How to prepare for question 1b
In Sunday’s post, I listed all questions which have been set in previous sessions:
Analyse media representation in one of your coursework productions.
Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to genre
Apply theories of narrative to one of your coursework productions.
You will notice that each of these questions is quite short and fits a common formula. You can be assured that the same thing will apply this summer. You will be asked to apply ONE concept to one of your productions. This is a quite different task from question 1a, where you write about all of your work and your skills, as this one involves some reference to theory and only the one piece of work, as well as asking you to step back from it and think about it almost as if someone else had made it- what is known as ‘critical distance’.
There are five possible concepts which can come up
Representation
Genre
Narrative
Audience
Media Language
If you look through those questions above, you will see that the first three have all already come up, but don’t be fooled into thinking that means that it must be one of the other two this time- exams don’t always work that predictably! It would be far too risky just to bank on that happening and not prepare for the others! In any case, preparing for them all will help you understand things better and there are areas of overlap which you can use across the concepts.
So, how do you get started preparing and revising this stuff? First of all, you need to decide which project you would be most confident analysing in the exam. I believe that any of the five can be applied to moving image work, so if you did a film opening at AS, a music video, short film or trailer at A2, that would be the safest choice. Print work is more tricky to write about in relation to narrative, but the other four areas would all work well for it, so it is up to you, but to be honest, I’d prepare in advance of the exam as you don’t want to be deciding what to use during your precious half hour! What you certainly need is a copy of the project itself to look at as part of your revision, to remind yourself in detail of how it works.
Representation
If you take a video you have made for your coursework, you will almost certainly have people in it. If the topic is representation, then your task is to look at how those representations work in your video. You could apply some of the ideas used in the AS TV Drama exam here- how does your video construct a representation of gender, ethnicity or age for example? You need also to refer to some critics who have written about representation or theories of media representation and attempt to apply those (or argue with them). So who could you use? Interesting writers on representation and identity include Richard Dyer, Angela McRobbie and David Gauntlett. See what they say...
Genre
If you’ve made a music magazine at AS level, an analysis of the magazine would need to set it in relation to the forms and conventions shown in such magazines, particularly for specific types of music. But it would not simply comprise a list of those conventions. There are a whole host of theories of genre and writers with different approaches. Some of it could be used to inform your writing about your production piece. Some you could try are: Altman, Grant and Neale- all are cited in the wikipedia page here
Narrative
A film opening or trailer will be ideal for this, as they both depend upon ideas about narrative in order to function. An opening must set up some of the issues that the rest of the film’s narrative will deal with, but must not give too much away, since it is only an opening and you would want the audience to carry on watching! Likewise a trailer must draw upon some elements of the film’s imaginary complete narrative in order to entice the viewer to watch it, again without giving too much away. If you made a short film, you will have been capturing a complete narrative, which gives you something complete to analyse. If you did a music video, the chances are that it was more performance based, maybe interspersed with some fragments of narrative. In all these cases, there is enough about narrative in the product to make it worth analysis. The chances are you have been introduced to a number of theories about narrative, but just in case, here’s a link to a PDF by Andrea Joyce, which summarises four of them, including Propp and Todorov.
Audience
Every media product has to have an audience, otherwise in both a business sense and probably an artistic sense too it would be judged a failure. In your projects, you will undoubtedly have been looking at the idea of a target audience- who you are aiming it at and why; you should also have taken feedback from a real audience in some way at the end of the project for your digital evaluation, which involves finding out how the audience really ‘read’ what you had made. You were also asked at AS to consider how your product addressed your audience- what was it about it that particularly worked to ‘speak’ to them? All this is effectively linked to audience theory which you then need to reference and apply. Here are some links to some starting points for theories:
general intro
presentation on reception theory
Media Language
A lot of people have assumed this is going to be the most difficult concept to apply, but I don’t think it need be. If you think back to the AS TV Drama exam, when you had to look at the technical codes and how they operate, that was an exercise in applying media language analysis, so for the A2 exam if this one comes up, I’d see it as pretty similar. For moving image, the language of film and television is defined by how camera, editing, sound and mise-en-scene create meaning. Likewise an analysis of print work would involve looking at how fonts, layout, combinations of text and image as well as the actual words chosen creates meaning. Useful theory here might be Roland Barthes on semiotics- denotation and connotation and for moving image work Bordwell and Thompson
So what do you do in the exam?
You need to state which project you are using and briefly describe it
You then need to analyse it using whichever concept appears in the question, making reference to relevant theory throughout
Keep being specific in your use of examples from the project
Here is a link to a good answer to q1a and 1b from the January session.
Tomorrow we will start to look at the section B topics, with Contemporary media regulation
http://petesmediablog.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/how-to-prepare-for-question-1b.html
Tuesday, 17 April 2012
Contemporary media regulation
Contemporary Media Regulation exam questions
As we saw on Sunday, these are the previous questions set for this topic:How effectively can contemporary media be regulated?To what extent is contemporary media regulation more or less effective than in previous times?Evaluate arguments for and against stronger regulation of the mediaHow far do changes to the regulation of media reflect broader social changes?Discuss the need for media regulationTo what extent can the media be regulated in the digital age?As you can see, though there is some variation between questions, you should not have a shock when you turn up for the exam! Two of the previous questions refer to 'effectiveness' - in other words, does regulation work? A third asks something very similar- 'to what extent can it be regulated?' and two of them ask you to look at the arguments around regulation- why do people believe it is needed and 'for and against'.One way or another, this summer's questions should be in similar territory.
Even if you get something which appears to go off at a tangent- like the question of how far it 'reflects social changes', you should be able to adapt your response based on the material you have studied. If we look at the bullet points in the Specification, which defines what should be studied, we should be able to see what kinds of question can come up:• What is the nature of contemporary media regulation compared with previous practices? (Past v Present)• What are the arguments for and against specific forms of contemporary media regulation? (what do people say- note this is not asking for your opinion, but for you to weigh up the arguments of others!)• How effective are regulatory practices? (does it work?)• What are the wider social issues relating to media regulation? (put regulation in the wider context of society)So we can see, all those areas have come up already and will come up again! As you have a choice of two questions, there should be nothing to panic about regarding what might come up!This part of the exam asks you to do three more specific things, whatever topic you answer on:1. You MUST refer to at least TWO different media2.
You MUST refer to past, present and future (with the emphasis on the present- contemporary examples from the past five years)3. refer to critical/theoretical positionsFor regulation, this should be perfectly possible. For point 1 You could choose to write about:Film censorship/classificationThe regulation of advertisingNewspaper regulation Computer / video game classification, The regulation of online media, social networking and virtual worlds Contemporary broadcasting (TV and/or Radio)Any two of these compared and contrasted, with some knowledge of what the rules are, who does the regulating, how it works and what the arguments are with close reference to specific examples will give you most of what you need! It will then just be a matter of answering the specific question. BUT make sure you do refer to TWO! It doesn't need to be absolutely balanced, but if you only refer to one medium, like film, it will cost you a lot of marks. I'd say go for an answer which is between 60-40 and 50-50 balanced between reference to your two media. If you write about three media, then either one third on each or 40% each on two, 20% on the third will give you time and space to do a good job.For point 2, the main danger is spending too much time writing about the past, which many candidates have a tendency to do; the topic is CONTEMPORARY Media regulation, which means NOW, so that is where your emphasis should be. If you write about online media or newspapers, that should be easy to do, as there are some fantastic case studies around this year! But even writing about film should be possible with recent examples. If you don't know any, go to the BBFC student site for some tips! The BBFC even has an app for your phone now...The tricky bit to get to the top of the mark range is FUTURE media, but that need not be a big deal. Just makes sure you say something about where the evidence is pointing for the future- I'd suggest, for example, that as we become more 'digital' it is harder to control what people do online so a key thing for the future is education so that audiences understand the implications of what they may access and what they can say. I'll give an example of this later, referring to Twitter.Finally for point 3, you need some relevant writers/critics/theorists to reference in relation to your examples and answer. Don't just write the history of media effects, hypodermic syringe theories or all that stuff, but reference people who are relevant to the argument you are making. So, for example, if you are talking about anxieties about children's media consumption in the digital era, the research by Tanya Byron and Sonia Livingstone's EU Kids online project would be particularly relevant.
Current Case study: TwitterThe row this week over the Ryan Giggs case is a perfect example of the problem of regulation in the digital age. As you may know, a number of celebrities have taken out injunctions against newspapers, preventing them from printing stories about them (usually to do with some kind of sexual indiscretions/extra-marital relationships. These injunctions have an additional clause which turns them into what is known as 'superinjunctions' in that not only can the newspapers (or broadcasters) not report about the celebrity's affair, but they can't even mention that there is an injunction at all. Sometimes, newspapers or broadcasters in other territories might decide to report the case as the injunction does not apply overseas. In such instances, it is not that hard, via google, to find out the details, but there may still only be a limited number of people who bother to do this; social media have of course changed all this, as it is very easy for messages to spread on a site like facebook. Twitter, with its instant messaging and hashtags, has taken this considerably further.On 8 May, a twitter user set up a false account and posted details of six alleged superinjunctions. It was covered on BBC News and it only took me a quick search on twitter via #superinjunction to find them, by which stage lots of people had been re-tweeting them. One of the six made headlines with a denial, but the other five have, as far as I am aware, remained quiet. The Sun made several attempts to get the superinjunction for one of the celebrities overturned (the footballer) as his name was being repeated across social media quite a bit yet newspapers were not allowed to print it; the footballer then took out a writ against twitter to get the name of the person who tweeted the information. Last week, this led to massive retweeting of his name and it spread so much that it was even being chanted by Man City supporters on sunday. Finally an MP took advantage of what is known as parliamentary privilege (freedom from prosecution if done inside Parliament) to name Ryan Giggs, so the newspapers could then report it.This case shows how impossible it is to control social media in the way that mass media can be regulated; if a newspaper faces an injunction and breaks it, then the editor or owner could go to prison or the paper face a massive fine (hardly worth it for a story about a footballer and a Big Brother contestant, though maybe if it's a major state secret or political scandal). On Twitter, once one person tweets, it is possible, as in this case, that thousands more will follow. So how do you catch the first one and do you prosecute everyone? There are a lot of interesting articles around in the papers and and online about this at the moment, so I would expect to see some good answers in the exam!here's a couple of links for now:Good article on claims that the internet is like the Wild westGuardian writer asking for screening of all twitter messages !Peter Preston on the legal implicationsand also an hilarious tale of a twitter spoof by Graham linehan about Bin Laden's TV viewing and how quickly people believe itfinally if you want one of your mates to appear in the media with a superinjunction, try this (it's just for fun)
As we saw on Sunday, these are the previous questions set for this topic:How effectively can contemporary media be regulated?To what extent is contemporary media regulation more or less effective than in previous times?Evaluate arguments for and against stronger regulation of the mediaHow far do changes to the regulation of media reflect broader social changes?Discuss the need for media regulationTo what extent can the media be regulated in the digital age?As you can see, though there is some variation between questions, you should not have a shock when you turn up for the exam! Two of the previous questions refer to 'effectiveness' - in other words, does regulation work? A third asks something very similar- 'to what extent can it be regulated?' and two of them ask you to look at the arguments around regulation- why do people believe it is needed and 'for and against'.One way or another, this summer's questions should be in similar territory.
Even if you get something which appears to go off at a tangent- like the question of how far it 'reflects social changes', you should be able to adapt your response based on the material you have studied. If we look at the bullet points in the Specification, which defines what should be studied, we should be able to see what kinds of question can come up:• What is the nature of contemporary media regulation compared with previous practices? (Past v Present)• What are the arguments for and against specific forms of contemporary media regulation? (what do people say- note this is not asking for your opinion, but for you to weigh up the arguments of others!)• How effective are regulatory practices? (does it work?)• What are the wider social issues relating to media regulation? (put regulation in the wider context of society)So we can see, all those areas have come up already and will come up again! As you have a choice of two questions, there should be nothing to panic about regarding what might come up!This part of the exam asks you to do three more specific things, whatever topic you answer on:1. You MUST refer to at least TWO different media2.
You MUST refer to past, present and future (with the emphasis on the present- contemporary examples from the past five years)3. refer to critical/theoretical positionsFor regulation, this should be perfectly possible. For point 1 You could choose to write about:Film censorship/classificationThe regulation of advertisingNewspaper regulation Computer / video game classification, The regulation of online media, social networking and virtual worlds Contemporary broadcasting (TV and/or Radio)Any two of these compared and contrasted, with some knowledge of what the rules are, who does the regulating, how it works and what the arguments are with close reference to specific examples will give you most of what you need! It will then just be a matter of answering the specific question. BUT make sure you do refer to TWO! It doesn't need to be absolutely balanced, but if you only refer to one medium, like film, it will cost you a lot of marks. I'd say go for an answer which is between 60-40 and 50-50 balanced between reference to your two media. If you write about three media, then either one third on each or 40% each on two, 20% on the third will give you time and space to do a good job.For point 2, the main danger is spending too much time writing about the past, which many candidates have a tendency to do; the topic is CONTEMPORARY Media regulation, which means NOW, so that is where your emphasis should be. If you write about online media or newspapers, that should be easy to do, as there are some fantastic case studies around this year! But even writing about film should be possible with recent examples. If you don't know any, go to the BBFC student site for some tips! The BBFC even has an app for your phone now...The tricky bit to get to the top of the mark range is FUTURE media, but that need not be a big deal. Just makes sure you say something about where the evidence is pointing for the future- I'd suggest, for example, that as we become more 'digital' it is harder to control what people do online so a key thing for the future is education so that audiences understand the implications of what they may access and what they can say. I'll give an example of this later, referring to Twitter.Finally for point 3, you need some relevant writers/critics/theorists to reference in relation to your examples and answer. Don't just write the history of media effects, hypodermic syringe theories or all that stuff, but reference people who are relevant to the argument you are making. So, for example, if you are talking about anxieties about children's media consumption in the digital era, the research by Tanya Byron and Sonia Livingstone's EU Kids online project would be particularly relevant.
Current Case study: TwitterThe row this week over the Ryan Giggs case is a perfect example of the problem of regulation in the digital age. As you may know, a number of celebrities have taken out injunctions against newspapers, preventing them from printing stories about them (usually to do with some kind of sexual indiscretions/extra-marital relationships. These injunctions have an additional clause which turns them into what is known as 'superinjunctions' in that not only can the newspapers (or broadcasters) not report about the celebrity's affair, but they can't even mention that there is an injunction at all. Sometimes, newspapers or broadcasters in other territories might decide to report the case as the injunction does not apply overseas. In such instances, it is not that hard, via google, to find out the details, but there may still only be a limited number of people who bother to do this; social media have of course changed all this, as it is very easy for messages to spread on a site like facebook. Twitter, with its instant messaging and hashtags, has taken this considerably further.On 8 May, a twitter user set up a false account and posted details of six alleged superinjunctions. It was covered on BBC News and it only took me a quick search on twitter via #superinjunction to find them, by which stage lots of people had been re-tweeting them. One of the six made headlines with a denial, but the other five have, as far as I am aware, remained quiet. The Sun made several attempts to get the superinjunction for one of the celebrities overturned (the footballer) as his name was being repeated across social media quite a bit yet newspapers were not allowed to print it; the footballer then took out a writ against twitter to get the name of the person who tweeted the information. Last week, this led to massive retweeting of his name and it spread so much that it was even being chanted by Man City supporters on sunday. Finally an MP took advantage of what is known as parliamentary privilege (freedom from prosecution if done inside Parliament) to name Ryan Giggs, so the newspapers could then report it.This case shows how impossible it is to control social media in the way that mass media can be regulated; if a newspaper faces an injunction and breaks it, then the editor or owner could go to prison or the paper face a massive fine (hardly worth it for a story about a footballer and a Big Brother contestant, though maybe if it's a major state secret or political scandal). On Twitter, once one person tweets, it is possible, as in this case, that thousands more will follow. So how do you catch the first one and do you prosecute everyone? There are a lot of interesting articles around in the papers and and online about this at the moment, so I would expect to see some good answers in the exam!here's a couple of links for now:Good article on claims that the internet is like the Wild westGuardian writer asking for screening of all twitter messages !Peter Preston on the legal implicationsand also an hilarious tale of a twitter spoof by Graham linehan about Bin Laden's TV viewing and how quickly people believe itfinally if you want one of your mates to appear in the media with a superinjunction, try this (it's just for fun)
Monday, 17 October 2011
DEA
The Digital Economy Act 2010
Is an Act of the Parliament of United Kingdom regulating digital media. Introduced by Peter Mandelson, Lord Mandelson, it received Royal assent on 8 April 2010, and came into force on 8 June 2010.The Act's provisions against the act of copyright enfrigment proved controversial
BBC: What is the Digital Economy Bill?
Is an Act of the Parliament of United Kingdom regulating digital media. Introduced by Peter Mandelson, Lord Mandelson, it received Royal assent on 8 April 2010, and came into force on 8 June 2010.The Act's provisions against the act of copyright enfrigment proved controversial
BBC: What is the Digital Economy Bill?
It is a broad suite of legislation aimed at bringing Britain into the digital age. It follows proposals about digital media set out in the Digital Britain White Paper published by the government in June 2009.
There are various aspects of the bill, which cover everything from local television provision and video game ratings to the powers of regulator Ofcom and how internet domain names are registered in the UK.
What happens now?
The bill will touch on many areas of our digital lives. However, the aspect that has received the most attention is measures designed to curb illegal file-sharing.
This is basically a long set of instructions to Ofcom to draw up guidelines for rights holders and ISPs on how they deal with net piracy.
What does this mean for me?
In theory, if you do not upload or download copyrighted content, these plans should not affect you. If you do, the government and creative industries hope that these measures will eventually encourage you to use legal services.
So, is cutting people off from the net the only controversial aspect of the bill?
No. There are also concerns about how the file-sharing measures could affect public wi-fi services. Specifically, people are concerned that the owner of a connection could be held liable even if they are not personally responsible for downloading pirated material.
So, for instance, if someone used wireless connectivity in a cafe to download free content, the cafe owner would be held responsible. Universities and libraries are also concerned about this aspect.
Wednesday, 14 September 2011
The effect on Album sales?
The year Apple's iTunes made downloading of certain songs an easy and legal process. By 2009 download sales of albums easily outpaced retail sales but its impact was still hard to judge. Even with download figures added in, album sales that year were way down from the year before
Artists can build or maintain a fan base through downloads without having to worry about physical albums being in stock at retail stores. But financially, artists may be not getting such a great deal. In 2009, popular artist Eminem sued his record label for extra royalties from downloads. According to the website Cult of Mac, at issue was how much an artist should get per download. The website said Eminem was getting 20 cents per 99-cent song and wanted 35 cents.
Technology impacts
Technological convergence- The digital age? Does this have an impact on illegal file sharing?
Implications of Digital Technology to Music | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/list_6798576_implications-digital-technology-music.html#ixzz1XvU3Pm5W
"A lot of this has to do with consumer freedom. We need to have a legal framework that supports consumer use rather than treat it as regrettable. We can't say that businesses should embrace technology but say to consumers they can't use technology for products they have paid for."
Many voices in the music industry have claimed that internet piracy has reduced
sales of legitimate CDs and that illegal MP3 downloads have become a substitute
for legal CD purchases.1 Indeed, many analysts believe that the current downturn
in CDs sales is due to the increasing and uncontrollable number of illegal copies
available using peer-to-peer (P2P) technologies.
Digital technology has implications throughout the entire spectrum of the music industry. Technology has changed everything from performances to record sales and has made recording and production more affordable and accessible. Promotion and publicity have been enhanced through advances in communication technology. The revolution of digital technology has--and will continue to--impact music in a variety of ways.Implications of Digital Technology to Music | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/list_6798576_implications-digital-technology-music.html#ixzz1XvU3Pm5W
Is illegal downloading damaging?
We know that illegal downloading has a detrimental effect on artists sales and the anger in causes in the music industry- it means that artists are not being paid for their professional work and therefore is causing great damage.Specifically, the creative industries have gone to great lengths to spell out the damage done by file-sharing copyright content without permission.
It says up to 800,000 jobs in the creative industries, out of 1.8 million in total, are threatened.
That's almost half of the entire industry which, the statement says, contributes £112.5bn in revenue to the economy, equivalent to 8% of GDP.
Around seven million people in the UK are involved in illegal downloads, costing the economy tens of billions of pounds- So, what is the solution? Is it possible to regulate this sector which the huge amounts of people that do it every single day?The solution can be found on "How illegal downloading can be prevented" an article that intends to educates the general public and to prevent the widespread of downloading illegally.
Is youtube encouraging illegal file sharing?
This video is named "How to illegally download music, for free" in the description stating 'how to teach you'. Should youtube clamp down on this? are they portraying the image that this is okay and therefore spreading a negative false and against the law image? Additionally, this is not the only video that has been posted upon youtube.
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