Critical Media Studies - Media Messeges

 Understanding Key Terms 

Media messages cannot help but convey certain meanings, and these meanings are never neutral or objective. Films, songs, series and other, constantly impose certain attitudes on us, persuading us to dismiss all others that differ from the one they are conveying. They rely on certain symbols embedded in the messages to influence us. This use of symbols as means of persuading the audience to fell and think in a certain way is called rhetoric. 

This message transmission is achieved through certain rhetorical structures, one of which is form. Form can be defined as the creation and satisfaction of desire. For example, when we watch a movie, we expect a certain outcome, for our favorite character to survive, or for a goal to be achieved. The realization of our desired outcome is a form, and if not fulfilled it creates a bad review on the film, which classifies its form as bad. There are four varieties of a form, according to Burke: progressive form (step by step advancement of the story, with each step following logically from the previous one), repetitive form (the repetition of the same pattern of behavior over and over again), conventional form (they are based on a particular set of conventions we desire at a particular point in time), and minor or incidental form (appeareance of brief, frequent literary devices that allow us to enjoy segments of text, apart from the whole). 

Another way of conveying media messages is through the concept of genre. Genre is combination of messages that share the same stylistic (syntactic), substantive (semantic) and situational (pragmatic) characteristics. It relies on certain repetitive behavior that can be expected, which helps us divede certain categories. For example, based on their characteristics, we can divide movies into genres: horror, comedy, romance, action and etc. These categories, or different genes, fulfill different desires, based on what the audience wants to watch in a certain moment.  

Doxa is a concept for exploring the workings of ideology. It refers to any constructed aspect of culture that its members do not question. It's simply "the way things are". 

Interpellation refers to the process by which individuals are made to be a part of an ideology. 

Media outlets often present a certain understanding of class in America: clear class distinctions. This is often referred to as the American Dream, or the idea that a person's level of success is directly related to the amount of effort he or she puts forth. It is one of the most prevalant hegemonic ideologies in the American media texts. 

Othering is the process of marginalizing minorities by defining them in relationship to the (white) majority, which functions as the norm or the natural order. For Example, if we were to look up descriptions of Eddie Murphy or Kevin Heart that characterize them as "black comedians" in the movie industry, but if we were to look up Jim Carrey and Steve Martin they wouldn't be described as "white comedians", but just "comedians", because a generic "comedian" refers to a white person.