Case study Q's

Key Questions: use these q’s to complete your text conclusions

Please note: NOT all of the following q’s will be applicable to every text

The MEDIA’S ROLE and influence in the construction of identities

• What identity or identities are being constructed through this text?
• How big is the product examined? Think in terms of audience size, media presence, potential impact on society, impact created on other media products
• What is the function of the media? Entertain, inform, persuade?
• How does the format of the text or type of media help shape the identity messages produced?
• What kinds of messages do products within this genre usually produce? Is this product similar or dissimilar?
• How do key figures (stars, directors, writers) help shape the identities provided?

What ideas and values

The changing roles and power of audiences, AUDIENCES AND IDENTITIES, including audience uses and responses, self-representation role playing, collective identities

• Are the audiences of this text addressed in a manner that makes them active and empowered? How and where?
• Are they rendered passive? How?
• What uses and gratifications do the identities produced create? Escapism, surveillance,
• How has it enabled the construction and display of collective identities?
• Are there opportunities within the media or in support material for the audience to self represent or communicate their own responses to the text? (Twitter feeds/social media etc)  - if so what responses do the audiences make? Are these valued or mediated?
• How do audiences respond to the text?
• How could audiences and different audiences use and respond to the different products?
• Who is the audience for this product? How does this effect the identities created?
• Who is in control of the identities created? How far do audiences construct their own identity?
• Is there a celebrity and fan culture surrounding this text? How does this support/challenge the identities created?
• Do the media control the construction of identity?
• Do audiences accept media representations and ideologies or do audiences select and adapt them to construct their own identity?
• Can audiences reject and challenge mainstream media identities and create alternative identities through this text?
• How and why could different audiences have a variety of different responses?

The impact of SOCIAL MEDIA on identity and the role of the individual as producer

• Is there a social media dimension? Are individuals producers, do they self-represent?
• What would Henry Jenkins say about this text?
• What might Gauntlett say about this product?
• What might Chandler say about this product?
• Have technological developments empowered ordinary people or is the new technology increasingly controlled by powerful governments and commercial corporations reducing freedom of choice?
• Does the product fulfill pluralist and democratic ideals or is it increasingly dominated by mainstream media for profit?
• Is the social media dimension a supplement or a core activity within this product?
• What might Andrew Keen say about this product?
• What might Cass Sunstein say about this product?
• What might Sherry Turkle say about this product?
• What might Negroponte say about this product?
• There are debates about whether this has meant that individuals use new media to create original identities, adapt them to suit themselves, or just conform to and recreate identities they have already consumed in the mainstream media. Does the social media associated with this text allow audiences to adapt, conform or create new identities? Where? How?
• Is technology a threat to the construction of identities or has it had a positive influence?
  

POWER AND RESISTANCE, debates about the power of the media and audiences, including the media’s influence, varieties of audience uses and responses, campaigning

• Is this product democratic?
• Does the product fulfill pluralist and democratic ideals or is it increasingly dominated by mainstream media for profit?
• What would Marxists make of this product?
• Does this product create commodity fetishism/pseudo individuality?
• Who shapes this product and for whom?
• Does this product challenge social norms in any way?
• Does this product produce audience resistance? How?
• Does this product have a political or social message?
• Does this product conform or challenge? How? Where? What?
• What might Gauntlett, Jenkins, Adorno, Chomsky or other theorists make of this product?

Debates about DOMINANT AND MARGINALISED identities

• Does this text reinforce pluralist or Marxist ideas? How? Where?
• Does it allow more choice, complexity and diversity?
• Does one identity dominate, or are there diverse or contradictory identities?
• Does this text create traditional or post traditional identities?
• Why is this, considering, for example, producers, production, aims and audiences?
• What are the possible positive and negative effects of globalisation?
• Increasing globalisation has also influenced debates about identity. Some would argue it has had a positive effect by increasing choice and empowering audiences. It could give audiences access to
  a wider range of representations and ideologies and so possible identities, for example, music artists that reach a global market but also keep their local identity. Is this true of your text?
• Globalisation could also enable those without a voice in mainstream media more power to represent themselves and communicate to a global audience. Is this true of your text?
• However others would argue that globalisation has had a negative effect, only serving to increase the power of Western global media companies. This could lead to an increasingly homogenised culture and the lack of culturally specific identities. Is this true of your text?
• What might Zuckerman say about this product?

IDENTITY POLITICS, including diverse, fluid and multiple identities, changing identities,  alternative and queer identities  

• How does the text fit into the feminism and postfeminism debate?
• Does this text present opportunities for audiences to create multiple identities?
  How wholesome are those identities?
• What might Sherry Turkle say about this product?
• How is it used to display identity and to campaign for a specific group?

IDEOLOGY, the ideas and values communicated by identities.

• What ideas and values do the identities communicate?
• How do the identities produced reflect and reinforce power in society?
• Are the identities presented more diverse and open or is there a move back to narrower, more traditional identities?
• Are there economic reasons behind the identities, and range or lack of range, including issues of ownership, control and choice?
• What are the possible positive or negative effects on democracy and the globalisation of culture of the identities depicted?
• Does the media campaign on any issues?
• What might Giddens say about this product?
• What might Adorno say about this product?
• What might Owen Jones say about this product?
• What might Judith Butler say about this product?
• What might Barthes say about this product?