Representation:
Read the Media Magazine feature 'Representation old and new'. This is in MM51 on page 6 - go to our Media Magazine archive to find the article. Complete the following tasks:
1) Why is representation an important concept in Media Studies?
Representations are always, in some way, filtered through someone’s point of view, and carry particular meanings or values. In other words, they are ideological. Thus an understanding of how representations work helps us to identify the way media products create ideological meaning.
2) How does the example of Kate Middleton show the way different meanings can be created in the media?
• A picture editor selects the photo from a whole series of images to be used to illustrate a news story. The image may be cropped, resized and, in some cases, photoshopped.
• A news editor will decide on the way the story will be presented, and the use of captions to pin down, or anchor, the meaning of the image.
• The photograph of Kate Middleton in the newspaper is a re-presentation of what she looks like, with people controlling and manipulating the image at various stages throughout the process.
3) Summarise the section 'The how, who and why of media representation' in 50 words.
When analysing representations, it is always essential to question who is creating them, and why. All media products have a specific function which will impact on the representations they construct.
Producers will consider:
• the expectations and needs of the target audience
• the limitations provided by genre codes
• the type of narrative they wish to create
• their institutional remit.
4) How does Stuart Hall's theory of preferred and oppositional readings fit with representation?
Hall’s critique is known as the ‘Encoding/Decoding Model’, and still challenges conventional assumptions about how media messages are produced, circulated and consumed. Hall argued that audiences do not necessarily accept the ideology of texts passively, but instead draw on their own cultural and social experiences to create their own interpretations. In his view ‘meanings’ and messages are not fixed by the creator of the text, but depend on the relationship between the reader/ viewer, and the text.
5) How has new technology changed the way representations are created in the media?
The style of a specific selfie, the identification with our favourite book or film, or the clothes we choose to be seen wearing become the ‘media language’ choices we make when constructing our own identities online. We may have one consistent identity, but it is more likely that we have a range of different identities that we draw on in different contexts. We may construct these identities in slightly different ways that relate to the groups we are in and the way we identify with that group.
6) What example is provided of how national identity is represented in Britain - and how some audiences use social media to challenge this?
During the 2014 World Cup, The Sun sent a free newspaper to 22 million households in England which represented its own concepts of ‘Englishness’ by symbolic references – queuing, the Sunday roast, Churchill and The Queen – to heroes, values and behaviours that the paper (and its owners, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corps) defined as appropriate expressions of ‘English identity’.
Watch the clip from Luther that we studied in class (Season 1, Episode 1 - minute 7.40-10.00 - you'll need your Greenford Google login to access the clip). Now answer these final two questions:
7) Write a paragraph analysing the dominant and alternative representations you can find in the clip from Luther.
You can see that the main character (Luther) demonstrates stereotypical traits including his size, power and aggression.However, masculinity is represented in a very complex way, Luther is represented as an aggressive, alpha male yet also vulnerable through his psychological instability. This psychological instability is seen at the start where he is seen sitting by himself looking down at a hole in the middle of the floor.
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