WIDER CONTEXTS AND MEDIA DEBATES: INTERNET FREEDOMS AND STATE CONTROLS

Today i thought we'd follow up on the session where we were looking at the case of the Raqqa group and citizen journalism.  It also links us to Edward Snowden and Wikki-leaks and, prosaically [beyond what pught to be out humanitarian concerns] it links really well into Section a of the AQA paper on wider contexts and media debates and would be a good focus for a Section B case study on blogging and internet democracy.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL RAIF BADAWI

BBC NEWS JANUARY 2015 RAIF BADAWI

BBC NEWS JUNE 2015 RAIF BADAWI

RAQQA CITIZEN JOURNALISM

Here's where we might start to look at wider issues - the wider context/media debates of Section a as much as case-study for Section B

This programme is a good introduction to Edward Snowden - link may disappear soon so watch as soon as you can

BBC PROGRAMME ON SNOWDEN - SPIES AND THE LAW

In case the link fails here is one to the BBC news contextualisation of the story

EDWARD SNOWDEN BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT

CITIZEN JOURNALISM CASE STUDY

Today we'll be looking at an interesting feature from the BBC which considers a case-study of real citizen journalism and the cost of it.  these pieces are very moving but should start a discussion around the issue

BBC CITIZEN JOURNALISM

INTENTIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS

Remember to start by considering the media mantra:

WHAT TYPE OF PRODUCT IS IT? [WHAT IS ITS INTENTION?]
WHO IS IT AIMED AT? [AUDIENCE]
WHAT MIGHT BE THAT AUDIENCES EXPECTATIONS OF SUCH A PRODUCT?
DOES THIS PRODUCT MEET SUCH EXPECTATIONS - HOW? WHY NOT?
IS THE PRODUCT EFFECTIVE IN ITS INTENTIONS?



We then need to look at application of theory - how might Hall be applied to this one?

unwitting-star-burger-kings-blow-job-ad-finally-lashes-out


gap-pulls-controversial-ad-image/

CELEBRITY SPORTSMEN

Here we're going to take a look at two very different adverts for products that both feature celebrity footballers endorsing their products. We here go beyond two-step flow to explore what these products indicate about the prevailing zeitgeist and our world of obsession with celebrity and the lives of others.

Product 1 is an advert for Dr Dre Beats headphones.
Product 2 is part of the campaign for Adidas football boots.

[1] How do the two products represent the life of celebrity footballers?

[2] Media commentator and theorist John Fiske wrote : 
‘our society teaches men that their masculinity depends upon successful performance’ (Fiske, 2010) and that 'the media promotes unrealistic and dangerous role models.'

How do media products such as these reinforce or contradict such a view?

[3] How have changes in social media [these two adverts totaled over 27,000,000 hits on You Tube] impacted on the spread of commercial messages and how advertisers promote their products?

Identity theory

Theorist: Judith Butler

Judith Butler is a Professor of Comparative Literature and Rhetoric at the University of California. She is a well known theorist who talks about power, gender, sexuality and identity. 


 'Performativity' is her theory as to how identities are a performance of day to day life, and that identity is not a fixed state but one which is constantly changing. In her theory it is not so much who we are but what we do, our performance, that defines us


You act differently with your parents compared to your best friend: teachers act differently within class compared to what they would at home. So we have the clear  sense of not being just one person, but instead being one person who shows different sides of personalities and performs differently all the time depending on the context and the identities around them. 


 The media over the years has constructed a stereotypical image of teenagers through the television they watch, in the newspapers they read, in the music listened to - these stereotypical images surround us. Relating to Butler's theory on performance, we can see that the majority of teenagers in this modern world are performing in a way they believe is expected of them; they are performing to societies expectations. 

So from this studywe might ask of such events as the 2011 riots: is it all just a performancewith youth acting to the expectations which the public have of British Teenagers? 
In a majority of the newspapers covering the riot stories, they featured shocking images entailing teenagers during the riots and the destruction in which they caused. for many, they looked as if there were acting out scenes from 'Kidulthood' or Skins or any other modern youth drama

borrowed interest - a primer

A great example of borrowed interest or media inter-textuality from the Sun

RETURN OF THE SON OF BEACH BODY READY - REMEMBER?

Last year we spent a few happy lessons dealing with the fall-out from a controversial advert : the are you beach body ready campaign.

Here is another campaign that treads similar ground



slimming-pills-xls-medical-ad-banned-irresponsible-approach-body-image

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/dec/15/as-itv-prepares-for-the-sound-of-music-live-are-we-watching-tvs-future

BUNS AND STUFF

In case the news-blip passed you by, Amanda Platell  a columnist for the Daily Mail made ripples by suggesting in print that one of the Bake-off contestants, a middle-class woman called Flora Shedden, and her chocolate carousel, were booted off the BBC’s Bake Off cake contest in favour of Muslim mum Nadiya Hussain, gay doctor Tamal Ray and “new man” Ian Cumming, because she wasn’t “politically correct” enough. Perhaps, wrote Platell, “if she’d made a chocolate mosque she’d have stood a better chance”.


Follow the link below to the article on the Daily Mail coverage of Bake-off. How can a programme about buns create such an ideological storm?
In the lesson today we're going to explore some of these issues



DAILY MAIL AND BAKE-OFF

LESSON 920152: WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

The figure of the vampire has been a rich source of ideas for films for almost 100 years.  Frederick Murnau's Nosferatu [1921] being the first great introduction to a figure familiar to audiences from literature and stage adaptations of the Bram Stoker novel.
The first talking Dracula - and the genre setting template - was Universal Film's DRACULA [1931] starring Bela Lugosi that went on to have a series of film's based around the immortal figure of the Count.  The Hammer Films series in the 1960s has become a classic representation of the vampire. the late 20th Century saw a glut of vampire inspired films - Francis Ford Coppola's DRACULA ; INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE; VAMPIRE 2000; BLADE TRILOGY - all of which explored the vampire legend.
Post 9/11 the figure has seemingly developed into a much more sexualised figure with TWILIGHT franchise and representations on TV such as TRUE-BLOOD, BEING HUMAN.
Each generation has seemingly constructed a version that reflects that era's concerns and values: the zeitgeist
Consider that in the post WW1 era of the 1920s with concerns of re-populating a European society devastated by war and the destruction of the 'flower of humanity' the vampire was a figure that represented a homophobic ideology.  In the 1930s it represented the blood-sucking rich preying on the working poor [the time of the Great Depression].  In the liberated 1960s the representation was sexual and sexualised represented by the change in victims and their seduction by the creature. In the 1990s - with the repeal of capital punishment and a more liberal approach to mental health -  the vampire is no longer a monster but a figure to be understood rather than hunted and destroyed. Post 9/11 the desire for romantic escape from the horrors of an uncertain world and the issues of 'living together' underpin Twilight and True Blood and certainly Being Human.
Much of the enduring fascination has been ascribed by psychologists [and they should surely know!] to a sense of The Other.

,Vampire’s can be found in the folklore of virtually all cultures.  Their physical appearance may have changed but their social function has remained the same, suggesting that the vampire is as much a symbolic being as a supernatural one.

Within Eastern European lore vampires are often depicted as dirty, stumbling and mindless peasants whose victims are often their own family or neighbours. Their existence was used to explain sudden deaths or the spread of disease within the community, clearly indicating that the image of the vampire, for this culture at least, was one of a contagious pestilence. From what you have already researched it should be clear that such a description is dramatically different to the image most Western readers and audiences are familiar with. To us, [despite the gruesome representation in Murnau’s Nosferatu – which itself clearly owes much to the mid-European background of the auteur himself] the vampire of Hollywood has - in general - come to be represented as a clean and sophisticated creature, a supernatural being that is personified by the Count in Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula (1897). In this narrative, the vampire comes to English shores from abroad and begins its seduction of virginal young women, biting their necks and turning them into his undead brides. Even from this simple description of Stoker’s complex narrative, a similar symbolic value to the East European folklore emerges: this time the vampire is a sexual predator that infects the innocent with their disease.

From these examples emerge two of the vampire’s most potent symbolic qualities:

·         they are a direct threat to the safety of the family unit  

·         their primary symbolic function is to represent that which is Other.

The Other

As a broad definition, the term the Other refers to those characters who stand in opposition to characters who represent the ‘normal’ within any narrative. In essence, the Other is simply that which is wholly different to the ‘normal’. Relating this to the vampire, consider any adaptation of Stoker’s Dracula: here ‘normal’ is represented by the protagonists Jonathan Harker and Van Helsing whilst the Other is, obviously, Count Dracula and those he infects. The opposition is obvious in that Harker and Helsing are good, moral, and pure, whereas Dracula is evil, immoral, and diseased. To take the character’s symbolic values further, it can be suggested that the protagonists represent a patriarchal, heterosexual and (more than likely) Christian society that is attacked by the satanic force of the vampire.

Clearly then the vampire, in all of its manifestations, is a prime example of the Other. But, in recent years the figure of the vampire has steadily changed: although historically depicted as a disease-ridden, aggressive and uncommunicative creature, contemporary depictions of the vampire have given them back their humanity and their voice so that they can communicate the pain of their ‘illness’ and reflect, in a melancholy manner, upon the horrors of immortality. Films such as  Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992) and Interview with a Vampire (Neil Jordan, 1994) all provide the opportunity for their vampire (anti)heroes to speak about their condition and so elicit the audience’s sympathy. Some vampires have such a loathing for their condition that they actively hunt and kill their own kind [Blade; Seline]. Such a transition clearly lends a certain sense of humanity to them as they talk of their human past, of those they have left behind and the horror of the vampiric infection. These recollections add a further sense of sympathy to these creatures, suggesting that most, if not all, contemporary vampires are as much victim as villain, and remind the audience that they were once us. In this context, these vampires can be read as ambiguous as they question their status as Other: their sense of disgust and regret for their condition implies a yearning to return to the normal, to be accepted as human as opposed to inhuman. Yet, for all of this, their fundamental sense of Otherness still remains: they are still vampiric regardless of their emotions, their regret and the ‘good’ deeds they perform. It would seem then that once one has become the Other there is no possibility of a return to the ‘normal’.

With this in mind, we can now begin to explore a very contemporary spin on the mythic tale of the Other, the ideas surrounding the representation of vampires in  David Slade’s 30 Days of Night (2007) returns the vampire to its original state as visceral and brutal monsters who crave only one thing – blood.
TASK:
From the sequence viewed [the arrest of the stranger to the group of survivors taking refuge in the attic] in what ways have the vampires been represented as 'Other' 

LESSON 820152: THE OTHER

We now need to move on with a consideration of a different representation of 'monster' : the vampire.
We will be using some ideas that have found their way into popular culture from cinemas changing representations of what has become a classic monster.
As we shall see, each generation creates a reinterpretation of the vampire. such evolving representations tell us much about the values and concerns of each era - the zeitgeist.  the fact that the figure of the vampire is capable of constant reinvention also says much for how it resonates with deep psychological needs of audiences over a period of almost 100 years.
The accompanying booklet to the lessons fills in some of the history and developments of this classic monster enabling us to spend the next few lessons exploring a contemporary manifestation of the vampire in David Slade's 2007 film  30 Days of Night.  In this we are concerned with notions of the Other and in the vampire as terrorist.

In the opening sequence we have the 'Classic hollywood Realist' conventions of the horror genre layered on top of the Todorov narrative structure we are now familiar with.

Equilibrium-disruption-complicating events-climax-resolution-new equilibrium.

The film opens with a sketched outline of the lives of the people of Barrow - their domestic situations, their frustrations, their coping with the particular climate of Barrow.

TASK:

What observations does it offer of small town American life?
What impression do we have of its people and their values?

RLA Digital Media: Lessons 1-5

After a few technical issues, I'm finally able to post on the blog!

Digital media is any media that is encoded in a machine-readable format. Digital media can be created, viewed, distributed, modified and preserved on computers. Computer programs and software; digital imagery; digital video; web pages and websites including social media; data and databases; digital audio such as mp3s; and e-books are all examples of digital media.
Digital media is frequently contrasted with print media, such as printed newspapers and magazines, and other traditional or analog media, such as film and audio tape.

We looked at our individual consumption of such media formats, and many were shocked to discover the huge amount of time we spend consuming digital media! On average, we discovered that youth tend to skew the data of the overall public, and that you babies of the digital revolution consume far more digital media in the form of social networking, music and video streaming and computer games than your older counterparts, who tend to use digital media more for video calling, reading e books and doing research.

You can see from

But why have they had this effect on our media consumption?

You can use a smartphone to:

• Watch TV (both legally through sites like iPlayer or Netflix.com, and illegally through streaming websites).
• Stream films (again, both legally and illegally)
• Shop online
• Be advertised to in the form of banner ads on games, internet sites, apps etc.
• Broadcast advertising is quickly becoming far more usable and prevalent on smartphones - youtube has started using adverts before their videos on phones now, not just on desktop accessed videos. This change only came into effect in 2014, a big change in how they advertise to us!

 Simply put, this is technological convergence, a buzzword from your AS Media Studies exam in May.

Jenkins says that convergence is:

"the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behaviour of media audiences who would go almost anywhere in search of the kinds of entertainment experiences they wanted“

Essentially, when focusing on technological convergence alone, it is the accessing of multiple media platforms from a single device, or the ability to do so. Not to be confused with synergy!

Mobile Apps study
U.S users spend the majority of their time consuming digital media within mobile applications, according to a new study released by comscore in 2014.
That means mobile apps, including the number 1 most popular app Facebook, eat up more of our time than desktop usage or mobile web surfing, accounting for 52% of the time spent using digital media.
Combined with mobile web, mobile usage as a whole accounts for 60% of time spent, while desktop-based digital media consumption makes up the remaining 40%.
Apps today are driving the majority of media consumption activity, the report claims, now accounting for 7 out of every 8 minutes of media consumption on mobile devices. On smartphones, app activity is even higher, at 88% usage versus 82% on tablets.

 

As you can see, it is clear that desktop usage is falling whilst mobile usage, particularly in the form of "apps" is increasing month by month, with a huge leap of 12% in just over a year.
Why are apps so appealing?

Well, they are converged technology access through more converged technology! The average consumer is lazy; we like to access our media "on the go" and instantly, with minimal effort on own part. Apps allow us to do this in the easiest possible way. They are often free, or very low cost, have easy user interfaces than their web-counterparts, and speed up the process of accessing the media products we love.

So, with all of this in mind, think back to your AS media exam and consider the question you were asked:

[TASK] What impact has convergence had on the way that audiences access and consume the media product from your case study?

LESSON 720152: ONE MILE AWAY

This sequence of lessons we are going to develop some of our ideas a little further. We have explored some of the ideas of veracity and verisimilitude of the fictionalised reality of 'based on a true story' and seen that our understanding is very much from one perspective: Aileen Wurnous.
The film One Mile Away is a C4 documentary which charts the attempts of Shabba and Flash over a period of a year to find a truce between two warring Birmingham gangs - the Johnsons and the Burger Boys.
The story of the film begins with the film 1 Day which was made in 2008. the film was a crowd funded Kick Starter fictional narrative of gangs and drug deals in the city. The film maker was contacted in 2010 by Shabba one of the gang members of the Johnsons to see if she could use her contacts with the Burger Boys from the filming to broker a peace deal between the two gangs.
From the start, the subjects of the film are not treated as wholly good. Shabba openly admits that he would rather kill a policeman than a rival ganger. To get the filming they need they enlist the help of Zilla who has served eight years for attempting to shoot two police-officers. In this sense, the documentary tells a different kind of 'truth' to Monster.

TASK:

[1] Compare the poster products for the two films:

What representations are offered - how are these constructed?

Do the posters represent differences in the products [fictional film; documentary film]? How is this done?

Are different audiences targeted by these products - How is this represented?

LESSON 620152: RESOLUTIONS

The 'end' of the film fulfils all of the ideas we looked at in AS regarding Todorov's Narrative Structure Theory.

Equilibrium  

Disruption 

Complicating events 

Climax 

Resolution / New Equilibrium

The final sequences draw together much of what has happened previously in the film and what we know of Aileen's character and that of Selby. The resolution of the 'disruption' is the capture and trial of Aileen. The betrayal of Selby and Aileen's acceptance of it, her own final sacrifice to her love for Selby has been set up by all we have learned of Aileen - her capacity to endure; her capacity for self-sacrifice; her determination and resolve; her desperate need to be loved; perhaps even her desire for notoriety and attention.

 

What we now need to do is try to bring our understanding of the film to a conclusion as to how you feel about the characters, events and the way that the film has represented them to audiences.

 

We will watch the 'making ofs' and the documentary background in order to support how we come to this conclusion - what the film-makers were trying to do [their intention; their values and ideologies; their agendas] and the actuality of Aileen [what she says of herself; her beliefs about what she did and why].

Nick Broomfield, the documentary film-maker who spent many days interviewing Aileen for his two documentaries - the Selling of A Serial Killer and Life and Death of A Serial Killer - believes that there is a 'truth' that only a narrative fictional approach such as in MONSTER can get at when those involved are reluctant to talk about events that involved them.

 

Task:

 

[1] Assign the key events of the film to the Todorov model by creating a timeline of the film.

 

[2]  Write a 500 word evaluation of your response to the film.

For Q2 : Remember to include an analysis of the film rather than a description of its narrative. How does the film create its story? What devices are used? Consider the mise-en-scene but also think of genre and narrative devices and the expectations of audiences.

A plan might include:

• Brief introduction [look at IMDB for data]
• The style of the film - how is the story narrated [devices?] How does it fit into a genre - which features lead you to this conclusion?
• Analyse a key sequence [the meeting; a killing; the relationship; the ending]
• Why was the film successful [box office; awards; critical reception]? What you thought of it
• Conclusion 

SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO

LESSON 520152: WHAT DO YOU UNDERSTAND? AUDIENCE POSITIONING

In Lesson 4 we explored some ideas around how media language constructed an understanding of Aileen as a killer.  We may each have arrived at differing points on a line of understanding but each of us used the information provided by the music, the shot choice, the editing to form an opinion as to Aileen's motives and the judgement we make of her.

Now we can move to consider how the mid-section of the film attempts to convey more complex ideas/understandings of Aileen and her relationship with Selby.  The details here - a further murder, the incident with the character with the disability, the visit to the funfair all add to our view of Aileen, supporting or challenging our perceptions of 'what she is'.

There is no doubt that there are apologists, those who whilst not excusing or even condoning Aileen's rampage, see some understanding of the justification of it .In this, they see Aileen as she depicted herself in court; the victim of a misogynistic male dominated society in which her main crime was to to be a woman who fought back to punish those who had exploited or abused her throughout her life.

There are others, the vast majority, who see her as a killer, an emotionally unbalanced woman who saw conspiracy's all around her and used violence to take what she wanted.

Patty Jenkin's film seeks to shed some light as to why this should be so and offers an opportunity for audiences to make up their own minds. We must bear in mind that her film is a partial account, one that has only one voice in it - that of Aileen who even, at key moments, narrates it.

A key narrated sequence occurs in sequence 3 which we viewed in Lesson 3.  Aileen returns from the second murder and as she washes up in the bathroom whilst Selby waits at the door she narrates in a voice-over the story of the huge Ferris wheel that arrived in her town one day - The Monster.  This wheel saw captivated the young Aileen that she could think of nothing but riding it but when she finally did she was terrified and violently sick. Clearly, the voice over is significant - why else include this one seemingly meaningless fact from her childhood when there are so many much more relevant stories of abuse committed upon her.

TASK: 

• What is the significance of the story of the Monster Ferris wheel? 
• What do we learn from the incidents with the man with disabilities; what about the incident with the killing of the ex-police officer?  How does the film use these to further our understanding of Aileen?
• What is the impact of Aileen's ride on the Ferris wheel with Selby in this film

LESSON 420152: CHARACTER BUILDING

Having explored verisimilitude [appearance of reality] in the representation of Aileen and then considered why it was 'broken' in the representation of Selby we now need to consider how the narrative of the film positions the audience regarding the actions of a woman who moves from possible 'victim' in the original murder of Vincent to the brutal, seemingly cold-blooded monster of the title.

The second killing is positioned at a very significant time in the narrative. we have seen Aileen's attempts to put her life back together - her desire to be normal, conventional.  We have also seen the results of this - rejection, humiliation and, finally degradation at the hands of the patrolman in the underground car-park.

We have also witnessed the reactions of Selby - her anger, petulance, selfishness - that force Aileen to reveal what happened with Vincent and also her decision to return to her work as a prostitute.

Task:

• The second victim is portrayed as that: her victim. How is this done? 
• Consider mise-en-scene elements
• does the representation of Aileen change at any time during this sequence?
• Do we understand anything new about her?  what?  how?
• Why does she kill him?
• why does the film's narrative representation of Aileen now change?

The next sequence takes us through a series of events surrounding Aileen and Selby.  Each incident is now clearly there to shed light on their characters, to help us understand what it is that motivates them. It also illuminates the nature of their relationship. The incident at the funfair is one that we shall explore in lesson 5 as it seems key to understanding Aileen's emotional state and also seems to offer some insight into understanding why she may have become the 'monster'.

LESSON: 320152 AGENDA SETTING AND REPRESENTATIONS

Today it's all about verisimilitude - the appearance of reality, or, in the case of film, the construction of a believable reality.  So, with this in mind we will be looking at the second series of sequences from Monster that chart the development of the love story between Aileen and Selby.

First, take a look at these images of Aileen and of Charlize Theron as Aileen and as herself. You will see the startling transformation of the actress into a believable resemblance of Aileen.  We know that Theron went to great lengths to create a representation of Aileen that audiences would find realistic, studying movements, gestures and expressions from videos of the trial and from Nick Broomfield's documentary on Aileen. A glamorous Aileen would have been ridiculous and undermined the narrative. - Aileen's trial had been world famous at the time, as were the almost iconic images of Aileen herself.

Then, take a look at those of Christina Ricci, then her appearance as Selby and then the real 'Selby'.

One of the key questions we might start to ask of these representations is 'WHY'? 

If  Charlize Theron - at the time described as one of the most desirable actresses in the world - was put through hours of make-up to create an accurate representation of Aileen then why was the character of 'Selby' represented in such an unrealistic manner - slim and elfin-like compared to 'Selby' who in reality was large and stocky?

Here, we enter the territory of intention, specifically the narrative and conceptual intentions of the director of the film, Patti Jenkins. Her concern is that we need to understand what drives Aileen to do the terrible things that she does. why, if is solely about her abuse at the hands of so many men did she not start her spree earlier? Why does [did] it coincide with her relationship with Selby? Clearly, if Selby is not the instigator of these murders [and Aileen claims she was not and Selby was never tried for her part in them] then it is linked into changes wrought on Aileen by finding a loving relationship. The desire/need to protect Selby is what drove her. to be understood by audiences it was felt that we had to 'see' Selby not as she was but as Aileen saw her - fragile and vulnerable. Hence the casting of the actress and the representation that is of the idea of Selby rather than an accurate representation of the actuality. Here art overrides truth.

LESSON: 220152 - SOME KIND OF MONSTER

Today we begin the process of exploring some media products that may well have passed some of you by. These are products that open up areas rich in discussion as to their intentions and to their receptions by audiences.
We are going to begin with a film that challenges your values, your attitudes towards a variety of issues. It will shock you, create debate amongst you and provide a very memorable start to our work for A2 – the ‘WHY’ question that will preoccupy so much of our work this year.
This text is very much linked to the new AQA topic area of ‘Identities’ and may also serve as a base text for those of you who are considering the option of the WJEC AS Film Studies next summer.

 

WHOSE TRUTH?

We may feel that we know the difference between fact and fiction, between a news story and a  creative fiction, a documentary and a fictional story. However, even our news is constructed - who to film; where to film them; how to edit the interview - and programmes such as TOWIE and Benefits Street have blurred the lines between the idea of a strictly factual objective documentary and fictionalised narrative. We need to keep in mind that each media product we are going to examine is the result of a number of decisions [choices] made by the production team and that these are what shape the finished product and how audiences decode and understand them. In this sense, there is no objective truth, simply versions of an event.

The film Monster is based on a true story but we must always keep in mind that this, like any other true story, is situated from the perspective of one person: Aileen Wuornos.  With this in mind, the details of the meeting, her state of mind, issues around how she sees those around her and, more specifically, the events leading up to and provoking the first murder, are hers alone.  For some things we may have other sources of evidence – her school records detail her expulsions; her welfare etc – but the murder is purely based on Aileen’s account of events.

The director [Patty Jenkins] also has a perspective on this.  She has a story to tell but she also has a purpose [a set of values/ideologies] that drive the narrative of that story [how the story is told to us]. Her agenda was to tell Aileen’s story and to examine why Aileen came to be the Monster of the title. The agenda is clearly also feminist.  she is telling the story of a woman who saw herself as the victim of a male dominated world [a patriarchy; a misogynistic culture].

Here, then, we might see a use for McComb’s theory of agenda setting, that the manner in which an event is presented can actually shape how audiences understand that event and subsequently come to believe that point of view, that representation. The story telling – the narrative presentation – becomes the version that people take to be a universal ‘truth’ of those events, that person.

 

Social Media Resources for Section B

Here is a link to the story on Facebook's new algorithm 'INSTANT ARTICLES' and how it will re-shape news feeds to its members.

Media debate Issues:

gatekeeper
hegemonic
agenda setting
agenda framing
media influence
impact of social media

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology


This might link really well to the following research finding:

facebook-study-finds-people-only-click-on-links-that-they-agree-with-site-is-an-echo-chamber

This is good BBC page for considering media influence and the notion of two step flow and agenda setting as well as hegemonic/pluralism etc. Have a look at the April page then look at the post election analysis


start of social media election?


IT WASN'T SOCIAL MEDIA 'WOT WON IT'