Key Terms

Technical/visual/audio codes - Technical codes are all the ways in which equipment is used to tell the story in a media text, for example the camera work in a film. CODE is a visual, audio or technical element that an audience has learnt to imply meaning

Denotation/Connotation – denote- the literally meaning explicit, connote an implicit meaning

Encoding/decoding- encoding of a message is the production of the message. It is a system of coded meanings, and in order to create that, the sender needs to understand how the world is comprehensible to the members of the audience. Decoding of a message is how an audience member is able to understand, and interpret the message

Polysemic readings- Polysemic text refers to the idea that any text can have multiple meanings rather than a single meaning

Iconography- Iconography is the use of images and symbols to portray a subject, movement or ideal. It can also be the use of certain symbols that convey certain genres such as religious iconography, iconography in art and iconography in film and television

Anchorage- Anchorage is when a piece of media uses another piece of media to reduce the amount of connotations in the first, therefore allowing the audience to interpret it much more easily. For instance, in a newspaper, pictures are accompanied by a caption that allows us to understand what the picture is showing us

Signs and Signifiers- semiotics (Barthes)- Simply put, the signifier is the sound associated with or image of something (e.g., a tree), the signified is the idea or concept of the thing (e.g., the idea of a tree), and the sign is the object that combines the signifier and the signified into a meaningful unit. Barthes' Semiotic Theory broke down the process of reading signs and focused on their interpretation by different cultures or societies. According to Barthes, signs had both a signifier, being the physical form of the sign as we perceive it through our senses and the signified, or meaning that is interpreted.

Mode of address- simply means how the text speaks to the audience, and involves them. It also refers to how a text influences the audience.

Digital technology- convergence- The term digital convergence means the ability to view the same multimedia content from different types devices. These are all thanks to the digitization of content (movies, pictures, music, voice, text) and the development of connections methods.

Structuralism (including Lévi-Strauss)- Structuralism utilises a semiotic perspective in which societies, cultural practices and artifacts, such as media texts, can be analysed as languages or signifying systems. ... For example, Barthes (1967) argued there are narrative codes that are identifiable across a range of media texts

Codes and conventions- Media Codes and Conventions. ... Media codes generally have an agreed meaning, or connotation, to their audience. There are three types of media codes, symbolic codes, technical codes and written codes. Conventions are expected ways in which codes are organised in a product

Intertextuality- through referencing other texts implicitly or explicitly and through use of codes and conventions- The term Intertextuality refers to the process of creating references to any kind of media text via another media text. In other words Intertextuality essentially means for a type of media (film, television, music etc) to pay homage to another media text.

Subverting/ challenging genre- What is a Genre A genre is basically the category of any type of art or literature, for example categories of movie would be comedy, horror, thriller etc. Some genres stand The detective film is partly defined out by their subjects by the plot pattern of an or themes investigation that solves a mystery. Subverting the Genre. ... Horror and thriller genres are positioned in the limbo between films that claim to represent trauma realistically and directly and those that reject that claim