Media, Information and Technoculture 1050A/B Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Semiotics, Emoji, Tinder
19 Dec 2016
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Media Midterm 1 Review
- Ideology: social norms that we have learned since birth, ideas presented or hidden as
“truths”
- Institutional State Apparatus: denote institutions which were formally outside state
control but which served to transmit the values of the state, to interpolate those
individuals affected by them, and to maintain order in a society, above all to reproduce
capitalist relations of production.
Examples:
◦Family
◦Church
◦Schools
◦Government
◦Legal system
◦Culture
◦Communication
- Commonsense: stands in for truth, reality
◦What is important
◦Who is important
◦How groups, people, and ideas are represented
- Norms:
- Media: how we communicate, software itself
➢Social media – snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, tinder
➢Ex. Television program
- Medium: the hardware, what you are reading/ viewing it on
➢Smartphone. Computer, Internet
➢Ex. TV
- “The media”: the content providers
➢Hulu, newspapers, film and television corporations
➢Ex. Netflix
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-How communication has influenced and reflected culture and society throughout
history:
➢!
From Sumerian cuneiform to phones and social media dependence
- Relationship between media and the cultural commonsense: Media circulates
"cultural common sense". They create certain norms typically enforced through
advertisements to sell a product.
- Rhetoric: a way of saying things without saying something
▪The construction and manipulation of language for affective purposes
➢Verbal Rhetoric: what and how something is said – ex. Rioters vs. thugs
➢Visual Rhetoric: visual ways to get attention – ex. Sexual cues, attractive
people
➢Presentational Rhetoric – explained below
- Rhetorical analysis – p.49 case study
➢Rhetoric is concerned with affect and attention, semiology is concerned with
interpretation
- Visual Rhetoric vs. Verbal Rhetoric: -> explained above
- Photographic devices:
➢Editorial rhetoric: organization of the moving image. Ex. Composition
(selecting angles, lighting, lens, framing, and other elements of the
construction of photographs) , retouching, cropping, juxtaposition, montage
(merging two or more images into a seamless whole to create a new text)
- Presentational rhetoric and examples: when these devices are put together to make a
consumer buy something or to make you think something
➢When a BBC presenter does not sound authoritative, clear and reliable we go
through a type of shock.
- Mise-en-scene and editing as rhetorical devices: it gives us info about what we are
going to see, setting.
➢Editing – continuity
- Rhetorical devices and culture: rhetorical devices are not neutral (ex. Of kids being
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called rioters vs. thugs)
- Semiotics: how this stuff works. Reveals arbitrariness of the way we make meanings
- Difference between rhetorical and semiotic analysis: rhetorical analysis involves
analyzing the construction and manipulation of language by the creator of a text for
affective purposes whereas semiotic analysis involves analyzing the “signs”
- Sign, signifier, signified: the sign is the key element.
➢Signifier: The physical properties or aspects of a sign that leads them to be
perceived in some way. Ex. Word cat
➢Signified: The conceptual aspect of the sign. Ex. Picture of cat
- Different types of signs (sign-object relations) and examples:
➢Iconic - ex. Emoji, take resemblance to what it is referring to. Photographs - it
looks like what it is
➢Indexical - cause and effect. Ex. Smoke signifies fire
➢Symbolical - no cause and effect, no physical resemblance. Relationship
between sign and object is conventional or habitual
- Arbitrary nature of signs (that is, why do we call a small furry domestic pet with a long
tail, !
whiskers, and haughty attitude a cat instead of a cow?): *? semiotics reveals the
arbitrariness of the way we make meanings
- Meaning - truth
- How meaning in media is determined: *? Media tries to reinforce common-sense
meaning through a lot of repetition.
- Syntagms: Relations of syntax, the order of signs creates meaning
➢In a sentence “It was a lovely, sunny day”, the order in which the adjectives
are put
- Paradigms: Chain or collection of signs, invoke each other because they are culturally
related.
➢Paradigm of romance
➢Paradigm of femininity
➢Paradigm of wealth
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Document Summary
Ideology: social norms that we have learned since birth, ideas presented or hidden as. Commonsense: stands in for truth, reality: what is important, who is important. Social media snapchat, instagram, facebook, tinder. Medium: the hardware, what you are reading/ viewing it on. How communication has in uenced and re ected culture and society throughout history: From sumerian cuneiform to phones and social media dependence. Relationship between media and the cultural commonsense: media circulates. They create certain norms typically enforced through advertisements to sell a product. Rhetoric: a way of saying things without saying something: the construction and manipulation of language for affective purposes. Verbal rhetoric: what and how something is said ex. Visual rhetoric: visual ways to get attention ex. Rhetoric is concerned with affect and attention, semiology is concerned with interpretation. Visual rhetoric vs. verbal rhetoric: -> explained above. Editorial rhetoric: organization of the moving image.
