Media Information Literacy, Study notes of Technology

Download Media Information Literacy and more Study notes Technology in PDF only on Docsity! MEDIA AND INFORMATION LITERAC Y CHAPTER II How Media Is Made LESSON 1 Constructedness: When Do We Say Something Is Const ructed? The Concept of “Construction” in Media  Today the capacities of the human mind aided by technology enable the process called construction of media and information messages.  The process of construction requires the exercise of deliberate choice: What tools to use; what to include and what not to include; what structure to create; as well as how to harness creativity and design elements to make the work more appealing to its audiences. Constructions and Representations  Constructions create representations, which are the construction in any media of certain aspects of reality and the constitutive elements that make up reality—people, places, time or historical period, objects, ways of life and even identities.  Representation is a way of presenting reality again.  Every media message, every media form, or media text, whether it is a printed advertisement prominently lining the we pass through to the television show you watch every day, are representations of how reality is perceived by its creator or producer, rendered into codes and conventions readable to the audience who in turn read or consume that version of reality.  It is very apparent that our perception of reality is mostly drawn from the representations that media provide us. What Are Codes and Conventions? • CODES ‒ are systems of signs that when put together create meaning. • CONVENTIONS ‒ are rules or agreed practices that relate to particular genres or styles of media productions. MEDIA FORM CONVENTIONS CO NVE NTI O N S FORM AND STRUCTURE ELEMENTS OF PAGE LAYOUT STORY GENRE CONVENTIONS CONVENTIONS PA°ER STOCK FOR CAUSE AND EFFECT GENERIC STRUCTURES TITLES AND CREDITS POINT OF VIEW SEQUENCES CHARACTER AND THE STRUCTURING STORY ARCS HYPERLINKING, OF TIME MOUNTING AND STORY PRINCIPLES FRAMING OF IMAGES The Semiotics Theory  Semiotics is the study of signs.  Media always is engaged in “signifying practices,” which means there is a kind of symbolic work that can be found in media texts.  To fully understand how the theory works and how coherent systems of meaning are created, the concept of culture should be discussed. The Role of Context Context can mean the established ways by which society privileges certain signs due to certain historical circumstances. Context can also mean the structures and institutions that we assign to the words, sounds, and images we see. LESSON 3 Genre What Is Genre?  The word genre is a French word which means ‘‘kind’’ or ‘‘class’’.  The original Latin word is ‘‘genus’’ and means a class of things that can be broken down into subcategories.  Genre tends to be understood to constitute particular conventions of content, and following a distinctive style in terms of form and presentation. Five Major Divisions of News Stories 1. Hard or straight news 2. Soft news 3. Feature 4. Opinion 5. Investigative news Five Major Divisions of News Stories 1. HARD OR STRAIGHT NEWS  What is usually found in the first page of a newspaper or makes up the headline of a regular episode of primetime news  Values two elements: seriousness and timeliness.  Journalists usually invoke the notion of objectivity as one of the guiding principles in covering and presenting news stories.  Thus, the lead paragraph opens with the very general recounting of the story, unpacking the widely acceptable 6 Ws—who did it, what they did, where they did, when they did it, to whom or with did they do it, and why.  The inverted pyramid seems to be the acceptable structure of the news story that is told objectively—with the base on top and the narrowest ad pointed section at the bottom. Five Major Divisions of News Stories Concise recounting of the details Supporting facts, evidence, key quotes from major personalities Supporting explanation Additional quotes and alternative explanation Other Relevant Information The inverted pyramid illustrates how information should be organized and prioritized in a news article. THE INVERTED PYRAMID  Five Major Divisions of News Stories 3. FEATURES  Feature stories are extensions of soft news in a sense that the human interest angle is played up and presented in a longer and elaborate format.  Most feature stories follow the beginning-middle-end structure, but the journalist can take liberties as long as clarity is not compromised.  There is a desire to take a more in-depth look at a topic and attempts to engage the reader using more colorful language or innovations in style.  The journalist’s perspective is also acceptable.  Using established literary conventions and literary devices are also acceptable styles that add flair to the writing style of the journalist. Five Major Divisions of News Stories 3. FEATURES  In the United States, the genre has been called literary journalism.  It can still cover the usual topics such as pressing issues of the day such as trafficking, unemployment, the reproductive health bill, or the Bangsamoro peace talks.  There are factual information stated in the article so their accuracy and commitment to truth still hold firm. However, the writer delves deeply by engaging her informants to reveal their complexities and seeks out the nuances of the issue as it bears on the lives and characters of people. Thus, literary journalism requires more research and more reflection from the writer.  It is also possible that the writer inserts herself into the narrative. His/her own reflections may form part of the ideas that the article wants to convey. Five Major Divisions of News Stories 4. EDITORIALS AND OPINIONS  Opinions against hard news are reserved for editorials and opinion columns.  More commonly called as columns, opinion articles express an individual or organizational point of view. In the case of editorials, it expresses the editorial committee’s stand on a very specific issue or a specific person or entity.  Editorials can serve many purposes. An editorial can call the attention of a certain individual or an entity (often the government) to act on the issue or respond to the clamor of the citizens. Sometimes, it is also meant to throw adulation to an individual, an organization, a policy, or an act exercised by the government, and cites why such should be the norm for others to follow. Sometimes, it is simply meant to entertain, and sometimes employ the tone of parody to underscore the misdemeanor of individuals or entities. Entertainment  The term "entertainment" is derived from the French word entretenir which means “to hold the attention, keep busy, or amused”.  The creation and production of entertainment is always hinged on the profi t driven motives of media institutions.  Entertainment grabs the audience’s attention to present something that will make them comfortably entertained, while generating pleasurable feelings of being satiated with the cumulative effect of the story, the production numbers, and the visuals. Entertainment  Entertainment has four sub-genres—festivals, gaming, drama, and comedy.  Each of the four sub-genres can still be broken down into more subcategories as the table below illustrates. Entertainment  The table below is configured to classify the sub- genres of entertainment in local television. LESSON 4 Formats What Are Formats?  Formats are templates that provide the working and provisional structures of media and information texts.  Formats provide the architectural foundation of a media or information text and thus dictate the kind of content that will be generated and the specific audience a program will attract.  We can say that our local television today thrives on formats—using time-tested formats, innovating on new ones, and appropriating from the global markets. What Are Formats?  Through formats, producers sell the realization of an idea for television. Global franchising works through this type of method: a basic template is sold on a global platform, then re-produced for different nation- states and their audiences. The format is the selling point.  The acquisition of global formats also involved international co-production. Like acquiring a franchise, the global formats that circulate in our local television are zealously supervised by the mother company that has its home base in another part of the globe.