media studies a level essay structure

AQA Media Studies

Introduction.

Media Studies provides a great opportunity to explore and evaluate why we engage with a wide range of media texts. Representation and media form are other important aspects of the course. AQA’s course also requires you to develop the practical skills needed to create your own exciting products.

Close Study Products

To demonstrate your understanding of the key concepts in media studies, you need to analyse various media texts from a broad range of media forms, such as television, newspapers, magazines, digital media and computer games. The following guides apply the relevant theoretical frameworks to AQA's list of A-Level Close Study Products.

• AQA A-Level

Media One - Advertising and Marketing

Sephora – Black Beauty is Beauty Campaign

Score Hair Cream

Media one - music videos.

Old Town Road

Media one - newspapers.

The Daily Mail

The Guardian Newspaper

Media one - media industries and audience.

The War of the Worlds

BBC Radio 1’s Newsbeat

Blinded by the Light

Taylor Swift and Social Media

The Gentlewoman Magazine

Analysis of GQ Magazine

BBC’s Capital

Deutschland 83

Media two - video games.

The Sims FreePlay

Horizon Forbidden West and Genre

Representation in Horizon Forbidden West

Unseen questions.

Past Papers and Mark Schemes

You can access various materials from the dedicated AQA assessment resources page .

Non-exam Assessment

You need to create a cross-media production which demonstrates your knowledge and understanding of the theoretical framework. You also need to produce a Statement of Intent - a 500 word commentary on your chosen brief and how you intend to fulfill its demands.

Research and Preparation

• Statement of Intent

• Indicative Content

Assessment Objectives

AO1: Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the theoretical framework of media and contexts of media and their influence on media products and processes.

AO2: Apply knowledge and understanding of the theoretical framework of media to:

(a) analyse media products, including in relation to their contexts and through the use of academic theories; (b) evaluate academic theories; and (c) make judgements and draw conclusions.

AO3: Create media products for an intended audience, by applying knowledge and understanding of the theoretical framework of media to communicate meaning.

Recently Added

Deus Ex Machina

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6

Key concepts.

Todorov’s Narrative Theory – Weight Watcher’s

Influencers and the Two-step Flow Theory

The Speaking-Circuit

Media studies.

• The Study of Signs
• Ferdinand de Saussure and Signs
• Roland Barthes
• Charles Peirce’s Sign Categories
• Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation
• Binary Opposition
• Vladimir Propp
• Tzvetan Todorov
• Quest Plots
• Barthes’ 5 Narrative Codes
• Key Concepts in Genre
• David Gauntlett and Identity
• Paul Gilroy
• Liesbet van Zoonen
• The Male Gaze
• Judith Butler and Performativity
• bell hooks and Intersectionality
• The Cultural Industries
• Hypodermic Needle Theory
• Two-Step Flow Theory
• Cultivation Theory
• Stuart Hall’s Reception Theory
• Abraham Maslow
• Uses and Gratifications
• Moral Panic
• Camera Shots

A-level  MEDIA STUDIES

News.  advice. ​ ​.

Thank you for visiting this free A-level Media Studies revision site; constructed for the modern Media student, to supply them with relevant, engaging and accessible content to study the important, contemporary and exciting subject that is Media Studies. 

No login or registration is required but please consider clicking on our ad banners to keep the site running.   Teachers : use and adapt resources and content for lessons HERE using a collaborative Google Drive Link and become part of the Facebook Group.  Bookmark this page and share it with your media classes!  It is growing and will continue to grow.

MEDIA STUDIES IN THE NEWS

Check the twitter feed to see what case studies and resources are circulating the web right now.  If you have a good one that you want to share, DM @alevelmedia and get yourself known...

LATEST RESOURCES

Students and teachers asked for the following.  Be careful what you wish for:

>   Case Studies

​>   Media Theorists

​>   Essay Structure

​>   Feedback - what you said

​>   Legacy Specification

​>   Coursework woes

​>   Key Concepts

​>   Media in the news

​>   Become part of the team

  more to follow soon.   

We've got everything you need for starting Media Studies in Year 12 to finishing off in Year 13 and beyond (and VERY soon, everything for GCSE Media Studies and Film Studies).

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A-level Media Studies 7572

A-level Media Studies Specification Specification for first teaching in 2017

PDF | 878.51 KB

2.0 Specification at a glance

This qualification is linear. Linear means that students will sit all their exams and submit all their non-exam assessment at the end of the course.

2.1 Subject content

• 1. Media language
• 2. Media representation
• 3. Media industries
• 4. Media audiences

2.2 Assessments

A-Level Media Studies

• Wider reading
• Media Focus
• Film studies

Monday, 20 May 2019

Exam tips and frequently asked questions, if you are viewing this post during the 2021 c19 pandemic, you can click here to view specific info and advice related to working in lockdown and alternatives to exams, general advice, how long should i spend on each question.

You are advised to spend approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes on section A, including studying the unseen resources, and approximately 45 minutes on Section B. You should use relevant theories and relevant subject-specific terminology where appropriate.

How do I actually get marks in media? Where's the mark scheme?

Should i write an introduction, how do i structure an introduction, especially in component two, how do i write an introduction and why should i bother, how do i actually start a paragraph, how often should i refer back to the question, how can i talk about intertextuality, how do i talk about how audiences are constructed, i'm lost. what can i do to revise, component one section a, how is c1a structured, what kind of stuff might come up if newspapers come up as an unseen text.

• Climate protests
• The European elections
• Something to do with the NHS
• Something to do with the representation of a specific group, for example working class teenagers, ethnic minorities, the elderly, etc

What can I talk about beyond voyeurism and sexualisation when discussing representation in Riptide?

So riptide is a postmodern video. but how how does it break rules, and how does it criticise metanarratives , how can i write about black identity in formation , what's the big hat beyonce is wearing in the formation video all about, then, how can i talk about gilroy when studying wateraid, what kind of stuff can i talk about if genre comes up.

• Form of categorisation
• An easy way of marketing a similar experience
• A way for audiences to personally identify with a product and to help define themselves (Gauntlett) 

What's positioning, and how can I talk about how audiences are 'positioned by representations'?

Which one's which with diegetic sound , how and when should i refer to bell hooks, component one b, when the question says "you will be rewarded for drawing together knowledge and understanding from across your full course of study, including different areas of the theoretical framework and media contexts", what does it actually mean, so i need to talk about context. but what other examples did we study in class.

• The Blair Witch Project (Super low budget film with a ridiculously successful viral marketing campaign)
• Kes (Another Ken Loach film that we watched the trailer for. Stereotypically social realist)
• Twilight  (Paranormal romance drama that used a huge digitally convergent marketing campaign, for example fake social media accounts for the main characters)
• We looked at lots of examples of newspapers, and your homework for this unit was to read a newspaper every day. This is why we got you to do that...
• The Mail Online (The most visited newspaper site in the world. Much more informal that the print Mail, and targets a working class female audience. Extremely sexualised representations of women)
• The Sun (we looked at a few front pages of this right wing working class paper)
• We got you to do a research task where you went through BBC sounds to find radio shows that reflected a range of demographic groups. You can refer to any of these BBC shows to demonstrate how the BBC offers a pluralistic experience for it's audiences. 
• Death Stranding (Kojima Productions. Highly atypical marketing strategy. Years from release yet already ridiculously popular through viral marketing)
• The 25th Ward: The Silver Case (Grasshopper Manufacture. Extremely niche genre and game targeting a niche but fanatical audience)
• Dark Souls III (From Software. Another niche game targeting it's specialised audience through extreme difficulty. Tagline: prepare to die!)
• Fallout 4 (Bethesda Softworks. Huge, AAA game that uses an immersive introduction to address both long term and new fans)
• Goat Simulator (Coffee Stain Studios. Tiny independent game that got extremely popular through word of mouth)

How explicit should my examples be for industry questions?

What key words might i be asked to define for the industry questions, what kind of stuff can i talk about for the marketing for assassin’s creed iii: liberation, what is diversification, how can i talk about demographics and psychographics, component two, i can't remember anything about les revenants . what happened again, who actually published woman magazine in 1964, what economic factors are important for the magazine industry, how can i apply industry theory to attitude online.

• Eliminating the competition
• Targeting a niche but dedicated audience
• Adopting a horizontally integrated business model
• Deliberately attracting high profile names to publicise the magazine to new and larger audiences, and
• Using straightforward language and lexis to appeal to a working class gay audience (website only)

How can I talk about theories of identity when exploring online media?

Component three - the coursework, do we actually get marked for the pre-production powerpoint, and if not, why bother doing it.