You can find a video which sums up all nineteen A-level media theories in just half an hour by clicking here!
Want to have all this information (and loads more) in a format that's loads easier on the eye? Then check out the A-level media studies revision guide, which can be downloaded for free by clicking here!
Want even more theory? Then check out the bonus theory post for 23 additional theories to really push your wider reading!
Want a bit more information on active audience theories, and the precise difference between Shirky and Jenkins? Then click here!
Each theory has a suggested book written by the theorist. But if you want a more teenager friendly book that covers all nineteen theories in detail that is written specifically for A-level media students, I STRONGLY recommend Mark Dixon's Media Theory For A-level!
Here you will find a complete list of the nineteen theories and theorists that you have to know for the A-level media exam. Remember that these are not the only theories or theorist out there, and you may refer to other concepts. Also please keep in mind that very few of these theorists ‘invented’ their concept, and all of them explored many more aspects than just the things we have studied.
The entries here have been adapted from the EDUQAS A-level media studies specification.
MEDIA LANGUAGE
1 - Semiotics - Roland Barthes
(advertising, music videos, newspapers, magazines, online media)
For a useful list of semiotic language, click here!
• Media products communicate a complex series of meanings to their audiences through a range of visual codes and technical codes. These codes can broadly be divided in to proairetic, symbolic, hermeneutic, referential, and so on.
• After many years of codes being repeated, their meaning can become generally agreed upon by society. For example, a scar on the face of a character can function as a hermeneutic code, indicating to the audience that they are ‘the villain’.
• Barthes also considered the importance of myths. Myths are stories and legends, which are passed down from generation to generation. They teach us why the world is the way it is, and also offer clues and instructions on how we behave. For example, in Greek myth of Narcissus, Narcissus was a particularly beautiful young man who turned down every woman as they didn't live up to his expectations. After he ignored Echo for so long, she faded away in to nothing, and became just a voice in the breeze. This is where echoes come from. Narcissus was punished, and was led to fall in love with his own reflection. When he realised that he could consummate his love with himself, he killed himself. This myth warns the listener to not be so self-obsessed, and it is even where we get the term 'narcissist' from
• Media products communicate a complex series of meanings to their audiences through a range of visual codes and technical codes. These codes can broadly be divided in to proairetic, symbolic, hermeneutic, referential, and so on.
• After many years of codes being repeated, their meaning can become generally agreed upon by society. For example, a scar on the face of a character can function as a hermeneutic code, indicating to the audience that they are ‘the villain’.
• Barthes also considered the importance of myths. Myths are stories and legends, which are passed down from generation to generation. They teach us why the world is the way it is, and also offer clues and instructions on how we behave. For example, in Greek myth of Narcissus, Narcissus was a particularly beautiful young man who turned down every woman as they didn't live up to his expectations. After he ignored Echo for so long, she faded away in to nothing, and became just a voice in the breeze. This is where echoes come from. Narcissus was punished, and was led to fall in love with his own reflection. When he realised that he could consummate his love with himself, he killed himself. This myth warns the listener to not be so self-obsessed, and it is even where we get the term 'narcissist' from
• For Barthes, the myths of modern society can be found in media products. Whereas previously we would learn from legends, now we are more likely to discover social norms and values from advertising. For Barthes, a myth is a widely held belief which is reinforced and emphasised through media language. This concept is closely related to hegemony and stereotypes.
Key work – Image, Music, Text
(television)
• Todorov's theory of narrative equilibrium is based around a three act structure. Firstly, a state of balance or equilibrium is established. This balance is disrupted or broken in some way, which leads to a liminal period or period of disruption. This second stage typically takes up the majority of a narrative. Finally, a typical narrative will conclude with a partial restoration of the equilibrium or new equilibrium, which will see the world of the narrative return to some sense of normality.
• Therefore, Todorov suggests that narratives move from one state of equilibrium to another, with the majority of a narrative focusing on conflict or imbalance.
• This structure can be summed up as:
• Equilibrium
• Disequilibrium
• Partial restoration of the equilibrium
• All narratives share a basic structure that involves a movement from one state of equilibrium to another
• The idea that these two states of equilibrium are separated by a period of imbalance or disequilibrium
• The way in which narratives are resolved can have particular ideological significance.
Key work – Genres in Discourse
(television)
• Producers rely on audience's desire to see both repetition and difference of genre conventions: seeking out the familiar, while also seeking something vaguely new and different.
• Over time, genres change (generic fluidity), combine with one another (generic hybridity) and form entirely new genres and subgenres
• Genres are useful for producers from an industrial perspective, as they allow for the precise and specific targeting of certain specific audiences
Key work - Genre and Contemporary Hollywood
(Advertising, music videos, newspapers, television, magazines, online media)
• All media products have an underlying structure, and knowledge of this structure helps us to analyse them.
• One of the fundamental ways that we make sense of not only media products but our lives in general is through the idea of binary oppositions, or two diametrically opposed concepts that end up defining each other (good luck trying to explain to someone the concept of day without using the concept of night!)
• Binary oppositions and the way they are used by producers in narratives demonstrate their ideological significance
Key work - Myth and Meaning
(television, online media)
• In postmodern culture the boundaries between the ‘real’ world and the world of the media have collapsed and that it is no longer possible to distinguish between what is reality and what is simulation. In fact, it really doesn't matter which is which!
• Therefore, in this postmodern age of simulacra, audiences are constantly bombarded with images which no longer refer to anything ‘real’
• Because of this, we are now in a situation that media images have come to seem more ‘real’ than the reality they supposedly represent. This concept is referred to as 'hyperreality'
Key work – Simulacra and Simulation
(advertising, music videos, newspapers, television, online media)
• Representations are constructed through media language, and reflect the ideological perspective of the producer
• The relationship between concepts and signs is governed by codes
• Stereotyping, as a form of representation, reduces people to a few simple characteristics or traits. However, stereotyping is useful, as it allows producers to easily construct media products, and audiences to easily decode them.
• Stereotyping tends to occur where there are inequalities of power, as subordinate or excluded groups are constructed as different or ‘other’ (e.g. through ethnocentrism).
Key work - Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (Editor)
(advertising, music videos, magazines, online media)
• Audiences are not passive, and media products allow the audience to construct their own identities
• Audiences can pick and mix which ideologies suit them, and completely ignore the elements of the product which they do not agree with in a process of negotiation similar to the one suggested by Stuart Hall
Key work - Media, Gender and Identity: An Introduction
(advertising, music videos, television, magazines)
• Gender is constructed through codes and conventions of media products, and the idea of what is male and what is female changes over time
• Women’s bodies are used in media products as a spectacle for heterosexual male audiences, which reinforces patriarchal hegemony
Key work – Image, Music, Text
2 - Narratology - Tzvetan Todorov
(television)
• Todorov's theory of narrative equilibrium is based around a three act structure. Firstly, a state of balance or equilibrium is established. This balance is disrupted or broken in some way, which leads to a liminal period or period of disruption. This second stage typically takes up the majority of a narrative. Finally, a typical narrative will conclude with a partial restoration of the equilibrium or new equilibrium, which will see the world of the narrative return to some sense of normality.
• Therefore, Todorov suggests that narratives move from one state of equilibrium to another, with the majority of a narrative focusing on conflict or imbalance.
• This structure can be summed up as:
• Equilibrium
• Disequilibrium
• Partial restoration of the equilibrium
• All narratives share a basic structure that involves a movement from one state of equilibrium to another
• The idea that these two states of equilibrium are separated by a period of imbalance or disequilibrium
• The way in which narratives are resolved can have particular ideological significance.
Key work – Genres in Discourse
3 - Genre theory - Steve Neale
(television)
• Producers rely on audience's desire to see both repetition and difference of genre conventions: seeking out the familiar, while also seeking something vaguely new and different.
• Over time, genres change (generic fluidity), combine with one another (generic hybridity) and form entirely new genres and subgenres
• Genres are useful for producers from an industrial perspective, as they allow for the precise and specific targeting of certain specific audiences
Key work - Genre and Contemporary Hollywood
4 - Structuralism - Claude Lévi-Strauss
(Advertising, music videos, newspapers, television, magazines, online media)
• All media products have an underlying structure, and knowledge of this structure helps us to analyse them.
• One of the fundamental ways that we make sense of not only media products but our lives in general is through the idea of binary oppositions, or two diametrically opposed concepts that end up defining each other (good luck trying to explain to someone the concept of day without using the concept of night!)
• Binary oppositions and the way they are used by producers in narratives demonstrate their ideological significance
Key work - Myth and Meaning
5 - Postmodernism - Jean Baudrillard
(television, online media)
• In postmodern culture the boundaries between the ‘real’ world and the world of the media have collapsed and that it is no longer possible to distinguish between what is reality and what is simulation. In fact, it really doesn't matter which is which!
• Therefore, in this postmodern age of simulacra, audiences are constantly bombarded with images which no longer refer to anything ‘real’
• Because of this, we are now in a situation that media images have come to seem more ‘real’ than the reality they supposedly represent. This concept is referred to as 'hyperreality'
Key work – Simulacra and Simulation
REPRESENTATION
6 - Theories of representation - Stuart Hall
(advertising, music videos, newspapers, television, online media)
• Representations are constructed through media language, and reflect the ideological perspective of the producer
• The relationship between concepts and signs is governed by codes
• Stereotyping, as a form of representation, reduces people to a few simple characteristics or traits. However, stereotyping is useful, as it allows producers to easily construct media products, and audiences to easily decode them.
• Stereotyping tends to occur where there are inequalities of power, as subordinate or excluded groups are constructed as different or ‘other’ (e.g. through ethnocentrism).
Key work - Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (Editor)
7 - Theories of identity - David Gauntlett
(advertising, music videos, magazines, online media)
• Audiences are not passive, and media products allow the audience to construct their own identities
• Audiences can pick and mix which ideologies suit them, and completely ignore the elements of the product which they do not agree with in a process of negotiation similar to the one suggested by Stuart Hall
Key work - Media, Gender and Identity: An Introduction
8 - Feminist theory - Liesbet van Zoonen
(advertising, music videos, television, magazines)
• Gender is constructed through codes and conventions of media products, and the idea of what is male and what is female changes over time
• Women’s bodies are used in media products as a spectacle for heterosexual male audiences, which reinforces patriarchal hegemony
Click here for a very blunt example of men's bodies and women's bodies are constructed differently in a mainstream Hollywood film!
Key work - Feminist Media Studies
(advertising, music videos, television, magazines)
• Feminism is a struggle to end patriarchal hegemony and the domination of women
• Feminism is not a lifestyle choice: it is a political commitment
• "Feminism is for everybody", and certainly not just for those that identify as women
• Race, class and gender all determine the extent to which individuals re exploited and oppressed
Key work - Feminist Media Studies
9 - Feminist theory - bell hooks
(advertising, music videos, television, magazines)
• Feminism is a struggle to end patriarchal hegemony and the domination of women
• Feminism is not a lifestyle choice: it is a political commitment
• "Feminism is for everybody", and certainly not just for those that identify as women
• Race, class and gender all determine the extent to which individuals re exploited and oppressed
Click here for a short primer on bell hooks, including a brief except from her most famous book!
Key Work – Feminism is for Everyone
(television, magazines, online)
• Identity is a performance, and it is constructed through a series of acts and 'expressions' that we perform every day.
• While there are biological differences dictated by sex, our gender is defined through this series of acts. These may include the ways we walk, talk, dress, and so on
• Therefore, there is no gender identity behind these expressions of gender
• Gender performativity is not a singular act, but a repetition and a ritual. It is outlined and reinforced through dominant patriarchal ideologies.
Key work – Gender Trouble
(advertising, music videos, online media)
• Postcolonialism is the study of the impact that being under direct rule has had on former colonies. For example, despite being a tiny island, Britain colonised and declared ownership of many countries, including India and Australia.
• These ideas and attitudes continue to shape contemporary attitudes to race and ethnicity in the postcolonial era
• These postcolonial attitudes have constructed racial hierarchies in our society, where, for example, white people are by and large given more positive and important roles than BME people
• Media producers are also guilty of using binary oppositions to reinforce BME people and characters as 'others'
Key work – After Empire
(film industry, newspapers, radio, videogames, magazines)
• 'The media' is controlled by an increasingly small number of companies who are driven by profit and power
• By concentrating media production in to the hands of so few companies, there is an increasing lack of variety, creativity and quality
• We need more socially diverse and democratic patterns of ownership help to create varied and adventurous media productions.
Key work – Power Without Responsibility
(film industry, newspapers, radio, videogames, television, magazines, online media)
• 'Regulation' refers to the rules and restrictions that every media industry has to follow. For example the UK film industry must use the BBFC's age certifications, and television must adhere to OFCOM's regulations
• There is a struggle in recent UK regulation policy between the need to further the interests of citizens (by offering protection from harmful or offensive material), and the need to further the interests of consumers (by ensuring choice, value for money, and market competition)
• The increasing power of global media corporations, together with the rise of convergent media technologies and developments in the production, distribution and marketing of digital media have placed traditional approaches to media regulation at risk.
• Online media production, distribution and circulation in particular often allows producers to completely ignore media regulations
Key work - Media Regulation: Governance and the interests of citizens and consumers
(film industry, newspapers, videogames, television, online media)
• 'Culture' and 'industry' are two terms that are often at odds with one another
• Producers try to minimise risk and maximise audiences through vertical and horizontal integration,
• They also standardise and format their cultural products (e.g. through the use of stars, genres, and serials)
• The largest companies or conglomerates now operate across a number of different cultural industries.
• The radical potential of the internet has been contained to some extent by its partial incorporation into a large, profit-orientated set of cultural industries.
Key work – The Cultural Industries
(videogames)
• This old-fashioned view of how media products effect audiences is associated with the Frankfurt School in Germany
• The effects model suggests that media can implant ideas in the mind of the audience directly. It is also known as the hypodermic needle model
• Audiences acquire attitudes, emotional responses and behaviours through media products modelling ideologies
• If a media product represents behaviour such as violence or physical aggression, this can lead audience members to imitate those forms of behaviour
• This model has many issues, though it still proves popular with the general public, newspapers and politicians who should frankly read a media studies textbook or two.
Key work - Psychology Classics All Psychology Students Should Read: The Bobo Doll Experiment
(advertising, newspapers, magazines, online media)
• Being exposed to repeated patterns of representation over long periods of time can shape and influence the way in which people perceive the world around them (i.e. cultivating particular views and opinions)
• This process of cultivation reinforces mainstream hegemonic values (dominant ideologies).
Key work - Against the Mainstream: The Selected Works of George Gerbner
(advertising, newspapers, radio, videogames, television, magazines)
• To watch/read/play/listen to/consume a media product is a process involving encoding by producers and decoding by audiences
• There are millions of possible responses that can be affected through factors such as upbringing, cultural capital, ethnicity, age, social class, and so on
• Hall narrowed this down to three ways in which messages and meanings may be decoded:
• The preferred reading - the dominant-hegemonic position, where the audience understands and accepts the ideology of the producer
• The negotiated reading - where the ideological implications of producer’s message is agreed with in general, although the message is negotiated or picked apart by the audience, and they may disagree with certain aspects
• The oppositional reading - where the producer’s message is understood, but the audience disagrees with the ideological perspective in every respect
Key work - Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies
(radio, videogames, television, online media)
• Fandom refers to a particularly organised and motivated audience of a certain media producer franchise
• Unlike the generic audience or the classic spectator, fans are active participants in the construction and circulation of textual meanings
• Fans appropriate texts and read them in ways that are not fully intended by the media producers (‘textual poaching’). Examples of this may manifest in conventions, fan fiction and so on
• Rather than just play a videogame or watch a TV show, fans construct their social and cultural identities through borrowing and utilising mass culture images, and may use this ‘subcultural capital’ to form social bonds. For example, through online forums like Reddit or 4chan.
Key work – Textual Poaching
(newspaper, radio, videogames, online media)
• New media, as in the Internet and digital technologies, have had a significant effect on the relations between media and audiences
• Just thinking of audience members as passive consumers of mass media content is no longer possible in the age of the Internet. Now, media consumers have become producers who ‘speak back to’ the media in various ways, creating and sharing content with one another.
• This can be accomplished through comments sections, internet forums, and creating media products such as blogs or vlogs
X - However, this theory can and should be criticised. Arguably the media industries are just as exclusionary as they always have been, and audiences are less 'producers' than 'unwitting advertisers'., promoting pre-existing products through retweets, fan accounts and derivative vlogs that could never be financially successful without aggressive monetisation!
Key work – Here Comes Everyone!
Key Work – Feminism is for Everyone
10 - Theories of gender performativity - Judith Butler
(television, magazines, online)
• Identity is a performance, and it is constructed through a series of acts and 'expressions' that we perform every day.
• While there are biological differences dictated by sex, our gender is defined through this series of acts. These may include the ways we walk, talk, dress, and so on
• Therefore, there is no gender identity behind these expressions of gender
• Gender performativity is not a singular act, but a repetition and a ritual. It is outlined and reinforced through dominant patriarchal ideologies.
Key work – Gender Trouble
11 - Theories around ethnicity and postcolonial theory - Paul Gilroy
(advertising, music videos, online media)
• Postcolonialism is the study of the impact that being under direct rule has had on former colonies. For example, despite being a tiny island, Britain colonised and declared ownership of many countries, including India and Australia.
• These ideas and attitudes continue to shape contemporary attitudes to race and ethnicity in the postcolonial era
• These postcolonial attitudes have constructed racial hierarchies in our society, where, for example, white people are by and large given more positive and important roles than BME people
• Media producers are also guilty of using binary oppositions to reinforce BME people and characters as 'others'
Key work – After Empire
MEDIA INDUSTRIES
12 - Power and media industries - Curran and Seaton
(film industry, newspapers, radio, videogames, magazines)
• 'The media' is controlled by an increasingly small number of companies who are driven by profit and power
• By concentrating media production in to the hands of so few companies, there is an increasing lack of variety, creativity and quality
• We need more socially diverse and democratic patterns of ownership help to create varied and adventurous media productions.
Key work – Power Without Responsibility
13 - Regulation - Sonia Livingstone and Peter Lunt
(film industry, newspapers, radio, videogames, television, magazines, online media)
• 'Regulation' refers to the rules and restrictions that every media industry has to follow. For example the UK film industry must use the BBFC's age certifications, and television must adhere to OFCOM's regulations
• There is a struggle in recent UK regulation policy between the need to further the interests of citizens (by offering protection from harmful or offensive material), and the need to further the interests of consumers (by ensuring choice, value for money, and market competition)
• The increasing power of global media corporations, together with the rise of convergent media technologies and developments in the production, distribution and marketing of digital media have placed traditional approaches to media regulation at risk.
• Online media production, distribution and circulation in particular often allows producers to completely ignore media regulations
Key work - Media Regulation: Governance and the interests of citizens and consumers
14 - Cultural industries - David Hesmondhalgh
(film industry, newspapers, videogames, television, online media)
• 'Culture' and 'industry' are two terms that are often at odds with one another
• Producers try to minimise risk and maximise audiences through vertical and horizontal integration,
• They also standardise and format their cultural products (e.g. through the use of stars, genres, and serials)
• The largest companies or conglomerates now operate across a number of different cultural industries.
• The radical potential of the internet has been contained to some extent by its partial incorporation into a large, profit-orientated set of cultural industries.
Key work – The Cultural Industries
AUDIENCES
15 - Media effects - Albert Bandura
(videogames)
• This old-fashioned view of how media products effect audiences is associated with the Frankfurt School in Germany
• The effects model suggests that media can implant ideas in the mind of the audience directly. It is also known as the hypodermic needle model
• Audiences acquire attitudes, emotional responses and behaviours through media products modelling ideologies
• If a media product represents behaviour such as violence or physical aggression, this can lead audience members to imitate those forms of behaviour
• This model has many issues, though it still proves popular with the general public, newspapers and politicians who should frankly read a media studies textbook or two.
Key work - Psychology Classics All Psychology Students Should Read: The Bobo Doll Experiment
16 - Cultivation theory - George Gerbner
(advertising, newspapers, magazines, online media)
• Being exposed to repeated patterns of representation over long periods of time can shape and influence the way in which people perceive the world around them (i.e. cultivating particular views and opinions)
• This process of cultivation reinforces mainstream hegemonic values (dominant ideologies).
Key work - Against the Mainstream: The Selected Works of George Gerbner
17 - Reception theory - Stuart Hall
(advertising, newspapers, radio, videogames, television, magazines)
• To watch/read/play/listen to/consume a media product is a process involving encoding by producers and decoding by audiences
• There are millions of possible responses that can be affected through factors such as upbringing, cultural capital, ethnicity, age, social class, and so on
• Hall narrowed this down to three ways in which messages and meanings may be decoded:
• The preferred reading - the dominant-hegemonic position, where the audience understands and accepts the ideology of the producer
• The negotiated reading - where the ideological implications of producer’s message is agreed with in general, although the message is negotiated or picked apart by the audience, and they may disagree with certain aspects
• The oppositional reading - where the producer’s message is understood, but the audience disagrees with the ideological perspective in every respect
Key work - Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies
18 - Fandom - Henry Jenkins
(radio, videogames, television, online media)
• Fandom refers to a particularly organised and motivated audience of a certain media producer franchise
• Unlike the generic audience or the classic spectator, fans are active participants in the construction and circulation of textual meanings
• Fans appropriate texts and read them in ways that are not fully intended by the media producers (‘textual poaching’). Examples of this may manifest in conventions, fan fiction and so on
• Rather than just play a videogame or watch a TV show, fans construct their social and cultural identities through borrowing and utilising mass culture images, and may use this ‘subcultural capital’ to form social bonds. For example, through online forums like Reddit or 4chan.
Key work – Textual Poaching
19 - ‘End of audience’ theories - Clay Shirky
(newspaper, radio, videogames, online media)
• New media, as in the Internet and digital technologies, have had a significant effect on the relations between media and audiences
• Just thinking of audience members as passive consumers of mass media content is no longer possible in the age of the Internet. Now, media consumers have become producers who ‘speak back to’ the media in various ways, creating and sharing content with one another.
• This can be accomplished through comments sections, internet forums, and creating media products such as blogs or vlogs
X - However, this theory can and should be criticised. Arguably the media industries are just as exclusionary as they always have been, and audiences are less 'producers' than 'unwitting advertisers'., promoting pre-existing products through retweets, fan accounts and derivative vlogs that could never be financially successful without aggressive monetisation!
Key work – Here Comes Everyone!
