GCSE Key Terms

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This page should act as a checklist for the important terms in GCSE Media Studies - a useful revision aid. These are all concepts and words that you need to understand, and you may be called upon to explain your understanding in an exam. You will find information in your textbooks, elsewhere on this site, and you can always ask your teacher to explain something just one more time...

This list is just a starter to help all of you who have emailed me to request one. I will add to it and build on it as time goes by. Don't forget to use the Search This Site function to see what context these terms may be used in. You will also have a number of specialist terms associated with particular media forms that you have been studying eg newspapers. It will help you if you keep a glossary, and note down new terms and their meanings as you come across them.

Anchorage	Fixing of meaning eg the copy text anchors (ie fixes to one spot) the meaning of an image in a print advertisement
Audience	The receivers of a media text. A great deal of media studies work is concerned with the effects a text may have on an audience.
Censorship	Control over the content of a media text. Different media forms have different forms of censorship - sometimes from a government, but mainly from a regulatory agency, eg the British Board of Film Classification
Code	A system of signs which can be decoded to create meaning. In media texts, we look at a range of different signs that can be loosely grouped into the following: technical codes - all to do with the way a text is technically constructed - camera angles, framing, typography etc verbal codes - everything to do with language -either written or spoken symbolic codes - codes that can be decoded on a mainly connotational level - all the things which draw upon our experience and understanding of other media texts, our cultural frame of reference.
Convention	The widely recognised way of doing something - this has to do with content, style and form eg the conventions of music video they are the same length as the song (somewhere around 4 minutes, say) they present the band, who look as though they are singing they have lots of fast edits
Denote/connote	Ways in which meaning is created — Denote = literal meaning Connote = meaning by association
Enigma	A question that is not immediately answered and thus draws an audience into a text eg. a body is discovered at the beginning of a tv detective drama. The killer's identity is an enigma. We watch to find out who the killer is.
Gatekeeping	Quite an old-fashioned term to describe the way in which certain key personnel (news editors, newspaper owners mainly) have control over the information that is presented to audiences, and the way in which it is presented (the angle)
Genre	A way of categorising a media text according to its form, style and content. This categorisation is useful for producers (who can utilise a genre's conventions) and audiences (who can utilise their expectations of the genre) alike
Ideology	This is a complex concept - in its basic form it is a set of ideas or beliefs which are held to be acceptable by the creators of a media text. For example, a text might be described as having a feminist ideology, meaning it promotes the idea that women are the equal of men and should not be discriminated against on the grounds of gender.
Narrative	The way in which a story, or sequence of events, is put together within a text. All media texts have some sort of narrative, from a single photographic image to a sports report to a feature film. Narrative may be reduced to one simple equation which is equilibrium - disequilibrium - new equilibrium
News Values	Ways of categorising and assessing news stories to decide on their newsworthiness
Ownership	An important issue in media studies - and a constantly changing one. Who produces and distributes the media texts we read?
Realism	The techniques by which a media text represents ideas and images that are held to have a true relationship with the actual world around us. Realism means different things in different texts - realism in animation (eg the movement of single hairs in computer animation) means something entirely different to realism in soap opera (eg the depiction of people eating breakfast and talking with their mouths full). it is important to assess how much a text strives for realism, how much audiences are expected to think it is realistic.
Representation	The way in which the media "re-presents" the world around us in the form of signs and codes for audiences to read.
Self-Regulation	When an institution (the Press, Advertising) appoints a group of individuals whose job is to deal with complaints about that institution
Signs & Signification	Sign - a symbol which is understood to refer to something other than itself. This may be very simple - think of a "No Entry" road sign. it may get more complicated when reading media texts, where a sign might be the bright red coat that a character is wearing (which signals that they are dangerous) Signification - the process of reading signs (see denotation and connotation)
Star	A person who has become so famous, both for doing their job (actor, sport player) and appearing in many sorts of media, that their image is instantly recognisable as a sign, with a whole range of meanings or significations eg - David Beckham's image represents a whole raft of meanings: England, football, wealth, Posh, success, fashion victim, expertise, sexuality etc... Britney Spears is also a star but her image signifies youth, physical fitness, virginity, blonde (+associated stereotypical characteristics), singing, dancing, sexuality, fashion etc... A star's image becomes a readily recognised sign that is used in many different media forms - think of where you have seen pictures of Britney and Becks. Stars can use the fact that their image has meaning by allowing it to be used for advertising purposes.
Stereotype	Stereotypes are representations of people that rely on preconceived ideas about the group that person is perceived as belonging to. It is assumed that an individual shares personal characteristics with other members of that group eg blondes are all stupid, accountants are all boring. Although using stereotypes saves a lot of explanation within a text, it can be a very lazy method of characterisation. Stereotypes may be considered dangerous, as they encourage audiences to think large groups of people are all the same, and often have the same negative characteristics.

if you have words you would like to see added to this list.