REPRESENTATION What do we mean by REPRESENTATION?

Encoding and decoding

The media are very powerful and the way in which they represent key areas of society, issues and events directly links to the way in which audiences interpret, understand and respond.

Repetition by a media text of a particular representation over time makes that representation appear ‘normal’.<br>

For example, front covers of women’s magazines continually bombard audiences with unrealistic images of perfect women. The producers of the media text encode ideas and messages through the representations contained within the text, e.g. this is a perfect woman, this is how you should look, this is what you should be aspiring to, etc. The audience then decode the messages and may respond to them in a variety of ways, e.g. wow, she’s beautiful, I want to be like her, I am going to start going to the gym tomorrow, I’ll never be as attractive as she is.

The way in which women are represented in magazines may be accepted by some audiences who will ‘buy into’ the message regarding body size. Other readers may challenge or ignore that message and will decode it differently extracting from it what matters most to them.<br>

How are women represented on these covers?
In what ways could women respond to the images?
Is this a fair representation of women? Give reasons.<br>

Representation – construction
The aspects that make up a media text will have been constructed to achieve an effect. This finished construction, particularly in factual texts, gives an illusion of reality that becomes accepted by the audience as truth.

The documentary, fly on the wall section of a programme Strictly Come Dancing or The X Factor constructs a narrative that positions the audience through the editing of filmed footage. Hours of film have taken during the week of rehearsals and training and have been edited down to present a particular view of a character or situation in order to manipulate the emotions of the audience. Strictly Come Dancing Name another show that edits down weeks and weeks of footage in to hour long programmes.
Does this construct a fair representation?
What do you think the criteria would be when deciding what to include and leave out?<br>

Representation – mediation Mediation is the selection process that a text may go through before it is consumed by an audience.

For example, think back four and a half years ago to
August 2011. Riots took place in many major cities
around the UK. The news of the events came from a
number of different sources – the Police,
eyewitnesses, journalists, victims, rioters etc. and
appeared on the front page of every newspaper.
With a story like this the audience at home have to
rely on how the event is represented and mediated
as they cannot witness it first hand.




What are these mediation processes…?<br>

Mediation processes Aspects of the events are caught on camera, this immediately gives a focus through what is included and what is left out. One of the main front page images (used by both The Sun and the Daily Express) was of a track-suited, hooded youth standing in front of a burning car, this was then anchored by a caption suggesting how the audience should view this image. A headline gave further interpretation, in this case through use of emotive and hyperbolic language including lexis like ‘yobs’, ‘feral’ and ‘mob rule’. Within the newspaper the editorial may offer further opinion offering a representation of the event. The way in which the event was mediated through the images, text and representation of young people affects the way in which an audience will respond to the text.<br>

The areas of representation that you may be asked about in the exam are: GENDER REGIONAL AND NATIONAL IDENTITIES ETHNICITY ISSUES EVENTS AGE<br>

Exam preparation

In the exam you will be asked to explore the theme given in the question using three contrasting texts from different media.

For example the question may be…

Using your own detailed examples explore the representations of age in the media today.

The texts that you had studied for age might be a newspaper front page featuring young people, the television series Skins or The Inbetweeners and maybe a magazine front page with an older woman as the cover model.

You will need to start thinking of good examples, that you can write in detail about, from all the areas on the previous slide.

Please do not only rely on ones that you are given in class, it is important that you find your own.

Lastly, make sure that you use all the textual analysis skills when forming an answer because the representation has been constructed using camera shots, editing, audio codes etc. and you wont get the higher marks if you don’t refer to them.<br>