AQA Media studies essay structures

Teaching of Media studies in my school hasn't gone so well and only this year did we get a really good teacher who's tried his best to pull us up to the content we were supposed to cover. Last year, we had three teachers who taught us nothing, even the wrong content. At the moment, I'm a little bit worried for Media studies and I only want to try my hardest for it.

As for practice questions, does anyone have a really good essay structure for AQA media studies? Mainly the 20 and 25 marker questions. If so, it would really help me, thanks

Reply 1

sabrinawahdani

Introduction

Definition - Define the keywords that you have underlined. For example "representation refers to how issues and individuals are constructed by the producers of media texts, and can be done so for a variety of different reasons"

Argument - the point of view that you will be taking in the essay. eg
"Media representations are constructed by producers to be as generic as possible, in order to appeal to the widest possible audience"
"Producers lazily reuse genre conventions to appeal to the largest possible audience"

Context - Basic information on the texts you are studying, eg "The Selfish Giant is a 2013 British social realist film directed by Clio Barnard which had limited financial success in cinemas"

Paragraph

Point - The thing that you wil be discussing in th eg:
"There are many powerful, though possibly negative representations of the working class used in The Selfish Giant, to present to the audience the depressing life of the working class in Bradford"
"The construction of the representation of women in Skyfall is consistently negative, which reinforces gender stereotypes"

Evidence - Comprised of visual codes and technical codes.
eg - "the deep red of Merrida's hair connotes her fiery and rebellious personality"
"Severin's low cut, tightly fitting dress further sexualises her when she is at her most vulnerable"

Argument - Link back to how your point confirms your argument. This is where you include theory.
"Severin's fetishistic dress confirms she is the subject of the male gaze. Her only function is to fulfil heterosexual male fantasies. This reinforces patriarchal hegemony as the dominant ideology of the text..."

Timings

There's no perfect timings, so this is just a suggestion. You should spend 50 minutes on each question. This could work out as:

Planning and introduction - 6 minutes

Text one - 13 1/2 minutes

Text two - 13 1/2 minutes

Text 3 - 13 1/2 minutes

Conclusion - 3 minutes