Learner response: OSP assessment
Your Online, Social and
Participatory media assessment was tough - two 25-mark essay questions to
replicate the kind of challenge we'll be facing in the Media Two exam.
The first part of your learner response is to look carefully at your mark, grade and comments from your teacher. If anything doesn't make sense,ask your teacher - it's crucial we're learning from the process of assessments and feedback as we move towards the exams at the end of this year. The second focuses on using the mark scheme as a learning resource and developing our skills in essay planning and structuring.
Your learner response is as follows:
Create a new blog post on your Media 1 Exam blog called 'OSP assessment learner response' and complete the following tasks:
1) Type up your feedback in full (you don't need to write the mark and grade if you want to keep this confidential).
The first part of your learner response is to look carefully at your mark, grade and comments from your teacher. If anything doesn't make sense,ask your teacher - it's crucial we're learning from the process of assessments and feedback as we move towards the exams at the end of this year. The second focuses on using the mark scheme as a learning resource and developing our skills in essay planning and structuring.
Your learner response is as follows:
Create a new blog post on your Media 1 Exam blog called 'OSP assessment learner response' and complete the following tasks:
1) Type up your feedback in full (you don't need to write the mark and grade if you want to keep this confidential).
WWW:
The first page or two of this exam is much better than a D grade - you show brilliant potential here. if you added a section on The Voice to Q1 it would go a lot higher.
EBI:
The key lessons here are mainly about exam technique and timing. You need to write two complete essays here - planning will help you with this.
Make sure you construct an argument that answers the question: you don't do this for Q2
Q2 is a synoptic question so you need to bring in aspects from across the course (e.g. other CSPs or theories)
2) Read the whole mark scheme for this assessment carefully. Identifythree potential points that you could have made in your essay for Question 1 (Shirky, audiences and producers).
2) Read the whole mark scheme for this assessment carefully. Identifythree potential points that you could have made in your essay for Question 1 (Shirky, audiences and producers).
Teen Vogue
- Teen Vogue reflects the challenges major media producers such as Conde Nast have faced:
declining print revenues, changing audience habits, the need to diversify and create new
revenue streams. Teen Vogue has entirely reinvented itself in the last four years – initially
cutting down the print edition to four per year then cutting it entirely. Meanwhile, the
website was moved in a more political direction with the ‘News and Politics’ tab becoming A Level Media Studies the first option on the top menu bar and op-ed pieces such as ‘Donald Trump is Gaslighting America’ becoming viral sensations.
declining print revenues, changing audience habits, the need to diversify and create new
revenue streams. Teen Vogue has entirely reinvented itself in the last four years – initially
cutting down the print edition to four per year then cutting it entirely. Meanwhile, the
website was moved in a more political direction with the ‘News and Politics’ tab becoming A Level Media Studies the first option on the top menu bar and op-ed pieces such as ‘Donald Trump is Gaslighting America’ becoming viral sensations.
- The construction of the Teen Vogue website and social media also reflects the power shift
from producers to audiences. Without cover-price and print advertising revenue, Teen
Vogue now needs clicks. Although the brand has received significant credit for its political
reporting, the website and social media channels are still dominated by ‘clickbait’ headlines,
often constructed in an unusual first-person style (‘Cats Can Get Acne Too and Now I Feel
Less Alone.’)
The voice
The Voice should be successful – the opportunities that are offered by digital media and the
new media landscape in targeting niche audiences could provide an ideal platform for a
strong black British voice. However, the poor construction of the website and social media
presence (dead links, cluttered design, low-quality photography, lack of fresh content, poor
video production values) means it is not the powerful voice in British media it set out to be
when launched in 1982. Shirky discusses the “mass amatuerisation” of the media but
successful products still need to at least imitate professional production values and The
Voice fails to do this.
The Voice is a very typical newspaper website. In terms of conventions, it is dated – it has
the feel of a 2010 news website (for example, the old BBC website). In many ways, it doesn’t
reflect the changing landscape in the way one might expect – and this perhaps explains its
relative lack of success in recent years. At a time digital media has been used powerfully to
spotlight minority issues (such as the Black Lives Matter movement in the USA), The Voice in
the UK seems to have been largely silenced. The refusal to publish website or circulation
statistics suggests a brand that has failed to adapt to the “contemporary media ecosystem”
Shirky describes.
3) Now use the mark scheme to identify three potential points that you could have made in your essay for Question 2 (values and ideologies).
Teen Vogue
- The ‘End of Audience’ that Clay Shirky writes of means that a wider, more diverse range of
values and ideologies are now available to consumers. Teen Vogue illustrates this with a
liberal agenda that promotes perspectives championed by digital feminists in the late 2000s
(sometimes considered the fourth wave of feminism). Promoting Judith Butler’s view on
gender as performance, Teen Vogue is positive on gender fluidity and an increasingly non-
binary approach gender identity. This is illustrated by features such as the October 2018
article ‘How to Break Away From the Gender Binary’. Similarly, Teen Vogue has encouraged
activism and played a partisan role in the gun violence debate and Black Lives Matter
movement (‘Black Teens Have Been Fighting for Gun Reform for Years’ – February 2018).
These are values and ideologies that have been present in mainstream media previously but
not from a teenage magazine brand like Teen Vogue. Indeed, it is a huge change from the
content of the first print edition of Teen Vogue in 2003.
The Voice
- Paul Gilroy has written extensively on the experience of black British people and his work on
‘double consciousness’ is worth exploring in relation to this question. The Voice arguably
plays an important role in offering a more diverse range of values and ideologies in offering
black British audiences representations that more closely reflect their experience of life in
Britain. Gilroy would arguably agree with Hesmondhalgh’s view that the cultural industries
promote a narrow set of values and ideologies – ideologies that are dominated by white
voices and a white perspective. If The Voice offers black audiences the opportunity to see
representations that are not created by media producers that are overwhelmingly white
(and middle class) then it is arguably offering an important service to British culture despite
its low production values or YouTube view count. Links can be drawn here with music videos
such as Common’s Letter to the Free, another product seeking to create an audience
experience that transcends the ‘double consciousness’ that black consumers so often face
when interacting with the cultural industries.
- The Voice should be successful due to the opportunities that are offered by digital media
and the new media landscape in creating a platform for values and ideologies such as a
strong black British voice. However, the poor construction of the website and social media
presence (dead links, cluttered design, low-quality photography, lack of fresh content, poor
video production values) means it is not the powerful voice in British media it should be.
Synoptic answers
- Teen Vogue’s promotion of issues such as gender fluidity chimes with the Maybelline ‘That
Boss Life’ advert featuring notable YouTube influencers MannyMua and Shayla. The
YouTube campaign suggests that the internet has led to a more diverse set of views and
values and perhaps challenges Hesmondhalgh’s theory.
- Teen Vogue’s ‘clickbait’-style headlines are clearly designed to maximise traffic and the
argument must be made that the demand for profit in major media institutions outweighs
any particular values and ideologies. This could be applied to MailOnline – the website of a newspaper famous for its right-wing, conservative ideologies but a site that shamelessly uses clickbait articles that would seem to contradict the values of the print newspaper. The right-hand ‘sidebar of shame’ featuring celebrity gossip and salacious paparazzi photography is clearly designed to maximise traffic in exactly the way Teen Vogue does with celebrity stories and beauty tips. Perhaps the narrow range of values and ideologies in the cultural industries is less a product of political hegemony but instead the constant demand for profit.
4) Use your exam response, the mark scheme and any other resource you wish to use to write a detailed essay plan for Question 1. Make sure you are planning at least five well-developed paragraphs in addition to a brief introduction and conclusion.
5) Finally, do the same for Question 2. Remember, Question 2 is a synoptic question so your answer must refer to aspects from the whole A Level Media course. Therefore, make sure you are bringing in CSPs, theories or debates from across the whole course of study.
The Voice should be successful – the opportunities that are offered by digital media and the
new media landscape in targeting niche audiences could provide an ideal platform for a
strong black British voice. However, the poor construction of the website and social media
presence (dead links, cluttered design, low-quality photography, lack of fresh content, poor
video production values) means it is not the powerful voice in British media it set out to be
when launched in 1982. Shirky discusses the “mass amatuerisation” of the media but
successful products still need to at least imitate professional production values and The
Voice fails to do this.
The Voice is a very typical newspaper website. In terms of conventions, it is dated – it has
the feel of a 2010 news website (for example, the old BBC website). In many ways, it doesn’t
reflect the changing landscape in the way one might expect – and this perhaps explains its
relative lack of success in recent years. At a time digital media has been used powerfully to
spotlight minority issues (such as the Black Lives Matter movement in the USA), The Voice in
the UK seems to have been largely silenced. The refusal to publish website or circulation
statistics suggests a brand that has failed to adapt to the “contemporary media ecosystem”
Shirky describes.
3) Now use the mark scheme to identify three potential points that you could have made in your essay for Question 2 (values and ideologies).
Teen Vogue
- The ‘End of Audience’ that Clay Shirky writes of means that a wider, more diverse range of
values and ideologies are now available to consumers. Teen Vogue illustrates this with a
liberal agenda that promotes perspectives championed by digital feminists in the late 2000s
(sometimes considered the fourth wave of feminism). Promoting Judith Butler’s view on
gender as performance, Teen Vogue is positive on gender fluidity and an increasingly non-
binary approach gender identity. This is illustrated by features such as the October 2018
article ‘How to Break Away From the Gender Binary’. Similarly, Teen Vogue has encouraged
activism and played a partisan role in the gun violence debate and Black Lives Matter
movement (‘Black Teens Have Been Fighting for Gun Reform for Years’ – February 2018).
These are values and ideologies that have been present in mainstream media previously but
not from a teenage magazine brand like Teen Vogue. Indeed, it is a huge change from the
content of the first print edition of Teen Vogue in 2003.
The Voice
- Paul Gilroy has written extensively on the experience of black British people and his work on
‘double consciousness’ is worth exploring in relation to this question. The Voice arguably
plays an important role in offering a more diverse range of values and ideologies in offering
black British audiences representations that more closely reflect their experience of life in
Britain. Gilroy would arguably agree with Hesmondhalgh’s view that the cultural industries
promote a narrow set of values and ideologies – ideologies that are dominated by white
voices and a white perspective. If The Voice offers black audiences the opportunity to see
representations that are not created by media producers that are overwhelmingly white
(and middle class) then it is arguably offering an important service to British culture despite
its low production values or YouTube view count. Links can be drawn here with music videos
such as Common’s Letter to the Free, another product seeking to create an audience
experience that transcends the ‘double consciousness’ that black consumers so often face
when interacting with the cultural industries.
- The Voice should be successful due to the opportunities that are offered by digital media
and the new media landscape in creating a platform for values and ideologies such as a
strong black British voice. However, the poor construction of the website and social media
presence (dead links, cluttered design, low-quality photography, lack of fresh content, poor
video production values) means it is not the powerful voice in British media it should be.
Synoptic answers
- Teen Vogue’s promotion of issues such as gender fluidity chimes with the Maybelline ‘That
Boss Life’ advert featuring notable YouTube influencers MannyMua and Shayla. The
YouTube campaign suggests that the internet has led to a more diverse set of views and
values and perhaps challenges Hesmondhalgh’s theory.
- Teen Vogue’s ‘clickbait’-style headlines are clearly designed to maximise traffic and the
argument must be made that the demand for profit in major media institutions outweighs
any particular values and ideologies. This could be applied to MailOnline – the website of a newspaper famous for its right-wing, conservative ideologies but a site that shamelessly uses clickbait articles that would seem to contradict the values of the print newspaper. The right-hand ‘sidebar of shame’ featuring celebrity gossip and salacious paparazzi photography is clearly designed to maximise traffic in exactly the way Teen Vogue does with celebrity stories and beauty tips. Perhaps the narrow range of values and ideologies in the cultural industries is less a product of political hegemony but instead the constant demand for profit.
4) Use your exam response, the mark scheme and any other resource you wish to use to write a detailed essay plan for Question 1. Make sure you are planning at least five well-developed paragraphs in addition to a brief introduction and conclusion.
5) Finally, do the same for Question 2. Remember, Question 2 is a synoptic question so your answer must refer to aspects from the whole A Level Media course. Therefore, make sure you are bringing in CSPs, theories or debates from across the whole course of study.
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