OSP 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).

-N/A

2) Read the whole mark scheme for this assessment carefully. Identify three specific aspects from Figure 1 (the Google Home advert) that you could have mentioned in your answer (e.g. selection of image, framing and focus, colour, text etc.)

-Dominant readings: Links Google brand to vision of ideal family life – creative play with parent; coloured pencils, paint bottle and corner of child’s picture all reinforce creativity and colour.

-Oppositional readings: Reinforces white, western, middle-class representation of family life to the exclusion of other backgrounds (race/ethnicity, sexuality, age, class). Presents the white, western ‘2.4

children’ average as desirable, aspirational lifestyle – some audiences will reject this.

-Negotiated readings: Negotiated readings could include an acceptance of a warm picture of family life – plus the potential usefulness of the speaker – despite concerns over how the device uses data and

the growing power of companies such as Google and Amazon.

3) Now use the mark scheme to identify three potential points that you could have made in your essay for Question 2 (Hesmondhalgh - validity of theory/narrow range of values and ideologies).

-Taylor Swift: Swift’s website and social media presence also arguably reinforces dominant capitalist

ideologies in the way everything is used to maximise profit. The website contains plenty opportunities for Swift fans to spend their money on merch, collectable versions of her albums (including on cassette tape, CD and vinyl) or tour tickets.

-Taylor Swift’s massive success also reinforces the idea that the cultural industries are built around a small number of hugely profitable ‘hits’ – Swift being the perfect example of one.

-The Voice: 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.

4) Use your exam response, the mark scheme and any other resources you wish to use to write a detailed essay plan for Question 2. Make sure you are planning at least three well-developed paragraphs in addition to an introduction and conclusion.

-Paragraph 1: Taylor Swift

-The ‘End of Audience’ that Clay Shirky

-Hesmondhalgh’s theory

-Taylor Swift’s online and social media presence arguably supports this with her promotion of a liberal agenda that challenges attitudes towards gender in society and the music industry. The power and influence of Taylor Swift’s fans (‘Swifties’) also shows that a wider range of values and ideologies are now available in the cultural industries thanks to technology and social change.

-Paragraph 2: The Voice offers an explicit Black British perspective on news stories and issues in London and the UK. This alone sets it apart from mainstream media and suggests that Hesmondhalgh’s view that only a narrow range of values and ideologies are available is not entirely valid. Features such as the first black photographer to shoot the cover picture of Vogue magazine (December 2018) and campaigns such as the Black Pound campaign encouraging readers to spend their money with Black businesses (also seen in the suggestion to ‘Buy Black on Black Friday’) both reflect this agenda. However, The Voice has been doing this to some extent since its launch in 1982 and it has arguably become less powerful and influential in recent years. This suggests the digital revolution Clay Shirky writes about (the “billion new participants in the contemporary media ecosystem”) has not benefited The Voice in its mission to promote values and ideologies that remain outside the mainstream. Perhaps this reinforces Hesmondhalgh’s view that the media is dominated by a narrow range of values and ideologies in that The Voice has failed to really challenge the hegemonic ideology of the UK.

-Paragraph 3: Taylor Swift is simply replicating many of the mainstream, hegemonic values and ideologies found across the cultural industries with regards to the representation of women. Despite championing women in the music industry(for example, at the Woman of the Decade award ceremony) her marketing material for the Tortured Poets Society (which is plastered across her website and social media) is constructed in a sexualised way that emphasises Swift’s appearance. This appears to reinforce stereotypical representations of women in the media as spectacle (van Zoonen) and therefore support Hesmondhalgh’s idea that only a narrow range of values and ideologies can be found despite the size of the cultural industries.

-Conclusion:Link back to question and give my opinion about how valid David Hesmondhalgh argues that despite their size, the cultural industries are dominated by a narrow range of values and ideologies.

5) Finally, identify three key areas you plan to revise from the OSP unit before the January mock exams (e.g. CSP elements or media theories) having looked at your feedback from this assessment.

-CSP: Taylor Swift and The Voice context.

-Theories: such as Hesmondhalgh and Clay Shirky.