Jasmine's Blog

Ofcom is responsible for regulating the content of all television and radio programmes of channels such as; BBC, ITV, Channel  4. They make sure that all footage is suitable for all its audience. e.g. making sure that programmes that are being shown pre-watershed (before 9pm) don’t have any swearing in it. 

Press Complaints Commission is where people can go to complain about different texts thats they are unsatisfied with.

BBFC decide on the age certificate on films and prgrammes, to nmake sure that is suitable for rats.

What makes a story news worthy?

• The readers can relate to it
• Can shock the audience – about something that isn’t normal or tragic

http://www.slideshare.net/MrRichards/news-values-3299801

The Five News Values

• Continuity - Stories that are about events that have a continuing impact on readers for example, the war or the Olympics.
• Negativity - Readers find it more exciting to read about bad news rather than good news.
• Unexpectedness - If an event is out of the ordinary it will be more likely to make it into the news than an everyday occurrence would.
• Reference to an elite person - The media pay attention to the rich, powerful, famous and infamous. Stories about important people get the most coverage.
• Threshold - The bigger impact the story has, the more people it affects, the more extreme the effect or the more money or resources it involves, the better its chances of hitting the news stands.

Forms

‘The Only Way Is Essex’ is a hybrid genre of ‘Dramality’, a mixture of genres of drama and reality, the characters are real but some aspects of the programme have been made up for the audience’s entertainment. This is a similar style of programme to ‘The Hills’, both programmes features a lot of relationship problems. For example in ‘The Only Way Is Essex’ one characters had been n a relationship with a man for nine years and is no longer in one with him and there is resentment between the two characters. There also there are storylines of the character’s love interests and the audience are left with cliff hangers on whether they’re going to go out with each other. These sorts of programme always contain storylines like these to keep the audience’s interests in the text. This style of programme always features image conscious blonde women with fake tans and false breasts. The men feature in this programme always own flash cars, big watches and are always on the lookout for women.

Audience

The target audience are women aged 20+ who live in Essex and have similar interests to the people featured in the text. This text allows the audience to respond in three of many ways with; identification, where they can relate to the character’s storylines. For example, one of the female characters has to deal with her separation with her partner of nine years; the audience will be able to put themselves in the character’s shoes as they may have experienced something similar. The audience can also respond with gratification as the programme features people what people argue that are ‘good looking’, there is a scene where there is a male working out in the gym showing off all his muscles, the female audience are gratified by watching the male characters that they find ‘good looking’. The audience can also aspire to be like the character, rich; owing a flash car and living in a mansion. They could also aspire to look like the characters featured in the programme; blonde, big breasts and skinny. This programme could also appeal to the audience because it is filmed somewhere local and they will be able to identify where it is set.

Representations

This style of programme mainly focuses on the life of the privileged; Men, who wear fake tan and have muscles by working out regularly, they live in big mansions, wear big diamond encrusted watches and drive flash cars. The women mostly blonde, covered in fake tan, have false breasts, are very image conscious and are aspiring models. This conveys that life is best if you are rich and that you are superior to everyone else who are as privileged. ‘The Only Way Is Essex’ also gives a negative representation of women as they are referred to as ‘Birds’ and people who are very image conscious and convey values that image is everything. This is shown when the two women go in to the salon to get a makeover, even though some could argue that there was no need.

Institutions

This television programme is shown on ITV2 at ten O’clock in the evening. This institution was formed to entertain it audience, unlike the BBC it was mainly made to inform but to entertain as well, so it is not unusual that ‘The Only Way Is Essex’ is shown on this television channel. This is programme is shown in the evening because it is aimed at people who are aged 20 years and older, so they may be at work or university during the day so the evening is the only good time to get high ratings for the majority of the audience to watch the programme.

Common stereotypes

• Chavs – They are rude and wear tracksuits
• Gay Men – Camp, are feminine, wear the colour pink
• Geeks – Clever, unpopular, not very good in social situations
• Hoodies – Young, dangerous

We have these perceptions because we get them from the media giving us ideology on what each stereotype is like. We also might have theses perceptions because of first hand experiences and lead us to believe this about most people. We can also get perceptions from what we hear from other people. However, where ever we get our perceptions from they aren’t always accurate as everyone is not the same, for example not all youths are Hoodies and dangerous.

The media use stereotypes to represent people and places to appeal to their target market. A lot of stereotypes are used for comedy, for example Lauren Cooper in ‘The Catherine Tate Show’ is a stereotypical teenager who is rude and uses the phrase “Am I bovvered” when confronted. Stereotypes could also be used for identification as well.

The stereotypical white middle class nuclear family living in the suburbs is being represented, the mum and dad with their three children. The people featured on the cover represent the audience the magazine is targeted at which are women aged 35+ in a family.

If this text was to be aimed at men Angelina Jolie would be the main feature and the children wouldn’t be on the cover. Angelina Jolie would be sexualised to appeal to the male audience.

‘The Sun’ is a tabloid newspaper and is aimed at working class people. On the cover features Prince Harry behaving in such a way the monarchy wouldn’t. The audience are able to identify with Prince Harry as he behaving like a ‘normal’ person would. You could say that Prince Harry is stereotyped as an unruly young person.

If the Monarchy was featured in ‘The Times’ paper they would be shown in a positive light, talking about their successes.

1.The ways Internet is used in our everyday lives

• Entertainment – Television, Films, Read Books, Radio
• Social networking/ blogging
• Keeping up to date with the news and weather
• Learning
• Shopping

2. Old media has a ‘top-down’ structure meaning theaudience have no imput in the media and recieve the content through the text, a book is an example of ‘top-down’ as the readers can not contribute their own ideas.

New media has ‘Bottom-up’ structure, the audience are able to contribute their own ideas to it. Wikipedia is an example of new media, the audience can also become the producers and are able to add and change the information.

3. Examples of interactive websites.

• On news websites you can comment on the the stories that have been posted.
• Websites have Forums, allowing audiences to discuss and share ideas on choses topics.
• you are able to share pages on to social networking sites and email pages to others, for exapmle you can share stories from news sites to facebook.

4. BBC Radio 4 claimed that children consume over 100 media texts before they get to school in the morning. Children would probably see the media texts on their way to school; there are adverts everywhere:

• There are billboards in the street
• Adverts on Bus Stops
• On Buses and inside Buses
• Posters in Tube Stations
• On Tubes
• MP4/MP3s
• Mobile phones – access the internet/watch T.V.

5. Examples of Media convergence other than mobile phone technology.

• MP4
• Computers

Different texts are aimed at different target audiences; there are different televison programmes aimed for different types of audiences, for example ’Eastenders’ is aimed at a different people who watch ‘Tracy Beaker’. Audience is split up into differents groups such as gender, age, race, class, sub-culture and sexuality; this is know as audience segmentation. Texts are designed to give audiences responses such as gratification, this is when the text satisfies its audience. The audinece can also relate with the text, this is know as identification, for example a magazine aimed at middle aged women and features real life stories and problems like dieting, the targeted audience, women, will be able to relate and identify with the stories featured in the magazine. Audiences can respond with aspiration, they aspire to be like characters featured in the text. The last Response is participation, for example on Big Brother viewers are able to participate by calling in to evict a housemate. Institutions also look at the audience’s mode of address, how the text appeals to the target audience. For example magazines aimed at young males contain provocative images of women  to ensure the magazine appeals to them, as many institutions use sex to sell their products.

• Connects to Bluetooth
• Connects to the Internet
• Allows you to play games
• Send and recieve text messages and calls
• Takes pictures
• Stores photos
• Stores and plays music
• Alarm clocks

CONVERGENCE- more than one media forms combined together.

http://www.mocom2020.com - Information on the future of mobile communictation.

1. The news appears several times through out the day such as;

early in the morning at 6 am, in the afternoon around 1pm, the evening around 6pm and late at night at 12am.

It ties in with the pattern of everyday life by being shown at times where the target audience will be most likely able to watch it. They also want to get the correct target audience watching the news as they put it on after programs like ‘Bargin Hunt’ which is aimed at a mature audience.

2. Broadcasters compete by scheduling programs that appeal to the same audience at the same time mainly on Saturday evenings and also on week day mornings. BBC Two and Channel Five both show programs for children in the mornings during the week. BBC One and ITV1 also go head to head showing family entertainment shows around the same time as well.

3. Continuing Dramas aren’t scheduled head to head because they are on almost everyday of the year and the broadcasters know that the audience will jump from one channel to the other to watch all soaps.

4.Programs like ‘X-factor’ and ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ go head to head because they both come on once a year, so it is important for them to get the most rating for their program.

5.Genres of TV programs:

Drama, Chat, Game Show, Reality, Documentary, Children’s, Comedy…..

Broadcast

Television

One of my Favourite T.V programmes is a comedy called The Inbetweeners. I like this Programme because it is a slightly exaggerated version of real school life. There are four main characters are group of teenage boys who are friends; Will, Jay, Simon and Neil. The main characters resembles a different type of friend for example; Neil is the ‘stupid’ one, Jay lies and exaggerates to make himself seem more popular, Will is the unlucky one who has been bullied by the school bully ever since he joined the school. Simon is the most normal, but is also unlucky as he has been trying to woo a girl and fails every time he tries. This Programme is aimed at mainly boys aged 16 to 25 years as the main characters are of the same age and gender, and the audience can identify with the characters as they may have experienced some similar events that has happened in the programme. The older audience cand identify with the actors rather than the characters because the actors aren’t actually 17 years old but are in their 20s.

Radio

My favourite radio station is BBC Radio One because it plays different genres of music. Radio One caters for all subcultures as there is something for everyone; There are different DJs with different tastes in music and different interest and feature different things on their show, for example The Chris Moyles show is a breakfast show where a lot of pop muisc is played and keeps listeners up to date with the news and weather, but it features a lot of comedy, chat and games and other opportunities for the listeners to participate in. whereas Zane Lowe’s show on Radio One features a lot of new indie/alternative/rock music. Zane Lowes keeps the listeners of his show up to date with the latest new music and festival to go to. Radio One is aimed at people aged 15-30 years, you can tell by the age of the presenters. This gives the audience the ability to identify with radio presenters or for the younger people in the audience may respond to aspire to be like the radio prresenters, for example  young teenage girls may aspire to be like Fearne Cotton.

Print

Magazine

Heat Magazine is a celebrity gossip magazine. This magazine contains all the latest news on different celebrities lives . This Magazine gives out many values such as; image is everything. The readers are told this mainly through images, for example the on the front cover  above Heat Magazine Kerry Katona is shown in a negative way because she isn’t slim.  Heat also has a section in the magzine dedicated to fashion, health and beauty. This magazine is aimed at women aged 18-30 years. The poeple featured in the magazine represent the audience of the magazine. The audience can respond to the magazine with identification, some women may be able to relate with Kerry Katona’s eating habbits and othe celebrites porblems. Women can also aspire to be like the slim models that are also featured in the magazine.

E-Media

The Web

Facebook is a social networking site enables people share ideas, inform and organise events and invite people to them. Facebook makes it easier for poeple to talk to many people at once for free. Facebook is a good example of web 2.0; poeple are able to contribute their own information and their own ideas as well as just recieve  it.  Facebook is an easy way to contact people from all over the world, send news and information quickly. Facebook enables you to send messages to as many people you want all at once, this good for organising events such as parties and protests as you can get your invitations out as quickly as possible. Facebook is also good for getting into contact with old friends and family as it allows you to search for people in its search engine.