Media Literacy AS

Media Language:
Media language refers to written, verbal, visual, and aural communication in a text, and sometimes can involve a combination of these kinds of communication. Media language is how the creators of the media text use: diegetic and non diegetic sound, camera angles, facial expressions and even hand gestures, dialogue, editing, lighting, and miss-en-scene to create a certain scene in a particular way to have the desired effect for the audience. The way media language is used can determine what genre the text fits into, this is because the audience learn to link certain conventions with certain genres. This also means that the audience then expects these conventions when consuming a media text of a particular genre.

Form and Style:
The form of a media text is its structure and the combination of dialogue, sound effects, editing, and atmosphere in the scene ( these elements are called 'micro elements'). The form is what helps make the genre of the text (or sub genre of TV Drama for example) immediately recognisable for the audience.
The style of the media text is how the text uses this form, which can make it more unique.

Convention:
Conventions are the ingredients for a particular genre. This means that each media text must include certain conventions in order to be recognised by the audience as being part of a particular genre.

Signification:
Everything is a sign. The signifier (denotation) is the meaning of the sign that everyone see's and agrees on. The signified (connotation) is the individual meanings that individual people apply to the sign.

Representation:
Representation is the way a media text re-constructs the real world to provide entertainment for the audience but while including mostly factual elements. They do this to represent: people, places, themes, ideas, time periods, and social situations in a media text.

Audiences:
When looking at a target audience for a media text or product, you should also consider the 'secondary audiences' and the ways that the different people can respond to different texts. This response may contrast and challenge your expectations which may mean you having to analyse your audience further.

Narrative and Genre:
Narrative structures are the way a media text is presented to an audience. Fictional media texts (such as TV and Film) tend to abide by the structure of balance, conflict and attempts at resolution. Narrative is the process of balancing what the audience actually witnesses during the text, and what they assume.
When various media texts appear to share similar conventions the audience develops expectations for this type of text - this is a genre. Often two genres can merge to form hybrid genres such as 'comedy horror' or 'rom- com'.

Creativity:
Creative skills necessary are the ability to use digital technology to create a media text that the audience can easily respond to; another skill necessary is the ability to grab the audiences attention with your media text and interest them. Media products are made as a result of a number of creative decisions, when analysing a text I'll need to work out what these decisions were. And when I have created the media produce I will need to evaluate these decisions from my own experience.

Connecting the Micr to the Macro:
The micro elements of a media text are the technical and symbolic features of the text. I will need to recognise these and describe their function. When all the micro elements are together they make up a very believable and realistic representation of the 'world'. This is called the plausible macro sum of the micro parts.

Multimodal Literacy:
Media literacy is continuously changing and allowing us to read and write in new ways. This means that the theories about communication also need to change and adapt.