COMN 2700 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Understanding Media, Semiotics

• School: York University
• Department: Communication Studies
• Course: COMN 2700
• Professor: Steve Gennaro

Document Summary

Representation: to look like or resemble, to stand in for something or someone, to present a second time to re-present. A system of representation through which we know and understand the world . Reality is always more extensive and complicated than any system of representation can possibly comprehend and this is why human history had produced so many different and changing ways of trying tom get in . Let"s explore these ideas a bit more: media as representation: symbols & icons . We deal with this in the section (semiology, pictures, ads, etc. : media representation as reality: maps . What we see and speak, impacts the way we understand the world and our place in it. Understanding media representation = understanding power dynamics. We need to be able to decode (unpack, make sense of texts, images, and representations) dominant readings (the meaning of a text that is accepted by most audience members)