Media Studies
outrage perhaps) and recognise the basis for shared interpretations.
Occasionally, when watching a film, we may find that its technique or budget might militate against the aspirations of its creators. Then we might find ourselves sneering at its appearance and failure, responding to it in ways that were unintended simply because it is not effective in marshalling rhetoric.
One final word on the ‘implied audience’ is worth making. Students sometimes leap to the conclusion that a text featuring particular social groups is providing a cue and a clue to the audience that is being addressed. There is some value in this, of course. If we take hip-hop music as an example, it is a cultural form derived from African-
American experiences and histories. Interestingly, however, it is consumed across a huge variety of cultures, notably white middle-class Americans, who became the key audience for this genre in the 1990s. To assume a direct correlation between appearance and audience, then, is a fallacy and requires some consideration (if this were the case then the main consumers of pornography would be women!). Analytical tools: semiology
Most academic disciplines seem to have an ‘ology’ somewhere in their scope. It indicates that they are a serious, systematic and logical endeavour. The Greek logos – from whence we get the suffix-ology – indicates a rational principle and order to explaining phenomena. The ‘ology’ of media studies (although not ours alone) is called semiology.
The prefix sem comes from the Greek for sign
(rather than the Latin for half) and is to be found in words such as semaphore – signalling with flags or lights – and semantics – the study of meaning in linguistics.
Developed long before and outside media studies, semiology is particularly useful for us in studying the process of media communication. As we have suggested previously, communication has sometimes been seen as a process by which information passes from one person to another, or from one to
Occasionally, when watching a film, we may find that its technique or budget might militate against the aspirations of its creators. Then we might find ourselves sneering at its appearance and failure, responding to it in ways that were unintended simply because it is not effective in marshalling rhetoric.
One final word on the ‘implied audience’ is worth making. Students sometimes leap to the conclusion that a text featuring particular social groups is providing a cue and a clue to the audience that is being addressed. There is some value in this, of course. If we take hip-hop music as an example, it is a cultural form derived from African-
American experiences and histories. Interestingly, however, it is consumed across a huge variety of cultures, notably white middle-class Americans, who became the key audience for this genre in the 1990s. To assume a direct correlation between appearance and audience, then, is a fallacy and requires some consideration (if this were the case then the main consumers of pornography would be women!). Analytical tools: semiology
Most academic disciplines seem to have an ‘ology’ somewhere in their scope. It indicates that they are a serious, systematic and logical endeavour. The Greek logos – from whence we get the suffix-ology – indicates a rational principle and order to explaining phenomena. The ‘ology’ of media studies (although not ours alone) is called semiology.
The prefix sem comes from the Greek for sign
(rather than the Latin for half) and is to be found in words such as semaphore – signalling with flags or lights – and semantics – the study of meaning in linguistics.
Developed long before and outside media studies, semiology is particularly useful for us in studying the process of media communication. As we have suggested previously, communication has sometimes been seen as a process by which information passes from one person to another, or from one to