A-level Media Studies

This A-level Media Studies qualification is based on the theoretical framework for analysing and creating media, which provides learners with the tools to develop a critical understanding and appreciation of the media. The framework consists of four inter-related areas:

• media language: how the media through their forms, codes, conventions and techniques communicate meanings
• representation: how the media portray events, issues, individuals and social groups
• media industries: how the media industries’ processes of production, distribution and circulation affect media forms and platforms
• audiences: how media forms target, reach and address audiences, how audiences interpret and respond to them, and how members of audiences become producers themselves.

You will study a wide range of theoretical approaches and theories, including advanced approaches, to inform and support your analysis of media products and processes.

In order to inform your study of the media, you will develop knowledge and understanding of media products in relation to relevant key social, cultural, economic, political and historical contexts.

This qualification enables you to develop various skills required for analysing and creating media products. In analysing media products, you will:

• analyse critically and compare how media products, including products outside the commercial mainstream, construct and communicate meanings through the interaction of media language and audience response
• use and reflect critically upon a range of complex theories of media studies and use specialist subject-specific terminology appropriately in a developed way
• to debate critically crucial questions relating to the social, cultural, political and economic role of the media through discursive writing. In creating media products, learners will apply knowledge and understanding of media language, representation, media industries and audiences to a cross-media production
• and apply knowledge and understanding of the digitally convergent nature of contemporary media
• use media language across media forms to express and communicate meaning to an intended audience.

This qualification provides opportunities for assessment that draw together knowledge, understanding, and skills from across the full course of study. You will always be provided with the opportunity to draw together knowledge and understanding from across the full course.