Y13 Baseline assessment learner response

 1) Type up your feedback in full (you don't need to write the mark and grade if you want to keep this confidential).

23\40 grade =c

WWW: good overall knowledge of industries with references to how both magazine csps are adapting to digital media constrains 

EBI: good knowledge of the different types of media effect theories but you need to explain how useful they are to the csp

2) Focusing on the BBC Newsbeat question, write three ways it helps to fulfil the BBC's mission statement that you didn't include in your original assessment answer. Use the mark scheme for ideas.

Newsbeat informs Radio 1 listeners about the news – important events going on in the UK and around the world including breaking news and developing stories. This includes politics, economics, crime, sport and entertainment

The news topics in a Newsbeat bulletin tend to offer entertainment to listeners. Although the top story will usually be serious (hard news) every Newsbeat bulletin will contain some sport or entertainment content which helps to fulfil the remit to entertain

Newsbeat offers educational content through some of the news stories selected to be in the daily bulletins.

3) Question two asked you how useful media effects theories are in understanding the audience response to War of the Worlds. Complete the following:

• Gerbner's Cultivation theory: useful or not useful? Why?  Gerbner’s Cultivation theory is very useful in understanding how American radio’s recent convention in the 1930s of ‘breaking news’ (‘We interrupt this broadcast to bring you…’) may have made audiences more likely to believe the fictional radio play was real.
• Frankfurt School's Hypodermic Needle model: useful or not useful? Why? hypodermic needle theory is arguably supported by the reported audience panic following the War of the Worlds broadcast in 1938. However, this theory has been widely discredited and considering a media audience as ‘empty vessels’ is overly simplistic and not useful.
• Stuart Hall's Reception theory: useful or not useful? Why? Stuart Hall’s reception theory is arguably more useful than traditional effects theories in analysing audience reaction – some would have believed it (preferred reading?), other sections of the audiences would have challenged or rejected it entirely.

4) Write a full essay plan for the 25-mark Magazines question. The mark scheme contains plenty of ideas you can use here. Your plan should include notes/bullet points addressing the following:

• Introduction: one sentence answering the original question and laying out your argument clearly. I somewhat agree that GQ and gentlewoman have attracted their target audience due to  
• Paragraph 1 content/ideas:GQ Magazine offers a range of audience pleasures to its target audience: Uses and Gratifications – personal identity and surveillance. 
• Paragraph 2 content/ideas: Decline in print due to rise in new/digital media: GQ has declined sharply over the last 10-15 years. Even in the last 5 years its circulation has dropped 25,000 (from 110,000 to 85,000). 
• Paragraph 3 content/ideas: The Gentlewoman has a very strong, distinctive brand and clearly positions itself to attract an audience that perhaps wouldn’t buy other women’s lifestyle magazines. Only printing twice a year, largely selling via subscription and charging a premium price (£10 per issue) 
• Paragraph 4 content/ideas: The Gentlewoman reflects a changing media marketplace with small, independent producers finding gaps in the market to connect with niche audiences. It is successfully using the digital landscape to connect with its target audience (global distribution etc.) 
• Conclusion: sum up your argument a final time in one sentence: Overall I think that they have targeted their audience. However, it depends on 

5) Finally, identify three key skills/topics you want to work on in A Level Media this year before the final exams in the summer.

- Revision of theories 

-Revision of how theories links to csps

- In depth detail on csps