AQA Media Studies for A Level: Revision Guide

74 AQA Media Studies for A Level Revision Guide Are you typical of your generation? According to research conducted by Adobe, Gen Z spends an average of 5.9 hours per day on their phones – nearly 50% of this age group spend 10 hours online each day. If so, you experience what Baudrillard calls media saturation – the idea that we are constantly surrounded by and immersed in the media. The appeal of the media is clear. It offers escapism and diversion ( Blumler and Katz ) by creating images and representations that are more interesting, exciting and engaging than the mundanity of day-to-day lives. Media representations are simulations of people, situations, places and, at times, relationships and feelings. We feel as if we know characters on TV and on social media. These relationships often feel as intense as ones we have in real life and often we ‘know’ media characters better than our own friends – or it feels as if we do, as the hyperreality of media representations makes it dif cult for us to clearly differentiate between reality and simulations. Social media celebrities, for example, spend a lot of time and energy creating a brand and then communicating these brand values in ways that are interpreted as authentic, thus creating an illusion of intimacy with their followers. This intimacy is, however, a construction, so the ‘close relationship’ it creates is a simulacra . Simulacra: a hall of mirrors – all representation and no ‘reality’. Still from Gotham (Season 3, Episode 14).