Baseline Assessment: Learner's Response

Type up your feedback in full 

• Strong responses to the shorter questions: focused and concise.
• More consideration of Industries for Q3 and a bit more balance in evaluation: How successful is 'OC' really?

Focusing on the BBC Life Hacks question, write three ways it helps to fulfil the BBC's mission statement that you didn't include in your original assessment answer. Use the mark scheme for ideas.

• Inform: Gender Identity 
• Educate: Topics that readers will commonly seek help and advice for
• Entertain: Diversion; listening to other people's issues that they may be able to relate to or seeing solutions to issues could be a gratification.

Question two asked you how useful media effects theories are in understanding the audience response to War of the Worlds. Complete the following:

Gerbner's Cultivation theory: 

• Gerbner's Cultivation theory suggests that heavy and prolonged media consumption can have an impact on people's attitudes and values. There is also an aspect of 'Mean World Syndrome' where audiences begin to believe the world is far worse than it is. 
• This theory is useful since it contextualises why the audiences perhaps were so quick to believe the worst when they heard the false reports- especially since this aired at the brink of a world war. However, it is not useful, as the study was conducted after the release of War of the worlds, and it could be argued that this was less the normalisation of breaking news and rather a global ignorance to media conventions.

Frankfurt School's Hypodermic Needle model: 

• That audiences are completely passive, and the media is 'injecting' them with information and ideologies, which they passively accept.
• This theory is perhaps less useful than the others as evidence shows that Newspapers may have over exaggerated the aftermath of the broadcast in order to create apprehension around new technology, and boost popularity of traditional media once again however there are examples of phone calls which do suggest that some audiences do reinforce the ideas suggested by the Hypodermic needle theory. 

Stuart Hall's Reception theory: 

• How an audience receives a media text- whether it is how the producer intended [dominant], the complete opposite [oppositional] or both agreeing and disagreeing [negotiated].
• This theory is useful since many audiences perhaps did comply with the dominant reading, Welles wanted audiences to be scared - and they were, however it could be said it is negotiated since the audiences were scared but perhaps at a degree that was unintended. This theory could also be not useful, as Welles intended reading is up for debate, and whether it was all a ploy to comment on the dangers of technology as the closing speech suggested or whether it was intended as a halloween prank.

Write a full essay plan for the 25-mark Magazines question. The mark scheme contains plenty of ideas you can use here. Your plan should include notes/bullet points addressing the following:

• Introduction:

Men's Health and Oh Comely have arguably both succeeded, and failed to attract audiences in the current climate of the print industry.

• Paragraph 1 content:

Men's Health: 

- Incentives: Adverts with discount codes, exclusives, star power

- Not Successful - online site, 500k online reach, utilises social media for sales

- Has seen a decline in recent years

• Paragraph 2 content:

Men's Health:

- 25-45, Male, Fitness Orientated

- Readership: 1,047,000

- Uses social media, brand deals and traditional conventions to attract readers

- Loyal following- people who read Men's Health are unlikely to be 'one-time readers'

• Paragraph 3 content:

Oh Comely:

- Audience: 27+ , White Middle Class Women, Educated, Liberal

- Readership: 25,000

- Unconventional composition- 'Our Writers are our readers' - Shirky

- Are they successful outside of their niche market?

• Paragraph 4 content:

Oh Comely:

- Niche audience

- Unconventional, Liberal content, Lack of competition

- At risk of losing audience, as commercially backed online publications such as Teen Vogue become more politicised

• Paragraph 5 content:

Industries: 

- Rise of Digital Media; Hearst Publications has seen a decline in sales, Iceberg is a small publishing company that requires sales in order to stay running

- Unsustainable goals; the content in both magazines is no longer exclusive

- Although they are attracting their target audiences, will it have a substantial impact as the industry itself loses velocity?

Identify three key skills/topics you want to work on in A Level Media this year before the final exams in June.#

• Contextualising and evaluating relevant information within relevant time periods.
• The magazine industry- how it's declining? how this impacts the success of the print CSPs?
• Structuring a 25 mark question!