Representations

The picture above translates to "This is not a pipe." It says this because it isn't a pipe; it's a picture of a pipe (a representation).

Everything in the media is a representation-everything we see is being represented. The selection process is:

·         The decision over what is chosen to be represented and what is rejected

·         The choices made when organising the representation

·         The options taken to focus the audience in a certain way

A theorist called White (1961) spoke of the gatekeepers – that is the people who are part of the decision making process in the construction of media texts. These can be the directors, the editors, the government or even the audience themselves. If this is the case, then while creating my music video, I was a gatekeeper f what messages i wanted to convey in the text.

A useful way of thinking about representation is that the meanings are created by this relationship between the producers, the text and the audience.

The representation is constructed with a set of ideas and values (producer’s intent/intended meaning).

The context of the representation is part of the representation (media language choices, anchorage, media form, placement/location, genre expectations, etc.)

The audience reads to this representation and this depends on their own personal interpretational context: age, gender, political, religions, nationality, etc. (negotiated meaning).

So my intended meaning of my music video would have been for the audience to feel happy with themselves despite what other influences may say. However, depending on my audiences interpretational context, this meaning could become negotiated or decoded into another meaning that I haven't even thought about.