A Study On Television Studies Media Essay

A Study On Television Studies Media Essay Television is that fantastic media phenomenon that provides us with pursuit at the click of the remote after a long day at the office; the cultural artefact that we can all relate to in one way or another. A large majority of us have our ‘favourite’, ‘must-see’ programmes that we religiously tune into; others simply choose to flick through the channels in hope of finding something ‘worthy’ of viewing; while many consciously choose not to watch certain programmes as they dislike them- chances being that their friends and colleagues will be talking about that programme the next day, making it almost impossible to be excluded from the discourses of social ideologies and construction that television presents. Each individual produces diverse reactions to television footage; whilst considering the representation of society through television media and flow, only we can conclude what we make of said footage, providing our own encoding of the text, thus possibly coming to a different supposition than another viewer of the text. Meanings are appropriated to the audience in different ways- meanings which are actively produced by the text- and whether we choose to agree with proposed meanings directly affects our own identities and representations. Firstly I am going to consider how far television is aiming to re-produce human identity and to what extent output creates and reinforces ideologies of UK culture. I will discover how genres of programmes can have a diverse impact on the ways in which we see representation in the UK. Using Baudrillard I will revise how ‘reality’ television can persuade us to conform to a new identity and representation. I will uncover how representations are obtained, and how these might be understood by the audiences. I wish to discover how constructed ideologies have forced us to accept specific cultural norms and values, and how television might reinforce this theory. I will also exa mine how, through the use of language and signs, media representations are understood in UK culture enabling me to gain a broader perspective on how such issues are reflected and how they may influence UK identity today. Using the theories of Hall and Saussure, I will discover how the use of a common understanding of representations enables us to construct identities today. Finally, I will look at how social class and sexuality are portrayed in television; my reason for this is that not are these matters an extremely apparent dynamic within television output, but it will enable me to correspond to Marxist theory, which I believe hold valid views to the links of power, social class and representation, allowing me to summarise how television output reflects representation. . When considering how evocative television is in the representation of the UK, many points have to be measured. Firstly we have to deliberate what the term representation essentially means. Marsen (2006:12) stat es: ‘A representation is a constructed pattern or design that describes or stands for something else†¦A representation could have a likeness with its object or it could be abstract. Language is to a large extent representational because it creates the object that it describes through words.’