The theory suggests that a media message is injected straight into the mind of a passive audience who are immediately influenced by the message (or a ‘’bullet’ from a ‘media gun’’). Therefore, the mass media can influence a large group of people directly and immediately and trigger a desired response.
It is a negative perception of the media as being dangerous and suggests the audience is powerless to resist.
A character ‘type’ used in media narratives and advertising who the viewer/consumer is positioned to relate to positively and ’look up to’.
Examples include doctors or scientists in advertisements, standing in their white coats in a laboratory setting, endorsing a particular shampoo and the hours of research behind its production. We believe in the authority of that person.
Others would be newsreaders, experts, religious leaders and long-established/ much-loved characters in a television drama.
Information about recent important events. Reported in newspapers, radio, television and the Internet. Events may be local, national or international and are usually investigated and presented or written by journalists or reporters.
As a television genre, the news follows conventions in structure, language and visual presentation. The news begins with recognisable and often dramatic theme music followed by the newsreaders introducing themselves and giving a brief summary of the news items to be covered. The most dramatic and important stories (with vision) are shown first, followed by local interest stories, sports and weather.
News reports need to be accurate, concise and objective and often include quotes, statements from experts, emotive words and phrases, and descriptive language.
News stories are constructed to give the facts about who, what, when, where, why and how, in the order of most important information down to the least important.
A filmmaker/director, who makes films with a distinctive, recognisable style and consistent themes. The word literally translates from French to ‘author’ and they have supposedly complete control over all the elements of production. The auteur often uses the same actors for each film.
The term was originally advocated by French director Francois Truffaut, who was a product of the French New Wave and therefore took himself and his peers seriously enough to associate their independent and personalised filmmaking with artistic authorship.
One obvious auteur is American director Tim Burton. His films are highly recognisable for their dark, gothic style and almost fairytale elements. His main characters are misfits, outsiders who are misunderstood by mainstream society. His style has elements of film noir and expressionism with contrasts of dark and light. Johnny Depp is often used in all Tim Burton films.
Other examples are Jane Campion, Gillian Armstrong, Howard Hawks, John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Ridley Scott, Penny Marshall and The Coen Brothers.
The implication that there is a world beyond the screen (or frame). Characters enter the scene from somewhere and exit to somewhere. A filmmaker can imply the presence of a world offscreen in many ways; a character may look or gesture to someone or something offscreen; object/s may protrude part of the way into the frame.
There are six potential zones of offscreen space: the space beyond each of the four sides of the frame; the space behind the camera and the space behind the set.
Offscreen voices or sounds also signal the presence of characters, objects or a world the audience cannot see.
French term meaning ‘black film’.
Style of low budget ‘B’ film which began in Hollywood in the 1930s, partly as a result of German Expressionist filmmakers such as Fritz Lang moving to Hollywood and bringing their dark styles. Film Noir reached its peak in the 1940s and 50s.
Noir elements include negative, pessimistic themes with flawed, anti-hero males who are cynical, disillusioned and morally ambivalent. The protagonist would battle wits with seductive femme fatales, women who were scheming, manipulative, beautiful and amoral. Settings were often the sleazy back streets and alleyways of a depressing city, cheap hotel rooms and bars mostly shot at night. They were filmed in black and white with dark, shadowy cinematography, canted framing and extreme, often low camera angles to put the audience at unease.
Other conventions are the use of a cynical voice-over, flashbacks, and claustrophobic interiors The pessimism, fear and paranoia that pervaded these films reflected the Cold War period in America.
Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), Murder My Sweet (1944), Touch of Evil (1958).
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Short songs used by advertisers to promote a product or service and have a catchy musical hook and slogan.
A zoom lens has a variable focal length. It can be adjusted to provide any shot size you wish within its range without needing to move the camera. The image size grows or reduces as you zoom in or out.” Excerpt From:
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The belief that western society is saturated by all types of media messages – news, entertainment, advertising – through all forms such as television, radio, film, print, internet, and that this is so overwhelming it affects our daily lives. This instant gratification affects our ability to think freely and make voluntary judgements with regard to what products to buy, what issues are presented etc.
Also, the pervasive nature of a particular message being promoted across all forms of media (television, radio, film and print) does not give the audience a chance to escape from that message.
A business can also saturate the market with advertising, often past the point of gaining any benefit.
The level of colour (chrominance) in an image.
Using language effectively to please or persuade an audience. Therefore, in communications studies it is the use of all the codes and conventions used by a media text producer to persuade and audience to its message: selection and omission of particular images; symbolic, technical codes; narrative; audience positioning.
The point of rhetoric is to be so persuasive that the audience is overwhelmed so much by the preferred meaning that they struggle to create a resistant reading.
For example, a particular news network might use seductive graphics, dramatic music, repetition of slogans, a limited variety of paid ‘experts’ for commentary, selection of some details of some news stories to the exclusion of others, in order to create a particular context (fear, patriotism) to seamlessly insert a certain agenda and promote a certain point of view of the left or right wing of politics.
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