AQA GCSE Media Studies Revision Guide - Revised Edition

The media are the means by which the producers get their messages to us; for example, via a website , television programme or a magazine . Increasingly, however, the media are interactive so the audience can send messages back to the producers . Semiotic analysis Fundamental principles of semiotic analysis, including connotation and denotation. Rapid Recap When carrying out an analysis, you will be using semiotics . Semiotics is the study of signs and their meanings . The signs – things you can see and/or hear in a media product – are combined together using codes that enable us to understand them. Each sign has a signi er – the thing we see or hear – and something signi ed – the meaning of the sign . The denotation is the literal meaning of the sign . The sign denotes what it actually is. The connotations are the potential meanings of the sign that you have learned through your experience of wider culture. The sign connotes some deeper meanings . In this OMO advert from 1955 (one of your CSPs), the denotation in the main image is of a woman looking over her shoulder while hanging out her washing. The connotations are that she is about to talk to the viewer in a friendly way, and that she is very happy with the quality of her wash. • Anchorage : if the intended meanings of a sign in a media product are not clear, they can be anchored by the use of further signs or codes. This could be by adding a caption to an image , putting two visual signs next to each other, or adding a voiceover narration over moving images , for example. • Icon : a sign that looks or sounds like the thing it refers to. For example, a photograph of a bear is an icon of a bear. • Symbol : a sign that doesn’t look or sound anything like the things it refers to, so we need to have learned its meaning . For example, a red rose is a symbol of romance. Spec Spotlight The chapter on Media Language (pages 21–57 of this book) revises these codes in greater detail. Link 19 1 The theoretical framework and analysis Copyright: Sample material