Year 13 baseline assessment learner response

 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:

 Good attempt for this baseline assessment. You are able to recall key stories from GQ CSP pages to support your essay.

EBI:

 -Revise other media effect theories 

-Learn BBC's remit in relation to the Newsbeat CSP

-Your essay should reference more examples from both CSP magazines especially Gentlewoman. You also need to include more on audience and industry for both magazine CSPs.

24/40  C

2) Focusing on the BBC Newsbeat question, write three ways it helps to fulfil the BBC's mission statement that you didn't include in your original assessment answer. Use the mark scheme for ideas.

·         Newsbeat informs Radio 1 listeners about the news – important events going on in the UK and around the world including breaking news and developing stories. This includes politics, economics, crime, sport and entertainment. The BBC’s remit demands that it offers informative content to all audience demographics and this helps fulfil its remit for reaching teenagers and young adults with news content.

·         Newsbeat offers educational content through some of the news stories selected to be in the daily bulletins. Examples include a Newsbeat story on a project highlighting street harassment of women which serves to educate both male and female listeners on the impact of harassment on victims. The construction of news stories within Newsbeat bulletins also contributes to this – for example, with expert interviews adding an educational element to news packages.

·         The news topics in a Newsbeat bulletin tend to offer entertainment to listeners. Although the top story will usually be serious (hard news) every Newsbeat bulletin will contain some sport or entertainment content which helps to fulfil the remit to entertain. For example, Newsbeat will contain pretty extensive reports from major sporting events such as Wimbledon or the World Cup and will also cover music or film awards ceremonies more than some other BBC news programmes.

3) Question two asked you how useful media effects theories are in understanding the audience response to War of the Worlds. Complete the following:

• Gerbner's Cultivation theory: useful or not useful? Why?

Gerbner’s Cultivation theory is very useful in understanding how American radio’s recent convention in the 1930s of ‘breaking news’ (‘We interrupt this broadcast to bring you…’) may have made audiences more likely to believe the fictional radio play was real.

• Frankfurt School's Hypodermic Needle model: useful or not useful? Why?

The Frankfurt School’s hypodermic needle theory is arguably supported by the reported audience panic following the War of the Worlds broadcast in 1938. However, this theory has been widely discredited and considering a media audience as ‘empty vessels’ is overly simplistic and not useful.

• Stuart Hall's Reception theory: useful or not useful? Why?

 Stuart Hall’s reception theory is arguably more useful than traditional effects theories in analysing audience reaction – some would have believed it (preferred reading?), other sections of the audiences would have challenged or rejected it entirely. Even then, was Welles’s intention to genuinely panic listeners (i.e. the preferred reading)? This is questionable.

4) Write a full essay plan for the 25-mark Magazines question. The mark scheme contains plenty of ideas you can use here. Your plan should include notes/bullet points addressing the following:

• Introduction: one sentence answering the original question and laying out your argument clearly.

Both successful even if they are traditionally print.

• Paragraph 1 content/ideas:

GQ media audiences. Wealthy, middle to upper class men = target audience. Director Will Welch 'new masculinity. Audience pleasures.

• Paragraph 2 content/ideas:

GQ media industries. Decline in print due to digital media. Reflects generational difference as younger audiences are not engaging with print products.

• Paragraph 3 content/ideas:

The Gentlewoman media audiences. Audience pleasures. Twice a year publication reflects digital revolution in society. Reflects feminist movement.

• Paragraph 4 content/ideas:

The Gentlewoman media industries. The internet has provided The Gentlewoman to find a global audience and not to rely on major publishers/distributors.  

• Conclusion: sum up your argument a final time in one sentence

They both can be successful if they use this new digital landscape to benefit them.

5) Finally, identify three key skills/topics you want to work on in A Level Media this year before the final exams in the summer.

- Remembering theories 

- Radio

- Indutries