Research - Moral Panics - Steve Baker

Steve Bakers - Representations

"Every time we encounter a media text, we are not seeing the reality, but someones version of it"

We cannot be 100% sure if what we see in the media is true or false
"The result of this process of mediation is that we are given a version of reality which is altered: those are never the real people that we are seeing but representations of them which have somehow been created"

"The media place us at one remove from reality: they take something that is real, a person or an event and they change its form to produce whatever the text we end up with"

Media text only show us what they want us to see, so sometimes we don't see the actually story or thing.

"We categorise people into types (E.G workaholic, feminist etc) to simplify the task of person perception"

Mediation - the three things

1. Selection: "What ever end sup on out screen or in the paper, much more would have been left out - Any news story has been selected from hundreds of others which the producers decided for you were less interesting, any picture has been chosen from an enormous number of alternatives".

2. Organisation: "The various elements will be organised carefully in ways that real life is not: in visual media this involves mise-en-scene and the organisation of narrative".

3.Focusing:"Mediation always ends up with us, the audience being encouraged towards concentrating on one aspect of the text and ignoring others. If you are watching a film the camera will pan towards an important characters, in a tabloid the headlines will scream for your attention".

"Constructionist feel that representation can never just be the truth or the version of the truth that someone wants you to hear since that is ignoring your ability as an individual to make up your own mind and the influences of the society that you live in on the way that you do so".

"Mediation refers to what media do, and to what we do with media"
http://www.newinfluencer.com/mediapedia/mediation/