While students may have an intuitive sense of how the media represents certain phenomena, they need to learn some particular research techniques for how to analyze these representations. It is often useful to model these different techniques, demonstrating how you use them in analysis of a particular example.

The following are some steps involved in conducting studies, following by specific aspects associated with analyzing representations:

In analyzing representations, students can focus on the following aspects:

images. The images employed that reflect certain positive versus negative value orientations based on cultural codes and archetypal meanings, for example, uses of dark or black colors to portray an urban area as dangerous or threatening (Lacey, 1998). In this semiotic analysis of representation, students are examining how the meaning of images as signifiers (wearing jeans vs. suits) creates certain signified or implied meanings (casualness/formality/dress for success) based on certain codes that link the signifiers with the signified meanings. For example, in reading the semiotic meaning of t-shirts, students draw on codes for interpreting the signs on t-shirts (Cullin-Swan, B., & Manning, P. K., “Codes, Chronotypes, and Everyday Objects” )

These codes are culturally constituted. Stuart Hall (1997) cites the example of the meaning of traffic lights—the fact that the signified meanings of red and green are culturally determined based on a code system that indicates that in certain cultures, red means “stop” and green means “go.” The difference between red and green is what signifies the meaning based on the cultural code. To determine how images are representing a social or cultural world, you need to determine the code system underlying the media texts.

sound/music. Media texts represent social worlds through the uses of sound or music. They may represent certain regions of the world by using music associated with those worlds, for example, Samba or Calypso music to represent South American worlds. These uses of sound or music are often based on audience’s prior knowledge of certain types of music as associated with certain types of experiences or worlds.

intertextuality. Media representations also depend on audiences’ knowledge of intertextual links between the current texts and other previous texts using the same images, language, sounds, or logos. For example, understanding the Energizer Bunny battery ads, in which the Energizer Bunny suddenly appears at the end of an ad, requires a prior understanding of previous Energizer Bunny ads. Audiences understand the meaning of certain representations because they have knowledge of these intertextual lnks. They enjoy fact that they are “in the know” about the intertextual references being made. In analyzing media representations, you therefore need to determine the intertextual links being employed to previous texts, and how these links are being used to represent a world in a certain manner.

Dan Chandler’s discussion of intertextuality

Gunhild Agger, Aalborg University, Intertextuality Revisited: Dialogues and Negotiations in Media Studies

language. In studying how language is used to represent experience, you are studying how language actually serves to create realities or worlds. The hyperbolic, idealized language of advertising is used to create worlds in which flaws or problems are instantly dealt with or solved. The language of sports commentary is used to dramatize the significance of a game to keep viewers watching the game.

Language is also used in media texts in ways that voice or “double-voice” certain discourses or cultural models. As noted in Module 4 under Critical Discourse Analysis, language references, mimics, or parodies legal, religious, scientific, business, romance, economic, or medical discourses. For example, political ads about education that employ the words “accountability,” “results,” “bottom line,” or “major investments of tax dollars,” are voicing a business discourse or cultural model in describing education. This language is being used to represent issues of education in terms of a business model in which being “accountable” to “results,” i.e., test scores, is the primary goal. Thus, schooling is being represented in terms of the discourses of business. By noting the types of discourses being referred to in the language, you can then determine the uses of certain discourses to represent worlds in certain ways.

In defining these discourses, you are also determining how audiences are being positioned to accept certain representations as “normal” or “common sense” constructions of reality. You may then describe how you are being positioned by these discourses by asking the question: “What does this text want you to be or think?”

One approach to studying language use to represent or construct worlds is to study language use in cartoons. In cartoons, language is often used to mimic or parody certain discourses. The humor of cartoons is often derived from the juxtaposition of two totally disparate worlds or discourses that usually have little to do with each other. By identifying the particular discourse(s) being ridiculed in a cartoon or similar groupings of cartoons, students could then discuss other examples of how that discourse(s) functions in their own lives.

Students can find many cartoons on the web. For example, they could go to The New Yorker collection of cartoons and under “search,” type in a certain discourse, such as “business,” and study the consistent patterns in the language employed in cartoons related to business — as reflected in the language of the following two New Yorker cartoons:

The first cartoon pokes fun at the use of the popular notion of a “corporate culture,” language that reflected the human resource management discourse. The corporate/business world is juxtaposed with the quite different practice of wearing polo hats. The second cartoon draws on the discourse of accounting / stock-market, juxtaposing that discourse with the totally different world of the “Three Little Pigs” children’s literature.

Some cartoons play one discourse off against the other. The following two cartoons employ the discourse of romance — the uses of language to build a romantic relationship — is set against other discourses.

In this cartoon, the discourse of romance is juxtaposed against a legal discourse.

In this cartoon, the discourse of romance is juxtaposed with a discourse of religious beliefs in “previous lifetimes.”

Students can search for cartoons on any number of different web sites:

The New York Times Cartoons

Daryl Cagle’s Professional Cartoonists Index

Students could also study the use of language in parody on the following sites:

The Onion [journal/site that ridicules current political coverage]

Modernhumor [contains different types of humor and parody]

False advertising

Parody Songs

For further information on this topic, see an article by Laura Shin, “Laughing all the way to the Cartoonbank,” USAWeekend, July 13, 2003.

technique. Different types of techniques may be employed to represent phenomena in different ways. For example, the close-ups of faces employed in soap operas emphasize the emphasis on the important of relationships and emotional conflicts communicated through nonverbal cues. Carmen Luke argues that these techniques are gendered in that they represent gender in different ways:

content analysis. In studying media representations, students could conduct content analyses of media texts. Doing content analysis involves creating a set of categories or coding system for analyzing the types of certain phenomenon in a media text. These categories focus on the surface aspects of a text in terms of the types displayed that indicate the ways in which that text is representing a certain phenomenon. For example, you might analyze the representation of topics on the evening news in terms by counting the number of minutes devoted to different types of topics: crime, local events, national news, health news, weather, sports, etc. Or, you might analyze the gender role portrayals on children’s cartoons, as well as the ways in which cartoon characters’ interact with each other: through physical/violent interaction versus through language or through a combination of physical and language interaction. In doing content analysis, you need to attend to both the surface meaning of images/language, as well as the latent or underlying meanings, that require your interpretation of what certain patterns in the result indicate about the representations employed (Sweet, 2001).

Methods for conducting content analysis:

Designs for Rigor and Relevance: Media Content Analysis

Writing @ CSU: Writing Guide

The Content Analysis Guidebook

Examples of studies employing content analysis:

Studies of content analysis of media texts

Gender-Differentiated Production Features in Toy Commercials

A Content Analysis of Gender Differences in Children’s Advertising

Product-Related Programming and Children’s TV — A Content Analysis

Module 5: Word document

What are Media Representations?

Why Study Media Representations?

Studying Media Representations

Methods for Analyzing Media Representations

Representation and Censorship

Representations and Public Relations / Promotions

Studying Representations of Social Types or Groups

Representations of Femininity

Masculinity

Masculinity and Sports

Gays / Lesbians

Racial and Ethnic Groups

Class

Representations of Different Age Groups or Occupations

Occupations

Institutions

Instructional Activity

References

Teaching Activities