkins – blurred global boundaries, users of digital technology now

participating in multiple communications Michael Wesch – YouTube as cultural phenomenon Chris Anderson – the internet and the distribution possibilities of capitalism. The

long tail.

Post-modern Media:

Charlie Brooker – blurred boundaries, representation of ‘the real’

Jean Baudrillard – Hyper-reality and simulacra Christopher Butler – Postmodernism: ‘A very short Introduction’ Francis Lyotard – micro narratives replacing macro narratives Noam Chomsky – against postmodernism, Marxist readings Ferdinand de Saussure: signifier and signified are often arbitrary Mikhail Bakhtin – the ‘Carnivalesque’ Pierre Bourdieu – social class is constructed by cultural taste (and in turn by

education) Dick Hebdige – subculture and the meaning of style Jacques Derrida – death of the author (audiences produce meaning) Fredric Jameson – on parody and pastiche Edward Said – on Orientalism Stuart Ewan – style is political Daniel Strinati – we understand the world through the media Anthony Giddens – modernity, not post modernity