Candidates are free to study any media texts, theories, case studies, debates and issues, providing they relate to the four prompts for the topic area selected. The exam question will relate to one or more of the prompts.
Contemporary Media Regulation
What is the nature of contemporary media regulation compared with previous practices?
What are the arguments for and against specific forms of contemporary media regulation?
How effective are regulatory practices?
What are the wider social issues relating to media regulation?
Candidates might explore combinations of:
Film censorship, the regulation of advertising, the Press and regulation / control, computer / video game classification, contemporary broadcasting and political control, the effects debate and alternative theories of audience, children and television, violence and the media or a range of other study contexts relating to the regulation of contemporary media.
Global Media
What kinds of media are increasingly global in terms of production and distribution?
How have global media developed, in historical terms, and how inclusive is this trend in reality?
What kinds of audience behaviour and consumption are increasingly global?
What are the arguments for and against global media, in relation to content, access, representation and identity?
Candidates might explore combinations of any two media in relation to the above prompts. Examples are film and debates around cultural imperialism, television and national versus imported broadcasting, national press in relation to global news provision, media marketing aimed at cross-national territories, examples of media that contradict theories of globalisation or a range of other examples of global media practices.
Media and Collective Identity
How do the contemporary media represent nations, regions and ethnic / social / collective groups of people in different ways?
How does contemporary representation compare to previous time periods?
What are the social implications of different media representations of groups of people?
To what extent is human identity increasingly ‘mediated’?
Candidates might explore combinations of any media representation across two media, or two different representations across two media. Some examples are:
National cinema, television representations, magazines and gender, representations of youth and youth culture, post-9/11 representations of Islam, absence / presence of people with disability in two media.
Media in the Online Age
How have online media developed?
What has been the impact of the internet on media production?
How is consumer behaviour and audience response transformed by online media, in relation to the past?
To what extent has convergence transformed the media?
Candidates might explore combinations of any two media, considering how each (or the two in converged forms) can be analysed from the above prompts. Examples might be music downloading and distribution, the film industry and the internet, online television, online gaming, online news provision, various forms of online media production by the public or a range of other online media forms.
Post-modern Media
What are the different versions of post-modernism (historical period, style, theoretical approach)?
What are the arguments for and against understanding some forms of media as post-modern?
How do post-modern media texts challenge traditional text-reader relations and the concept of representation?
In what ways do media audiences and industries operate differently in a post-modern world?
Candidates might explore combinations of:
How post-modern media relate to genre and narrative across two media, computer / video games and new forms of representation, post-modern cinema, interactive media, reality TV, music video, advertising, post-modern audience theories, aspects of globalisation, parody and pastiche in media texts or a range of other applications of post-modern media theory.
‘We Media’ and Democracy
What are ‘We Media’?
Where / how has ‘We Media’ emerged?
In what way are the contemporary media more democratic than before?
In what ways are the contemporary media less democratic than before?
Candidates might explore combinations of any two media in relation to the above prompts. Starting from Gillmoor’s definition, all media that are ‘homegrown’, local, organic and potentially counter-cultural can be studied for this topic, as long
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