Key Media Theories
David Crystal
Ben Zimmer
Roland Barthes
Steve Neale
'The electronic medium is neither exactly like speech nor exactly like writing'.
Doesn't believe that text speak is destroying our language - the two will co-exist, growing and expanding parallel to each other.
The rhythm of an internet interaction is a great deal slower than in a speech situation.
The idea that texts communicate their meanings through a process of signification.
Semiotics
Stuart Hall
This theory thinks about the preferred meaning of a text.
Encoding = what is written within a media text.
Decoding = when the audience reads into this piece of media and makes their own interpretation of what the image means.
'Steak and chips' - the idea where certain things can symbolise a national identity.
Angela McRobbie
Portrayal of men and women - the media shows the two genders in different lights.
Charles Pierce
Dominic Strinati
David Buckingham
The media offers not only a transparent window to the world but a mediated version of it.
Genres must show repetition and difference in order to maintain audience interest.
David Nye
Cyber-dystopia: a world made worse by technological advancements.
There is a need for shared socio-cultural knowledge and understanding between text receivers and text producers.
Critical of semiotics.
Some media texts are simply promotional tools and we cannot guarantee that audiences will read them the way we want them too.