Theory and key word checklist

A few people have asked about a definitive list of theories and key words that could be used for each type of question that can come up. We're happy to oblige, with a reminder that students who try and cram as many theories in as possible often end up shooting themselves in the foot! So don't see this as a list of things you have to include, but a list of things that you could include in your responses. You also need to make consistent reference to the toolkit for textual analysis, but you lot know this by now!

This list has been kept general to apply to both AS and A2 Media Studies. If there's something on here that you have no recollection of, you can happily ignore it. Each teacher uses a slightly different set of theories, and there are some completely new ones introduced in second year!

Finally, if you would like to know what these terms actually mean, you'll have to check your notes, or the glossary.

Genre

• Codes
• Conventions
• Fluidity
• Hybrid genre/generic hybridity 
• Iconography 
• Intertextuality
• Paradigm/paradigmatic
• Repetition and difference (Steve Neal) 
• Setting
• Subgenre
• Subversion 
• Typical/atypical 
• Unconventional 

Narrative

• Action code
• Binary oppositions (Levi-Strauss)
• Character roles (Propp)
• Closed narrative
• Diegesis 
• Disruption
• Equilibrium 
• Narrative equilibrium (Todorov) 
• Enigma code
• Linear narrative
• Multi-strand narrative
• Narrative functions
• Non-linear narrative
• Omniscient narrative
• Open narrative
• Restricted narrative
• Symbolic code

Representation

• Agenda
• Archetype
• Amplification
• Bias
• Class (social)
• Cultural Capital
• Ethnocentrism 
• Female chauvinist pigs (Levy)
• Feminism 
• Fetishisation 
• Gaze
• Gender
• Gender binary
• Gender performativity 
• Hegemony
• Hegemonic masculinity 
• Hypermasculinity
• Ideology
• The male gaze (Mulvey)
• Men act, women appear (Berger) 
• National identity 
• The 'new man' 
• Objectification
• Patriarchal hegemony 
• Sex
• Sexualisation 
• Stereotype
• Subcultural capital
• Subjugation 
• Symbolic anihilation 
• Voyeurism 

Audience

• Amplification
• Anchorage
• Bias
• Cultivation theory (Gerbner) 
• Dominant ideology
• Dominant reading
• Effects model/hypodermic needle model
• Encoding/decoding model (Stuart Hall)
• Hegemony
• Ideology
• Marxism
• Middle class
• Mode of address
• Negotiation/negotiated reading
• Oppositional reading
• Polysemy/polysemic readings
• Positioning 
• Preferred reading
• Reception theory (dominant, negotiated, oppositional...)
• Star theory (Dyer)
• Target audience
• Targeting
• Two step flow
• Uses and gratifications model
• Utopian solution (Dyer)
• Working class

Industry

• Celebrity
• Censorship
• Commodity fetishism 
• Commodification
• Conglomeration 
• Convergence
• Distribution
• Major (label/producer etc)
• Production
• Postmodernism
• Promotion
• Regulation
• Star theory (Dyer)
• Streaming
• Synergy