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Studying the Media Rather Than Simply Consuming It Essay

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Studying the Media Rather Than Simply Consuming It

Everyday we encounter the media in some form. It could be waking up to the sound of the radio, or passing billboards in the streets or simply just watching television. They are a lot of different forms of media, for example, verbal or written media, visual media and aural media. Examples of media would include newspapers, magazines, film, radio, television, billboard advertisements as well as the internet. Media studies came about because of the developments in mass communication and it provokes the generation of exigent questions about what we think we know as well how we came about knowing it. There are always changes in the media and the term “media” refers to the many ways …show more content…

The second reason is exemplification, as it aims to exemplify a certain aspect of a theory. Notoriety is another reason why studying the media text is important as it helps us think about social, political and cultural contexts. Text on it’s on is already something that is rather interesting but with its notoriety it reveals much more about their conditions of production as well as consumption. The forth reason is turning points, which can be included under notoriety, but texts can be vital without notoriety. Finally, comes aesthetic value, and it is a way of judging texts and making meanings out of them (Bazalgette, 2000).

One of the most important influences in media studies is self and experience in a mediated world. The self is seen as a product of the symbolic systems which precede it (Thompson, 1995). A person’s sense of identity and capacity to make sense of the world around us is said to be an outcome of a symbolic project. In short, this means, self-identity is the result of a project that a person forms out of the available symbolic materials to merge into a logical explanation of who oneself is. However, there are of course controversies to how the media construct our personal lives and the role it plays as well as the views of the world about it (Thompson, 1995).

Critical approaches to media studies are developed through different types of theories. European

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