Wikipedia- Semiotics

Semiotics is the intellectual study of signs, where therefore people interpret the meaning of each sign, sound and word. Each meaning can be altered depending on cultural and ethical background. Two key individuals that looked deeper into this is study are;  Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Pierce.

Primarily, Saussure looked into the system of signs and a variety of signifiers, which are the physical forms of signs so what is being looked at. He also looked at what is being signified, what is being implied learnt and taught from this physical form. He came to the conclusion that the relationship between both the sign and what it means, is decided and agreed on as we attach them to the certain object. Also that without this universal thinking no one would understand ad would have various interpretations.

However Piece, delved deeper into semiotics and concluded that with every sign, there is a multitude of meanings and understandings. That these meanings can be attached to the signifier and are varied depending on their audiences.

Denotations and connotations come hand in hand with semitics and this just explains what is seen by the audience and what is then thought afterwards. For example a Heart can be seen in various ways; the physical organ which pumps blood through the bod, however a heart has connotations of love, romance and valentines.

James bond Hypothesis:

To prove or disprove the following hypothesis 'The products constructed to market James Bond films are designed to offer a clear appeal to a wide global audience of young males age 17-35'. I wanted to look at a variety of James Bond posters from different time periods and compare the format of them.

In a variety of covers, there are a lot of half naked female figures, which is very provocative. This can be denoted by the audience as showing that the films contain sexual themes. This will appeal to males within these ages because this is what marketers think that they want to see.

Similarly the colour white featured in the posters to show purity and can be foreshadowing of future events in the film, inciting the audience. The colour white is featured in the majority of the posters and it creates a sense of mystery. 

It colour also support the hypothesis about young males, due to the fact there is a star image, Daniel Craig and Sean Connery are staring on the posters. This appeals to an audience because if they are a fan of these actors they will want to watch the film.

Themes of romance are portrayed in these films in all of these posters, which provide the idea that there is a romantic elect to the films. Stereotypically this will intrigue men. This is denoted on the 'Spectre' poster due to the fact that Bonds tie is the same colour as the woman lips. This could show a bond between the characters in a romantic light.

Cultural Industries – Hesmondhalgh

Cultural industries follow the normal capitalist pattern of increasing concentration and integration – cultural production is owned and controlled by a few conglomerates who vertically integrate across a range of media to reduce risk.

Risk is particularly high in the cultural industries because of the difficulty in predicting success, high production costs, low reproduction costs and the fact that media products are ‘public goods’ – they are not destroyed on consumption but can be further reproduced. This means that the cultural industries rely on ‘big hits’ to cover the costs of failure. Hence industries rely on repetition through use of stars, genres, franchises, repeatable narratives and so on to sell formats to audiences, then industries and governments try to impose scarcity, especially through copyright laws.

The internet has created new powerful IT corporations, and has not transformed cultural production in a liberating and empowering way – digital technology has sped up work, commercialised leisure time, and increased surveillance by government and companies. 

Regulation – Livingstone and Lunt

Livingstone and Lunt studied four case studies of the work of Ofcom.

Ofcom is serving an audience who may be seen as consumers and/or citizens, with consequences for regulation: consumers have wants, are individuals, seek private benefits from the media, use the language of choice, and require regulation to protect against detriment; citizens have needs, are social, seek public or social benefits from the media, use the language of rights, and require regulation to promote the public interest.

Traditional regulation is being put at risk by: increasingly globalised media industries, the rise of the digital media, and media convergence. 

Power and Media Industries – Curran and Seaton

A political economy approach to the media – arguing that patterns of ownership and control are the most significant factors in how the media operate.

Media industries follow the normal capitalist pattern of increasing concentration of ownership in fewer and fewer hands. This leads to a narrowing of the range of opinions represented and a pursuit of profit at the expense of quality or creativity.

The internet does not represent a rupture with the past in that it does not offer a level playing field for diverse voices to be heard. It is constrained by nationalism and state censorship. News is still controlled by powerful news organisations, who have successfully defended their oligarchy. 

‘End of Audience’ Theories – Shirky

In the ‘old’ media, centralised producers addressed atomised consumers; in the ‘new’ media, every consumer is now a producer. Traditional media producers would ‘filter then publish’; as many ‘new’ media producers are not employees, they ‘publish then filter’.

These amateur producers have different motivations to those of professionals – they value autonomy, competence, membership and generosity. User-generated content creates emotional connection between people who care about something. This can generate a cognitive surplus – for example, Wikipedia can aggregate people’s free time and talent to produce value that no traditional medium could match.

‘The Audience’ as a mass of people with predictable behaviour is gone. Now, behaviour is variable across different sites, with some of the audience creating content, some synthesising content and some consuming content. The ‘old’ media created a mass audience. The ‘new’ media provide a platform for people to provide value for each other. 

Fandom – Jenkins

0. Fans act as ‘textual poachers’ – taking elements from media texts to create their own culture.
   
   The development of the ‘new’ media has accelerated ‘participatory culture’, in which audiences are active and creative participants rather than passive consumers. They create online communities, produce new creative forms, collaborate to solve problems, and shape the flow of media. This generates ‘collective intelligence’.
   
   From this perspective, convergence is a cultural process rather than a technological one.
   Jenkins prefers the term ‘spreadable media’ to terms such as ‘viral’, as the former emphasises the active, participatory element of the ‘new’ media.