Media Studies key terms

The audience that receives and interprets a message.

The circumstances in which audiences encounter and interpret a media product.

An approach explaining how audiences actively interpret media messages and may accept, adapt or reject their preferred meanings.

A company that organises the release and promotion of recorded music.

A popular newspaper with a red masthead, such as the Daily Mirror.

The style of language used for a particular situation, purpose or audience, including its level of formality.

The setting and enforcement of rules or standards governing media organisations and content.

An organisation’s specified responsibilities and purposes, which guide the services and content it provides.

The collection of characteristic features that helps audiences recognise and distinguish a genre.

The reuse of familiar genre conventions, allowing audiences to recognise a genre and form expectations.

The use of familiar genre features alongside differences that make a particular product seem fresh.

The capacity of a game to remain enjoyable or rewarding when played again after completion.

A constructed portrayal of a person, group, place, event or idea through choices of media language.

The stage at which a narrative’s disruption or problem is dealt with, establishing a restored or changed situation.

A selected group whose behaviour or responses are studied to learn about a wider population.

The use of humour, exaggeration or ridicule to criticise behaviour, institutions or ideas.

Broadcasting that follows a schedule, with programmes transmitted at times chosen by the broadcaster.

Research using information already collected by another person or organisation.

The process of choosing which people, images, words or events to include in a media product and which to leave out.

The selection and construction of a version of an event, person or group through choices about what to include, omit and emphasise.

A system in which a media industry largely monitors and enforces its own standards, often through an industry-funded regulatory organisation.

The construction of an image of oneself through media, including choices about which experiences, qualities and viewpoints to make public.

The study of signs and how they create and communicate meaning.

The creator or producer of a message in a communication model.

Something that conveys meaning or stands for something else, such as a word, image, sound, object or gesture.

A situation comedy: a television genre in which recurring characters encounter comic problems within familiar settings.

An outfit or visual appearance applied to a game character.