CMAF 1010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Reality Television, Windsor Star, Discourse Analysis
Document Summary
Intro to media and society october 3rd. Representation is the act of putting ideas into words, visuals, audio, or any other medium of communication. Relationship between reality and what is represented in and through media. Representation simplifies and interprets what it is trying to represent/depict. Signs and semiotics: we make meaning through signs, semiotics is the science of signs. A more rigorous way to think about representation. Two components: example of a traffic light as a sign: Signifier = the aspect of the sign we experience. Signified = the idea or mental concept drawn from the signifier. Indeterminacy of representation: a sign can have different meanings, especially at the connotative level, conversely, there are an indeterminable number of ways of representing an object, person, or event. The remainder of today"s lecture will apply perspectives from pages 98- 107 of the textbook, including literary criticism, discourse analysis, content analysis, and critical political economy analysis.