If you are reading this in 2023 or beyond, hold your horses! This information ONLY applies to the June 2022 version of the component 2 exam! Check out elsewhere for information, because this will just confuse you!
General
- Your exam is in the afternoon of Wednesday 8th June 2022
- This exam is called component two
- It is two and a half hours long. That's 150 minutes
- There are four questions in the exam
- There are three sections in the exam, one for each industry:
A: Television (two questions)B: Magazines (one question)C: Online media (one question)
- You should spend 50 minutes on each industry
- Each question is on a different aspect of media (media language, representation, industry and audience). You should make sure you are talking about the right thing in the right question. ALWAYS LINK EVERYTHING BACK TO THE QUESTION
- However, this paper is SYNOPTIC. This basically means that you can and should refer to things outside of the question to back up the answer you are making. For example, for the representation and Les Revs question, you may argue that Les Revs presents challenging REPRESENTATIONS of gender, further anchored with challenging genre conventions (MEDIA LANGUAGE) in order to specifically target a niche AUDIENCE. This allows Canal + to target audiences it would normally not have reached, thus ensuring financial success (INDUSTRY)
- One question will ask you to evaluate a theory. The theories you could have to evaluate are listed for each question below
- Underline the key terms in each question
- Do a plan for each question and put it on your answer paper. You get marks for the plan!
- This is a standard, 'seen' exam. You will be given nothing apart from the question paper
Section A: Television
- This section is split in to two questions, one on Humans, and one on Les Revenants
- Both the TV questions will be worth 15 marks each
- You should spend 25 minutes on Humans question and 25 minutes on the Les Revenants question
- A good way to revise the TV questions is to watch the key scenes a few times, and work out which scenes are your favourite (and therefore which scenes you will talk about). You should also look at the marketing for Humans, for example the Persona Synthetics trailer we viewed as a class
Humans
- One question is on Humans, and it will be an audience question
- Audience questions are about how the audience uses or takes pleasure from a media product, and how producers target or construct these audiences
- The theories you may be asked to evaluate are Stuart Hall's reception theory and Henry Jenkins' fandom theory
- Spend 25 minutes on this question
- A good argument to make with Humans is that it uses science fiction conventions to target a niche audience, as well as an exciting and experimental advertising campaign to encourage audiences to use social media to help the show go viral.
Les Revenants
- The other question will be on Les Revenants, and it will a representation question
- The exam will refer to Les Revenants as 'The Returned'. Please refer to it as Les Revenants in your answer (or just 'les revs' or even 'lr' after you first write it)
- The theories you may be asked to evaluate are Stuart Hall's representation theory, Liesbet Van Zoonen's feminist theory and bell hooks' feminist theory
- Spend 25 minutes on this question
- A good argument to make with Les Revenants is that it uses atypical representations to create a niche and challenging product. It subverts Van Zoonen's theory frequently!
Section B - Magazines
- This section will have one question, on Woman and Adbusters, and will be a media language question
- Media language questions are basically always 'how does media language combine to make meaning', but you may also be asked to consider genre, narrative, codes and so on
- This question will be worth 30 marks
- You should spend 50 minutes on this question
- Yes, you definitely should compare and/or contrast these magazines!
- A good way to revise the magazine questions is to simply go through the case studies on the blog, and pick out about three pages you will definitely talk about for each one. Once more, I strongly recommend that you discuss the front cover for each magazine
- The theories you may be asked to evaluate are Roland Barthe's semiotic theory (codes, eg proairetic, hermeneutic, etc), and Caude Levi-Strauss's structuralist theory (basically binary oppositions)
- A good argument to make in the magazine question is that Woman magazine is simple, straightforward and sexist. This reflects the time in which it was made, and is done to reinforce patriarchal hegemony. However Adbusters is atypical, subversive and anticapitalist. It is deliberately upsetting to reflect the challenging and awful world in which we live in (!). So it also reflects the time in which it was made (now!)
Section C - Online media
- This section will have one question, on Zoella and Attitude Online, and will be a media industry question
- Industry questions are basically about how media products are made and how they make money. A big part of this is minimising risk ad maximising profit
- This question will be worth 30 marks
- You should spend 50 minutes on this question
- Yes, you definitely should compare and/or contrast these two products!
- A good way to revise online media is to check out the websites for Zoella and Attitude Online. Additionally, you should look at at least two videos from Zoella, from her different accounts, as well as links to her social media accounts and various books and other products. For Attitude Online, it's all about the website, though there are some social media accounts. You should also point out that Attitude online is a spinoff from Attitude, the magazine
- The theories you may be asked to evaluate are Sonia Livingstone and Peter Lunt (regulation, remember the regulation of online media is SPECTACULARLY ineffective, and is essentially self regulated!) and David Hesmondhalgh (the cultural industries, for example vertical integration and so on. Both Attitude and Zoella utilise digital convergence and multimedia integration to minimise risk and to maximise profit)
- A good argument to make for this question is that both of these priducts are simple, straightforward and appeal to a straightforward demographic. For example, Zoella has shifted her focus to slightly older women aged around 30, but her audience is still heterosexual, female, working class, and white. She uses very stereotypical representations and website layout to target these audiences. Attitude ONline is also nothing like the more sophisticated print version, and it uses straightforward and arguably stereotypical representations of gay identity to appeal to straightforward white working class gay audiences. The reasons why both of these websites 'play it safe' issssss (drum roll) to minimise risk and to maximise profit!