Key Concepts in Media Studies - First Lecture.

First off, must remember my seminar group and the lecture / seminar times!  Let’s see... *looks at notes* lecture starts at 15:00 pm, seminar group E at 17:00 pm. Sorted. This introduction lecture had many amusing anecdotes and stories from Paul Manning, which I'm now devastated that I can't remember them - all of those there know what I'm talking about.

Key Themes:

• Power and Control - who exerts power
• Meaning and Culture - when engaging in media texts
• Audience and Effect - how to engage with the target audience
• New and Old Media - basically the same thing, new media is influenced by old media and so on

Key Concepts:

• Production = goods and services
• Consumption = the media audiences consume media, texts and services. How much control do media consumers have over the media production is a key topic of debate in this section.
• Representation = this deals with how structures, symbols and images give particular meanings in adverts or on posters - for example today a beautiful work of art could also be a sign of fear to another (totes learnt just under an hour ago)
• Identity = Media texts draw on images and ideas to construct certain identities to do with locality, gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality and a fancy category dubbed "otherness"
• Regulation = Practices are established to shape and encourage media productions and media representation to occur in certain ways.

Now, this is all well and good but it really comes down to how much power adverts and advertising has on the consumers, are we all just mindless drones that will be so bought into anything we see on TV or are we rational individuals that can regulate ourselves and choose what not to buy or what not to watch. I like to think that it’s the latter but advertising is (one of) the dominate forces in society today.

A prime example of power in media would be Coca Cola. They spent $460 million on adverts in 2009 and then £36 million in the UK.

 When listening to Paul in the lecture I couldn't help but link in some of the ideas of the media being dominant to what we studied in sociology. We studied the ideology of Marxism and how the proletariat (working class) are nothing but pawns (in this case mindless consumers) of the bourgeoisie (the ruling class). Marxism states that the working class is oppressed and it has always been the case, this can be linked to advertising insofar as the media and advertising is run by, essentially, the ruling class / the state and therefore the people are being controlled by the state. Another thing that linked me to this was when Paul put forward the idea of rebelling against the media and advertising when someone defaces an advert and so on. Nice bit of sociology for you avid readers there.

Audience is also a key thing to think about; during the lecture we were shown an advert about L’Oreal with your classic models of the product. Then when the pictures of these models were replaced by an elderly couple the advert completely changed its meaning - the point of the advert was gone and this opens your eyes to how advertisers really choose their target audience, the idea of “core buyers” floods into the equation here also! I personally found it very a-Mew-sing (yes Pokémon)

So yeah, that's my first lecture done! Pretty decent stuff there I can see myself enjoying this module a lot. 
Bye and stuff x