Media Theory For A Level

Media Theory for A Level provides a comprehensive introduction to the 19 academic theories required for A Level Media study. From Roland Barthes to Clay Shirky, from structuralism to civilisationism, this revision book explains the core academic concepts students need to master to succeed in their exams. Each chapter includes: • Comprehensive explanations of the academic ideas and theories specified for GCE Media study. • Practical tasks designed to help students apply theoretical concepts to unseen texts and close study products/set texts. • Exemplar applications of theories to set texts and close study products for all media specifications (AQA, Eduqas, OCR and WJEC). • Challenge activities designed to help students secure premium grades. • Glossaries to explain specialist academic terminology. • Revision summaries and exam preparation activities for all named theorists. • Essential knowledge reference tables. Media Theory for A Level is also accompanied by the essentialmediatheory.com website that contains a wide range of supporting resources. Accompanying online material includes: • Revision flashcards and worksheets. • A comprehensive bank of exemplar applications that apply academic theory to current set texts and close study products for all media specifications. • Classroom ready worksheets that teachers can use alongside the book to help students master essential media theory. • Help sheets that focus on the application of academic theory to unseen text components of A Level exams.

From an established author with a growing international profile in media studies, Media/Theory is an accessible yet challenging guide to ways of thinking about media and communications in modern life. Shaun Moores draws on ideas from a range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, and expertly connects the analysis of media and communications with key themes in contemporary social theory. Examining core issues of time and space, Moores also examines matters of interactions, signification and identity, and argues that media studies is bound up in the wider processes of the modern world and not just about studying the media. This book makes a distinctive contribution towards rethinking the shape and direction of media studies today, and for students at advanced undergraduate or postgraduate level.

Matthias Vogel challenges the belief, dominant in contemporary philosophy, that reason is determined solely by our discursive, linguistic abilities as communicative beings. In his view, the medium of language is not the only force of reason. Music, art, and other nonlinguistic forms of communication and understanding are also significant. Introducing an expansive theory of mind that accounts for highly sophisticated, penetrative media, Vogel advances a novel conception of rationality while freeing philosophy from its exclusive attachment to linguistics. Vogel's media of reason treats all kinds of understanding and thought, propositional and nonpropositional, as important to the processes and production of knowledge and thinking. By developing an account of rationality grounded in a new conception of media, he raises the profile of the prelinguistic and nonlinguistic dimensions of rationality and advances the Enlightenment project, buffering it against the postmodern critique that the movement fails to appreciate aesthetic experience. Guided by the work of Jürgen Habermas, Donald Davidson, and a range of media theorists, including Marshall McLuhan, Vogel rebuilds, if he does not remake, the relationship among various forms of media—books, movies, newspapers, the Internet, and television—while offering an original and exciting contribution to media theory.

"Key Themes in Media Theory is wonderfully wide-ranging and deservedly destined to become a key text for students of Media Studies." Professor John Storey, University of Sunderland, UK "The very best text books are not just summaries of complex ideas for a student audience or an introduction to a critical canon; the very best add something to the canon they reflect upon, and Dan Laughey’s Key Themes in Media Theory is one such book. [It] is not a means to an end, as many such books can be. Rather it is a motivational primer, and one that should send both students and teachers heading to the library toread the theorists presented here again, for the first time." Richard Berger, Art, Design, Media; The Higher Education Academy, UK What is media theory? How do media affect our actions, opinions and beliefs? In what ways do media serve powerful political and economic interests? Is media consumerism unhealthy or is it empowering? Key Themes in Media Theory provides a thorough and critical introduction to the key theories of media studies. It is unique in bringing together different schools of media theory into a single, comprehensive text, examining in depth the ideas of key media theorists such as Lasswell, McLuhan, Hall, Williams, Barthes, Adorno, Baudrillard and Bourdieu. Using up-to-date case studies the book embraces media in their everyday cultural forms – music, internet, film, television, radio, newspapers and magazines – to enable a clearer view of the ‘big picture’ of media theory. In ten succinct chapters Dan Laughey discusses a broad range of themes, issues and perspectives that inform our contemporary understanding of media production and consumption. These include: Behaviourism and media effects Feminist media theory Postmodernity and information society Political economy Media consumerism With images and diagrams to illustrate chapter themes, examples that apply media theory to media practice, recommended reading at the end of every chapter, and a useful glossary of key terms, this book is the definitive guide to understanding media theory.

Our society has become characterized by aggressive media. Information is constantly at our fingertips – whether it be through the books, newspapers, and magazines we read, the television we watch, the radio stations to which we listen, or the computers that connect us to the world in a matter of seconds. We can try to limit our media exposure, but it is impossible to avoid all media messages. As a result, we psychologically protect ourselves by automatically processing the media to which we are exposed. Theory of Media Literacy: A Cognitive Approach comprehensively explains how we absorb the flood of information in our media-saturated society and examines how we often construct faulty meanings from those messages. In this book, author W. James Potter enlightens readers on the tasks of information processing. By building on a foundation of principles about how humans think, Theory of Media Literacy examines decisions about filtering messages, standard schema to match meaning, and higher level skills to construct meaning. A central theme of Potter′s theory is the locus that governs the degree to which a person is media literate. The locus is enriched by developing skills as well as good knowledge structures on five topics: media effects, media content, media industries, real world parameters, and the self. Key Features Presents the first social scientific theory of the process of media literacy Explores a broad range of literature on media literacy written during the past two decades Focuses on how the human mind works, especially in this mass media-saturated society Theory of Media Literacy is an essential resource to a wide audience within the media discipline. The book provides empirical researchers with direction to test the theory and extend our understanding of how the media affect individuals and society. Practitioners will find it helpful in developing strategies to achieve goals and, at the same time, avoid high risks of negative effects. In addition, new scholars will find it to be an excellent introduction to various media literacy research.

Considering Class: Theory, Culture and Media in the 21st Century offers the reader international and interdisciplinary perspectives on the importance of class analysis in the 21st century. Political economists, sociologists, educationalists, ethnographers, cultural and media analysts combine to provide a multi-dimensional account of current class dynamics. The crisis consists precisely in the gap between the objective reality and efficacy of class forces shaping international politics and the relative paucity of class-consciousness at a popular level and appreciation of class as an explanatory optic at a theoretical level. This important book shows why the process of reconstructing class consciousness must also take place on the ground of cultural and subjective formation where everyday values, habits and media practices are in play. Contributors are: Anita Biressi, Joseph Choonara, Maurizio Donato, Danny Dorling, Mark Gibson, Craig Haslop, Dave Hill, Peter Jakobsson, Marina Kabat, Holly Lewis, Catherine Lumby, Lisa Mckenzie, Tony Moore, Adrian Murray, Deirdre O’Neill, Jonathan Pratschke, Michael Seltzer, Eduardo Sartelli, Fredrik Stiernstedt, Roberto Taddeo, Mike Wayne, Milly Williamson, Ferruh Yılmaz.

The internet has fundamentally transformed society in the past 25 years, yet existing theories of mass or interpersonal communication do not work well in understanding a digital world. Nor has this understanding been helped by disciplinary specialization and a continual focus on the latest innovations. Ralph Schroeder takes a longer-term view, synthesizing perspectives and findings from various social science disciplines in four countries: the United States, Sweden, India and China. His comparison highlights, among other observations, that smartphones are in many respects more important than PC-based internet uses. Social Theory after the Internet focuses on everyday uses and effects of the internet, including information seeking and big data, and explains how the internet has gone beyond traditional media in, for example, enabling Donald Trump and Narendra Modi to come to power. Schroeder puts forward a sophisticated theory of the role of the internet, and how both technological and social forces shape its significance. He provides a sweeping and penetrating study, theoretically ambitious and at the same time always empirically grounded.The book will be of great interest to students and scholars of digital media and society, the internet and politics, and the social implications of big data.

Across the academy, scholars are debating the question of what bearing scientific inquiry has upon the humanities. The latest addition to the AFI Film Readers series, Cognitive Media Theory takes up this question in the context of film and media studies. This collection of essays by internationally recognized researchers in film and media studies, psychology, and philosophy offers film and media scholars and advanced students an introduction to contemporary cognitive media theory—an approach to the study of diverse media forms and content that draws upon both the methods and explanations of the sciences and the humanities. Exploring topics that range from color perception to the moral appraisal of characters to our interactive engagement with videogames, Cognitive Media Theory showcases the richness and diversity of cognitivist research. This volume will be of interest not only to students and scholars of film and media, but to anyone interested in the possibility of a productive relationship between the sciences and humanities.

Utilizes the resonance principle to explain the ways in which the electronic media is reviving nonlinear communication in modern society

Media are fundamental to our sense of living in a social world. Since the beginning of modernity, media have transformed the scale on which we act as social beings. And now in the era of digital media, media themselves are being transformed as platforms, content, and producers multiply. Yet the implications of social theory for understanding media and of media for rethinking social theory have been neglected; never before has it been more important to understand those implications. This book takes on this challenge. Drawing on Couldry's fifteen years of work on media and social theory, this book explores how questions of power and ritual, capital and social order, and the conduct of political struggle, professional competition, and everyday life, are all transformed by today's complex combinations of traditional and 'new' media. In the concluding chapters Couldry develops a framework for global comparative research into media and for thinking collectively about the ethics and justice of our lives with media. The result is a book that is both a major intervention in the field and required reading for all students of media and sociology.