Key words

Anchorage: In Media Studies this is the fixing of meaning

Alignment: The way that a media product attempts to position an audience in relation to what they are being shown

Anti-hero: An antihero (or anti-heroine) is a central character who lacks conventional heroic qualities such as idealism, courage, or morality.Audience: In media terms there are many types of audience that we might refer to. These might include the size – Global-mass-cult-niche – or refer to their age and interests

Binary opposition: The contrast between two mutually exclusive concepts or things that creates conflict and drives a narrativeBrief: Information provided by an institution or client about the content and purpose of a media product.Censorship: Control over the content of a media text. Different media forms have different forms of censorship.

Convention: The widely recognised way of doing something - this refers to content and form.

Convergence: The way in which technologies and institutions come together in order to create something new.

Contemporary: Meaning of the current time, the things that are happening now but also things that were happening at the time a media product was produced.

Cut: The sudden transition from one camera shot or audio sequence to the next. This is the manner used for the linking of most shots in a film or TV programme and the one that we are most accustomed to seeing.Demographics: The study of audiences according to factors such as age and gender that allow an analysis of who they are and attempts to understand and explain which type of audience behaves in which way. Diegetic: A way to describe sound in a film. All sound where the source is clear in the film is said to be diegetic.Dissolve: A transition from one shot to another that is gradual and used for effect.

Edit: The process by which a still image [such as a movie poster or magazine cover] or clip of film or a section of audio is treated to create the intended outcome of the photographer, editor, director, artist, producer etc. who is constructing it

Enigma: A question that is not immediately answered and thus draws an audience into a media product. Expectation: Very much linked into convention, the idea that an audience will have pre-knowledge of the kind of experience or pleasures that a media product will offer them.

Format: The way that a media product presents its content to the target audience.

Franchise: Media products based on the same background characters or situations. 

Genre: The linking of media products by a series of common elements or ideas. 

Hammocking: The term used by TV schedulers when a less popular [or new] programme is scheduled to air between two more popular programmes.

Ideology: This is a complex concept. In simple terms, for this subject at GCSE it is a set of ideas or beliefs which are held to be acceptable by the creators of a media product. 

Narrative: The way in which a story, or sequence of events, is put together within a text.

Mise-en-scene: everything in the frame - What is included within a particular shot in a film or TV programme.

Icon: An instantly recognizable actor, character or location or event.

Institution: In Media Studies we are concerned with using the meaning of an organization that creates and distributes media products.

Palette: The range of colours used in a film.

PoV [point of view]: A first-person camera shot that shows a scene from an individual character’s viewpoint. Preferred reading: The meaning of a media product which the producers intended. 

Scheduling: The timing of when programmes air on TV stations. 

Strap-line: The line of text on a poster that adds interest and sometimes might create an enigma to help in the marketing of a film.

Storyboard: A visual breakdown of a script often produced by a director in order to demonstrate to a camera operator or production team how a scene is designed to be shot. 

Star: A person who has become famous appearing in many sorts of media, whose image is instantly recognisable as a sign, with a whole range of meanings or significations.

Stereotype: Stereotypes are representations of people that rely on ideas about the group that person is perceived as belonging to. 

Representation: The way in which the media “re-presents” the world around us in the form of signs and codes for audiences to read.

Viral: The name given to any kind of promotion which spreads in the manner of a virus. 

Sub-genre: A smaller off-shoot of one of the main genre forms. 

Trailer: A short advert made up of edited highlights of the film being promoted.