A media text is anything made to communicate to an audience: an advertisement, a trailer, a front page, a music video, a documentary, a feed. They can be read as closely as a play, using the same questions plus some of their own.
The five questions
- Who made this, and what did they want to happen?
- Who is it for? Audiences are chosen before anything is made.
- What is the message — stated and implied?
- What techniques carry it?
- What is left out?
Techniques
| Technique | What it does |
|---|---|
| Framing and angle | Low angle empowers; high angle diminishes; close-up demands feeling |
| Colour grade | Warm for nostalgia and safety; cool for control and distance |
| Editing pace | Fast cuts excite and prevent thought; long takes ask for patience |
| Sound and score | Tells you how to feel before the image does; silence is a technique |
| Typography | A serif claims tradition; a heavy sans claims urgency |
| Composition | What is centred is the subject; what is at the edge is an argument |
| Casting | Who is allowed to represent what |
| Absence | Who is not there, and what is never mentioned |
Form matters as much as content
The same claim behaves differently as a headline, a thirty-second advertisement, a documentary segment, and a post. The form sets the audience’s expectations, the time available, and what counts as evidence — which is why The Media Deconstruction asks you to make one as well as take one apart.
Documentary is not neutral
A documentary chooses what to film, what to cut, whom to interview, and what music to put underneath. It can be honest and it cannot be neutral; those are different words. Ask what a documentary would look like if made by somebody with the opposite conclusion.
Curriculum connection
D1.1
explain how media texts, including increasingly complex texts, are created to suit particular purposes and audiences (e.g., magazines include content and advertisements to appeal to specific demographic groups; trailers or posters for actionadventure movies feature scenes and artefacts that appeal to a predominantly male audience)
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D2.1
identify general and specific characteristics of a variety of media forms and explain how they shape content and create meaning (e.g., identify the features offered in an online version of a newspaper that are not provided in the print version, and vice versa; suggest what type of content is appropriate for a podcast and explain why)
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D2.2
identify conventions and/or techniques used in a variety of media forms and explain how they convey meaning and influence their audience (e.g., the use of visual irony in political cartoons; the use of symbols as well as words to convey health and safety warnings on a range of product packages)
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D1.5
identify the perspectives and/or biases evident in media texts, including increasingly complex texts, and comment on any questions they may raise about beliefs, values, identity, and power (e.g., explain the perspectives evident in the covers of a selection of novels featured in the school’s English program; comment on the point of view evident in a television news story, identifying other possible points of view; analyse the text and images in a major department store’s website to identify groups and occupations that are represented and those that are nowhere evident)
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