Chapter 3 Chapter Overview

This chapter examines a number of different theories and perspectives on media content, using an encoding/decoding model of communication. The study of the creation and interpretation of media content is the study of representation, or, as the semioticians would classify it, signification. Such study examines how symbols, such as the words and ideas contained in language, are constructed and used to interpret the world of objects, events, persons, and representation in general. The study of representation involves understanding the nature of polysemy, intertextuality, and grounded indeterminate systems, relying on an understanding of the encoding and decoding processes that incorporate a range of social institutions and forces that contextualize the ways in which people create and make meaning from media messages. Put more simply, examining media content from a social or cultural perspective involves understanding how messages are open to a variety of interpretations, how interpretation depends upon other representations, and how there are bound to be a finite but unpredictable number of interpretations of the object, event, or phenomenon being represented.

Several approaches to media content are considered in the chapter: literary criticism; structuralism, semiotics, and post-structuralism; discourse analysis; critical political economy; cultural critique; content analysis; genre/media form analysis; and advertising analysis. Each perspective provides insight into the social and linguistic forces that influence the production process, and the varying perspectives of these views emphasize the notion that no particular view is correct on its own.

An understanding of the complexities of media content aids in the understanding of how media may impact social ideas and values, as well as how practices of representation can be problematic. The next chapter goes on to investigate how audiences, culture and media interact with each other, broadening the focus of this chapter.