Some Useful Terminology

Some Useful Terminology

Key Concepts

Audience: the term used to mean the people who watch, read, buy, listen to, or use a media product. The people at whom a piece of media is aimed i.e. magazine, film, website

You must think about audience. Many institutions in charge of the world’s media go to great lengths to work out how an audience functions

Target Audience: Who will buy a particular product. Who is the target audience for NME/Kerrang!/Smash Hits?

Institution: the term used to mean the companies who are responsible for creating media products. Film companies, record labels and magazine publishers eg EMAP and IPC

These institutions have a massive influence on how we respond to events. Mostly, media companies are driven by money, but they may have other intentions i.e. education. Knowing that a particular institution is behind a particular product may be important.

Representation: ‘A raw reality’. How a group of people are represented by the media. Through looking at representation, you are given a chance to see how media people - most of them decades older than you - depicts people of your age and how they brand their product accordingly.
• Brand – who/what do they associate themselves with?
• Lifestyle – each magazine has different identity EMOs, Goths, Punk
• Image of Artists – Music Press associate themselves with specific artists. Artists want to be in specific magazines.

Is their representation fair?:
• Is the representation based on reality? Or are stereotypes relied on?
• Does the way certain groups are represented alter how audiences think of them?
• To what degree will the representation of certain groups be accepted by the audience?


Language: Media has its own very specific language but we are looking in particular at the Music Press (MP), magazines and websites. Some useful (although not exhaustive) terminology:
• Masthead – the main headline on a newspaper / magazine front page
• Bar codes – a code printed on a product (magazine) consisting of black lines of varying thickness that can be read by an electronic scanner to automatically register its price at the till.
• Logos – an easily recognised design used by an organisation as an emblem to represent itself
• Byline – a credit for the journalist who has written an article
• Editorial – all copy in a newspaper or magazine that has no advertising in it.
• Copy – text that will be laid out and printed on a page.
• Stereotypes – an oversimplified way of classifying people based on a narrow set of attributes.
• Strapline – a smaller headline summing up the article in a neat way
• Genre - a category of media texts characterized by a particular style, form or content.
• Body text - the main text on the page
• Caption - describes an image
• Drop shadow - a shadow drawn on type or a picture to make it look as though it is raised off the page
• Circulation – The number of distributed copies of a magazine.
• Frequency – the number of times an audience is exposed to a magazine e.g. monthly, weekly.
• Subscriber – a person that pays for receiving a magazine.
• Font – typeface (style of lettering)
• Format – the different size, shape and appearance of competing media products e.g. magazines.
• Connotation – something suggested by a word or image that is different or distinct from its direct meaning i.e. Rose = Love
• Narrative – the way in which a story is told (this means images as well)
• Typography – point styles/sizes, font colour
• Standfirst – a short introductory few lines between the headline and the body of text in the article or feature.
• Anchorage – front page teasers