MEDIA LIT FINALS EXAM

GENRE
- a French word which means “kind” or “class”. The original Latin word is “genus” and
means a class of things that can be broken down into subcategories.
- tends to be understood to constitute particular conventions of content, a following a distinctive style in terms
of form and presentation

• PRIMARY GENRES THAT MEDIA CREATORS AND PRODUCERS INVOKE

Entertainment, news, information, education, and advertising.

1. NEWS
- are stories that have critical importance to community and national life, like the storytelling of fictional dramas,
news stories are also told following the basic structure of beginning, middle, and end.

• JOURNALIST
- people trained to report news to an audience, are expected be objective, comprehensive, and bias-free.
- They work for newspapers, radio stations, televisions, and lately online or web- based news services.
- employ various sub-genres in delivering the news.

• 5 MAJOR DIVISIONS OF NEWS STORIES

➢ Hard or Straight news
➢ Feature
➢ Soft news
➢ Investigative news
➢ Opinion

• HARD NEWS
- usually found in the first page of a newspaper or makes up the headline of a regular episode of primetime
news.
- values two elements: Seriousness and timeliness.
• SERIOUSNESS
- topics or issues that are critical to the lives of the community and body politic.
- Developments in the political and economic arena, crime-related events, outbreak and end of war, and the
occurrence of disasters are hard news
• TIMELINESS
- stories that cover current events and the current peace negotiations, the outbreak of war, a significant
public
statement issued by a leader or opinion maker, situation appraisal of a current crisis, etc.

* Since hard news is considered critical to the life of a community or the entire nation, journalist usually invoke
the
nation of objectivity as one of the guiding principles in covering and presenting news stories. Objectivity is
usually
considered a fair, balanced, and impartial stance when retelling the events, free of judgement and without
interpretation.
MEDIA LIT FINALS EXAM
The lead paragraph opens up with the very general recounting of the story, unpacking the widely acceptable
5Ws- Who was involved, What happened, Where did it happen, Why did it happen, When did it happen, How did it
happen.

• SOFT NEWS
- If the demand of hard news are too steep, then journalist are able to relax when presenting soft news. These
would include lifestyle news, travel news, articles offering, the best way to do something, or even video clips
presenting the point- of- view of ordinary folks. Soft news are also called Human interest stories.

• FEATURES
- Stories are extensions of soft news in a sense that the human interest angle is played up and presented in a
longer and elaborate format. Most feature stories follow the beginning- middle-end structure but the
journalist
can take liberties as long as clarity is not compromised.
- In the United States, the genre has been called literary journalism. It might seem like an oxymoron: journalism
speaks of objectivity and a commitment to standards of accuracy while literary implies enjoying liberties with
language as its defining characteristics.

• EDITORIALS AND OPINION

- Opinions against hard news are reserved for editorials and opinion columns. In a newspaper, they are usually
found in at least one page. These opinion articles and editorials express an individual or organizational point of
view.

• INVESTIGATIVE REPORTS
- It has a very specific relation to power because it focuses In finding, reporting, and presenting news which the
authorities try to conceal. It is out to expose wrongdoing, questionable transactions, and etc.

2. ADVERTISEMENTS
- are messages that are created to sell a product or a service. Advertising messages can either be commercial in
nature, information- laden, usually advancing a cause or an advocacy. There are three established broad sub-
genres od advertising.

➢ HARD- SELL ADVERTISEMENTS

- mostly commercial in nature and utilize explicit messages to get the consumer to purchase a product or
patronize a service.
➢ SOFT-SELL ADVERTISEMENTS
- It is associative in nature. A major soda company associated it products with the happiness derived from
family
togetherness. It invoke a motivational tagline that signifies courage and audacity in the face of the unknown.
➢ INFOMERCIAL
- derived from the words “information” and “commercial”, combine the need to inform or educate and the
intent
to sell a product

3. ENTERTAINMENT
- Derived from the French word “ entretenir” means “ to hold the attention, keep busy, or amused”.
- programming in the broadcast industries and entertainment news writing speaks much about how genre is
creatively realized in the current media industry. Turow (2009, 47) identified four sub-genres:
 MEDIA LIT FINALS EXAM
4. . INFORMATION
- raw material that circulates around us and from where news as another gene is generated.
- is anything that provides us data about the world. In could be a simple piece of data, or it could be a set of data
that says something about an event, a person, a thing, etc.
- In the context of MIL, it has come to mean the wide and almost infinite array of materials and texts we encounter in
the internet. Some uses pieces of information for our education ot to make our lives better and easier.
- It is very challenging task to taxonomize information from the internet into sub-genres.

• BLOGS
- For purposes of gaining information literacy, we can classify them into broad categories:
- Blog, derived from the words web and log, consists of web entries by an individual , displayed in reverse
chronological order, providing a commentary on something, or an articulation of a personal opinion, a
recounting of life’s events or an elaboration of some concepts.
• WIKI
- in essentially an application that allows the modification, revision, extension, elaboration sometimes even
deletion of its content.
- The most famous wiki is the Wikipedia, an encyclopedia project that relies on a global community of users to
contribute for content generation, revision, and elaboration.

FORMATS
- Are templates that provide the working and provisional structures of media and information texts.
- provide the architectural foundation of a media or information text and thus dictate the kind of content that will
be generated and specific audience a program will attract.
- presentation and style of a broadcast material that distinguishes it from others.
- differences in size and appearance of media products, the way we distinguish the tabloid format from the
broadsheet format in newspaper building.

➢ TABLOID
- a newspaper about half the page size of an ordinary newspaper containing short often sensational news stories
and many photographs.
➢ BROADSHEET
- large sheets of paper designed with columns which comprise a standard format newspaper.
- follows a formalized journalistic approach to news coverage with a serious editorial voice and in-depth news stories.

EX. OF BASIC FORMATS AND LOCAL SHOWS

• Panel Shows: GMA-7’s “Itanong mo kay Mareng Winnie” • Documentaries: ABS-CBN’s Storylines
• Demonstration programs: GMA-7: “Master Kusina” • Music/variety programs: ABC-CBN’s “ASAP”
• Game Shows: TV-5 Jeopardy, ABS-CBN’s “Deal or No Deal”• Public Service Bulletins
• Live transmissions: “Election Night” • News: Everything from the morning to the late night news
• Sports: PBA Governor’s Cup • Fiction or Drama, including teleseryes, situation-comedies

FORMULA
- Is an established procedure for achieving something .
- combination of elements that will generate the kind of content and the optimal effect that is envisioned.
- a specific historical period yields very resilient formula for media creation and production.
- Our local television today thrives on formats- using time-tested features innovating on new ones, and appropriating
from the global markets.
- Through formats, producers sell the realization of an idea for television. Global Franchising works through this type
of method: a basic template is sold on a global platform , then re-produced for different countries and their
audiences. The format is the selling point.
• ex. Big Brother, The Voice, Family Feud, Got Talent
 MEDIA LIT FINALS EXAM
GLOBAL FORMATS
- The acquisition involved international co-production. Like acquiring a franchise, the global formats that circulate in
our local television e.g., American Idol, Deal or No Deal and Big Brother, it is supervised by the mother company
that has a home based in another country.

- How are formats written? 7. Structure (if applicable)

1. Program Title 8. Program conceit: What makes this format stand out from other
2. Target Audience programs and competitors?
3. Suggested Time Slot 9. Sample Segment, if applicable
4. Length in Minutes 10. Suggested presenters, talents, or actors
5. Brief outline (2-3 sentences) 11. Location or if shot in the studio, the set design
6. Outline running order 12. Marketing Plans

THE NOTION OF THE AUDIENCE

- It could be because you bring your own lived experiences as a person which makes your character as unique as your
thumbprint. Included in these are your childhood, upbringing, education experiences with friends, and even your
own habits and hobbies that have come to define you as a person.

- DIFFERENCE. may possibly be more stark with people outside of your age range, your immediate environment or
with people outside of your social class. It makes a central notion when defining audiences. Hearing multiple
interpretations can build respects and tolerance for differences rather than similarities.
- SIMILARITIES. It is important to fully understand how media and information creators construct the category of
target audiences. They target a specific segment of the population with shared life characteristics to sell a product
or influence their opinion.

DIFFERENT MEDIA, DIFFERENT AUDIENCES

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN AUDIENCES OF DIFFERENT MEDIA:
• Level of activity and engagement with the media and information text
• Level of interaction with fellow audiences
• Location and space occupied
• Amount of time devoted to watching or viewing
• Accessibility and proximity

AUDIENCES FROM:
- NOONTIME SHOWS: come together to vicariously engage with a specific form of entertainment. They clap, sing,
wave their hands and sometimes enjoined to be part of a contest. While in the midst of watching, they interact with
each other. Space and location bear the behavior of audiences.
- DOMESTIC SETTING: they feel relaxed and may even get interrupted by house chores, a telephone call, a
visitors so on and so forth.
- Together they share insights once they sit before the television screen.
- CINEMA: behave differently as they remain seated and couched in the darkness of the theater.

• NOTION OF A PUBLIC
- is conveniently attached to the idea of audience. They are often imagined as a mass of peoplecongregating in space.
- problem of single word audience can be represented in so many ways. (McQuail 2,000) proposes

TYPOLOGY OF AUDIENCES
a. Audience as “the people assembled” and paying attention to a media performing before them.
b. Audiences as “the people addressed” referring to a group of people who were imagined by the communicator in the
creation and dessimination of the text such as the women who the advertisers think be patronizing their products;
c. Audience as “happening” which could be the experience of reception alone or with others as an interactive event
like a live streaming in the internet of a global event, such as the Miss Universe or the address of the President.
d. Audience as “hearing” or “Audition” which refers to the participatory audience experience, a high degree of
engagement like in a noontime show broadcasted live, and the audience participation is embedded in the show.

MASS AUDIENCES - It is about the nature of mass communication, specifically its ability to reach large audiences.
AUDIENCE - has still its roots in the idea of a spectator, more the captive set of listeners or viewers assembled in more
or less public and common space.
 MEDIA LIT FINALS EXAM
AUDIENCE THEORIES

AUDIENCE - is a highly valued concept of media and information production. From the side of the creators and
producer, they are perceived receiver, the viewer, and the end-user of the media and information text that will come
out of the production.

• Understanding audience behavior is a crucial step in appreciating the behavior of the popular consciousness.
• It also suggests that audiences will believe that anything told to them by the media. It views audiences as largely
homogenous and undifferentiated; thus a media text will generate the same reaction from all kinds of audiences.

1. PASSIVE AUDIENCE THEORY

- the weakness of the HYPODERMIC NEEDLE THEORY (1950’s) began to emerge.
that decade was intent on the discourse of the liberal man, someone who is rational, intelligent, and armed with
critical imagination that is discerning of the world.
- how audiences respond to media and information texts enabled research to move the focus out of the opinion
leaders but on the audiences themselves.
- The uses and gratification approach argued that the audience access media and information bringing with them their
own needs and desires, which in turn structures the way how the media is received.
- Researchers identified four kinds of Gratification.

> INFORMATION.
Public affairs programs broaden our knowledge beyond the what the newspapers, books, and magazines can
provide us.
INTERNET - a veritable source of information for anything we want to learn, from the mundane to the profound
> PERSONAL IDENTITY
validate understanding and appreciation of identities. characters, media celebrities & find ways of emulating them.
> INTEGRATION AND SOCIAL INTERACTION
a means of providing us with the information we need so we can integrate and interact with social groups.
> ENTERTAINMENT
attraction that provides simple pleasures of song & music or stories that engage plot twists and dramatic conflicts.

2. CULTURAL EFFECTS THEORY

- (1976, George Gerbner) He argued that television cultivates in its viewers a way of sensing and seeing the world.
Without judging television viewing as good or bad, he intuited that regular usage of television over extended periods
of time can shape people’s opinions views, and behavior.

3. ACTIVE AUDIENCE THEORIES

- more complex theorizing on audience reception. Invoke basic understanding of Stuart Hall’s framework for encoding
and decoding messages. If we tighten our understanding of this process, then we can truly understand that
audiences are not the passive receivers they appear to be as illustrated by the previous theories.
- We will truly appreciate the complexity of the content that is encoded in media and information texts.

RECEPTION AND RESISTANCE

- RECEPTION: not only one of acquiescence or passive acceptance nor is it also just matter of interpreting the multiple
meanings of the complex web of signs.
- (1980, David Morley) deriving mush from Stuart Hall, articulated three modes of reading media text on television.
Morley argues that audience can in fact resist the messages of media and information texts in very creative ways this
is done through the social positioning of the audience.

1. DOMINANT READING - reader fully shares the text’s code and accepts and reproduces the PREFERRED READING.
2. NEGOTIATED READING - audience party share the texts, code and broadly accepts the preferred reading, but
sometimes resists and modifies it in a way which reflects one’s own position, live experiences, and even opinions.
3. OPPOSITIONAL READING - audience takes a directly oppositional stance to the dominant code of the media and
information texts and resists it completely.
 MEDIA LIT FINALS EXAM
THE NOTION OF CONSTRUCTED AUDIENCES
- It is to say that the group of people defined as the audience of a particular television program could not have
existed
had it not been imagined and realized by a set of people.
- “Who is the target audience?” The construction of a target audience is a way of making the audience specific. By
actually identifying why this product is relevant to a particular group of people and by bringing in that imagined
group of people, the media text actually constructs the audience for whom it is intended.

• MARKETING PLAN
- is conceived and certainly a central part of it will be an advertisement. The potential consumers are now
transmuted to be the target audience of the advertisements.

• MEDIA EXECUTIVES do not think of target audiences in the same way that the target audiences think of
themselves.
- However, they think in a different light.

• TARGET AUDIENCE
- a specific group of people identified and aggregated from selected population segments who are the intended
users. - The information generated from them helps publishers and producers develop media messages that will
attract this
group or, in case of advertisers, help them recommend products that will be potentially attractive and useful to
this
target audience.

• HOW AUDIENCES ARE CONSTRUCTED - Shaun Moores (1993)

- asserts that the audience is not a homogeneous category and that it is best to see it in its plurality- as audiences.
- They are disparate group categorized by how they receive the media and other identity markers such as gender,
race,
ethno linguistic group, class status, and other positions in the society.

THE ATTRIBUTES OF THE AUDIENCE (GEARS)

• G- ender
• E- thnicity
• A- ge range
• R- egion or Nationality
• S-ocio-econimic group

AUDIENCES AS DEFINED BY DIFFERENCES

- Differences create the audience demographics. It is created by zeroing in to a particular sector of a population
that is the intended audience of a media or information text.

PSYCHOGRAPHICS
- It is derived from the concept of demographics, but is focused on the psychological traits.
- This category is often utilized to provide more substance to the profile of potential media audiences.
- It covers attitudes, personality types, opinions, and motivations.

CREATING CONTENT FOR TARGET AUDIENCES

- Fiske (1987) remarked that “television tries to construct an ideal position which it invites us to occupy, and, if we
do,
rewards us with the pleasure of recognition.”
- may be a tricky business for media executives. It involves a lot of research, a wide range of options, and
management
of risk should the initial formats would not work well.
- Most of the time they avoid risk and do not gamble. They hire creative people who have a proven track record in
keeping up with what the target audiences prefer.

• RISK MANAGEMENT
- is an exceptionally significant part of audience creation. The drive is to sustain the production and dissemination
of a
media text. Therefore, it has to be successful to generate audience share, revenues, and steady, if not
exponentially
increasing rate of profit.
 MEDIA LIT FINALS EXAM
AUDIENCE RESEARCH
- Is traditionally about
1) Gaining an insight on audience preferences, however fluid and ever-changing these could be in the present
period.
2) Calibrating audience’s size and reach.
However, there can be other directions for audience research that may be relevant to cite.

- it can be conducted so technological advances that the media industry will overtake can be based on sound
empirical data.
- the web-based platforms for delayed television viewing is an example of a technological innovation.
- Is also allied to market research and social research.

• MARKET RESEARCH
- is convenient to know about how markets thrive, consumer habits, and how consumers leverage their
consumption preferences. It is mostly aligned with increasing revenue or addressing issues that seem to constrain
revenue growths.
• SOCIAL RESEARCH
- is learning about social groups or sectors of societies.

QUALITIES OF RESEARCH THAT SHOULD UNDERPIN APPLY TO AUDIENCE, MARKET OR SOCIAL RESEARCH
a. SYSTEMATIC - undertaking should be structured with steps that should be followed according to the design.
b. LOGICAL - should be guided by the rules of logical reasoning and the logical process of induction and deduction.
c. EMPIRICAL - underpinned by data that is systematically gathered and forms the basis of all analysis and
conclusions that will be arrived at.
d. REPLICABLE - Research findings are verifiable by replicating the study and achieving the same results.

METHODS OF AUDIENCE RESEARCH

• SURVEY
- most common method of audience research; (questionnaires) administered to select a group of people
where they are asked the same questions, and their answer consolidated and tabulated.
- Along with surveys, observation, focused group discussions, and audience meters are employed to gain the
valuable data that the creators and producers need to shape media content and make programs thrive.

• OBSERVATION
- can be both formal and informal. A small notebook and pen will make informal observation when done with live
audiences of noontime shows o in market centers where consumer’sbehavior can be actually closely observed.

1. INFORMAL OBSERVATION
- is a good starting ground from where more elaborate research methods can be applied. For instance, a network
producer of a noontime show would like to reformat the program and may start by observing live audiences in the
studio, how they behave and in what point do they lose their interests.

2. FORMAL OBSERVATION
- may entail more structure and design. For instance, specific forms of behavior are looked into and observed such
as
when do they start looking for the remote control or when do they start to lose interest. One particular study
looked
into the listening habits of housewives on radio dramas.

• FOCUSED GROUP DISCUSSIONS (FGD)

- group of people led through the structured discussion by a skilled facilitator.
- The goal is to generate a maximum number of different ideas and opinions regarding a particular topic centered
around a media or information text.
- A set of carefully crafted questions are cascaded to the participants to trigger responses that will generate
opinions,
insights, and perspectives. Thus, it is a good way of gaining an insight on how they receive or how they are able to
generate their own meanings from a media or literary text.
 MEDIA LIT FINALS EXAM
MAKING SENSE OF MEDIA- MAKING FRAMES OF A STORY
- In media production, frames are tools utilized by media creators and producers to tell their story. The use of frames
gets more complicated for more complex media messages and formats

MEDIA AND STATUS QUO

- It is a Latin term that means “ existing state of affairs”
- It refer to prevailing state of affairs in society- the social institutions and the relationships that exist between
institutions and social classes. Most

VALUES AND ATTITUDES

VALUES
- are commonly held beliefs, views, and attitudes about what is important and what is right.
- can be prescriptive and serve as a guide for desirable behavior.
- are principles that we use to judge the worth of an idea or a practice.
- underpins the criteria by which we judge what is good or bad, what is right or wrong, and what is acceptable or not.

• PERSONAL VALUES - are those that drive our individual behavior.

• SPIRITUAL VALUES - direct your actions and decisions with regards to a higher power.
• VALUE SYSTEM - are a coherent and harmoniously aligned set of values from where you derive your sense of identity
and integrity, diligence, industry, respect for others, empathy, and compassion align to provide you with a sense of
how it is to be a good person given your particular circumstances.

ATTITUDES - are the expressions of our response to particular ideas, events, circumstances, or people. In cognitive
psychology, attitude may be described as a predisposition to react favorably to a situation, event or a person.
• LIFESTYLES - are ways of living and denote the interest, hobbies, behavior, opinions of an individual, family, group, or
even a community. Both tangible and intangible elements combine to render the kind of lifestyle that an individual is
predisposed to lead.

> TANGIBLE ELEMENTS - could be the social class, largely determined by income and other material possessions, as
well as the spaces inhabited.
> INTANGIBLE ELEMENTS - could come with the values and attitudes a person or a group is predisposed to.
> MASS ADVERTISING - encourages people to patronize products that promote certain lifestyles.
> SOCIAL MEDIA - today has privileged the sharing of information which also includes those that can positivity affect
one’s lifestyle.

PROPAGANDA AND PERSUASION

PROPAGANDA
- national conscious when a group of illustrados launched the propaganda movement in Europe in 1868.
- Gomez, Burgos, and Zamora were sentenced to death because of their alleged participation in the uprising in Cavite Naval Yard,
feelings of anger were stoked. Europe, a group led by Marcelo H. Del Pilar organized upper-class Filipinos.
- means to disseminate or promote particular ideas.
- In Latin, it means “to propagate” or “to sow”.
- It has been used extensively in history to advance religion and even justify conquest.
- about communicating ideas designed to persuade people to think and behave in a desired way.

PERSUASION
- a complex continuing interactive process in which a sender and a receiver are linked by symbols, verbal and non-
verbal, through which a persuader attempts to persuade the persuade to adopt a change in a given attitude or
behavior because the persuade has had perceptions enlarged or changed”
- a transactional quality.

There is a relationship between the persuader and the one being persuaded. Persuasion happens because there is an imperative to
be addressed, a need that has to be filled up. It can also be an interactive process- the two parties agree on a process and suggest a
mutually agreed upon message that results from exchange in opinions. The one who is the object of persuasion is an active audience
negotiating meaning in the hope that it will benefit them.
 MEDIA LIT FINALS EXAM
MEDIA AND IDEOLOGY
IDEOLOGY
- is associated with rigid political beliefs or with social movements espousing radical ideas about reform and
revolution, when someone is referred to as “being too ideological” it only means that he/she subscribes to some
political ideology and is unyielding to other beliefs.
- Karl Marx believed that ideologies were systems of thought perpetuated by the ruling classes to preserve an
existing social order that only serves the interest of the ruling classes.
- more coherent system of concepts and beliefs held by an individual or a group.
- Most of one’s ideological beliefs touch on the dynamics of power.
- Theories describe how media texts dominate its audiences and users. For Marxist, the discussion of ideology is
always attached to the idea of false consciousness. Ideology is a powerful mechanism that exerts control over the
people, specifically the oppressed classes who are forced to accept the ideology of the ruling class.

> FALSE - what they receive is not the ideology of their own class but the ideology of the powerful classes in
society.
> MARXIST ANALYSIS - asserts that media is an instrument of the ruling classes.
- It is a purveyor of ideas that represent the interests of the ruling elite and the powerful
media
institutions are actually equated to be the representative of the ruling elite.

IDEOLOGICAL STATE APPARATUS

- Gramsci and Althusser negated Marx’s view that social and political institutions including the state and their
interactions, as well as the ideas, values, and beliefs of a society, are solely determined by the economic
structures
and activities of society.
- Althusser proceeded further by theorizing how the media and other ideological state apparatuses work to
reproduce
the dominant ideology. He was interested in understanding the means by which the ruling class ruled as well as
how
the dominant ideology shaped people’s perception of the world.
- For Altusser. The media manufacture an imaginary picture of the real conditions of capitalism for their audiences
and in the process hide the true nature of their exploitations.

MEDIA AS PURVEYOR OF DOMINANT IDEOLOGY

- Today, there seems to be a debate: there are those who argue that media promote the interests of the ruling
classes,
the most powerful segments of society, thereby carrying the dominant ideology: on the other hand, there are
those
who assert that media text can also contain the messages that challenge existing worldviews other than that of
the
powerful classes. It is a matter of how the media text were created.
- We propose to think of media texts as sites where no one single reading should be considered as definitive.

IDEOLOGY IN STEREOTYPING
STEREOTYPING
- is an overarching belief about the characteristics of a certain group in society.
- then is never neutral or value-free. In most cases, forms of stereotyping in the media reinforce the marginalized
status of certain sectors, and impose a double marginalization on those whose freedoms and dignity are
traditionally
degraded because of poverty and exclusion.

STEREOTYPE
- It was first used of a journalist in the United States, Walter Lippmann in 1922.
- “picture in our heads” which we use to organize our perceptions of the world and those people in our world.
- It is actually a very assertive device in building expectations of others, how they should behave, and how groups
actually represent itself in a bigger society.
- are forms of characterization that are also memorable and widely patronized by many.
- Some stereotypes are attacked because they do not really convey the glaring realities faced by a particular group
of
people. When media present the followers of the Islamic faith as “terrorists”, they are missing out on how the
Islamic
faith preaches peace.