Notes · SociologyUK · A-Levels

The Media (optional topic)

This Paper 2 option examines who owns and controls the media and with what effect, how the news is selected and constructed, how social groups are represented, and how audiences respond to media messages. It sets manipulative against pluralist and hegemonic accounts of the media, analyses moral panics and the deviancy amplification spiral, and evaluates the competing models of media effects, including the impact of the new media.

5 sections~20 min reading time3 competenciesLevel Standard 2 · Advanced 3

T·111111 / 15

Exam profile

AO1 · Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of ownership, news selection, representations, audiences and the new mediaAO2 · Apply this material to the Item and to specific representations, moral panics and effects modelsAO3 · Analyse and evaluate manipulative, pluralist and hegemonic accounts and the effects models, reaching a judgement

Operators:outline and explainapplying material from the Item, analyseevaluateassessdiscuss

basic level

AS-Level expects the main views of ownership and control, news values, the leading representations and the effects models.

higher level

The full A-Level requires sustained evaluation of manipulative versus pluralist versus hegemonic accounts and of the effects models, including new-media debates.

Depth

Text

Contents · 5 sections

The Media (optional topic)

The new media and the digital divide#

StandardAQA 7192/2 The MediaDfE GCE Sociology subject content

The new media: optimist versus pessimist

Fig. 1Optimists see the new media democratising communication; pessimists stress the digital divide and corporate control.

The 'new media' - digital, interactive, networked technologies such as the internet, social media, streaming and smartphones - are distinguished from the 'old' or traditional media (print, broadcast) by their interactivity, convergence (many media on one device), and the way they blur the line between producer and consumer, so that audiences can now create and circulate content, not only receive it. Sociologists debate how significant this change is: whether the new media represent a genuine democratisation of communication or an intensification of existing patterns of power and inequality under new conditions.

Optimists ('neophiliacs') argue that the new media empower ordinary people: they widen access to information, give a voice to previously excluded groups, enable participation and activism, and undermine the control of traditional media owners and gatekeepers. On this view, the interactivity and openness of digital networks disperse communicative power and enrich democratic and cultural life. The rise of citizen journalism, online campaigning and user-generated content is cited as evidence that the audience has become an active participant rather than a passive recipient.

Pessimists ('cultural pessimists') counter that the new media reproduce and even deepen existing inequalities. The 'digital divide' - unequal access to, and skill in using, digital technologies by class, age, region and globally - means the benefits flow disproportionately to the already-advantaged, while the disadvantaged are further marginalised. Critics also argue that a few huge corporations dominate the digital landscape, that surveillance and data-harvesting extend commercial and state power, and that much online content amplifies commercial and ideological messages rather than challenging them. The apparent openness, they argue, masks concentrated corporate control.

Evaluating the new media means weighing these positions and recognising elements of truth in each. The new media have genuinely increased interactivity and participation and disrupted some traditional gatekeeping, supporting the optimists; but access and influence remain stratified by the digital divide and dominated by powerful corporations, supporting the pessimists. The strongest answers avoid technological determinism (the assumption that the technology alone determines social outcomes) and analyse the new media within existing structures of ownership, power and inequality - a theme that runs directly into the debate about ownership and control examined next.

Worked example

Evaluating the democratising claim

Assess the view that the new media have democratised communication.

State the optimist case
The new media widen access, give a voice to the excluded, enable participation and activism, and undermine traditional gatekeepers - dispersing communicative power.
State the pessimist case
The digital divide means benefits flow to the advantaged; a few corporations dominate; surveillance and commercial messages extend existing power.
Avoid determinism
Outcomes depend not on the technology alone but on the structures of ownership, inequality and power within which it operates.
Judgement
Conclude that the new media have increased participation but within, not against, existing inequalities and corporate control, so 'democratisation' is partial and uneven.

Result: The new media have genuinely widened participation but remain shaped by the digital divide and corporate power, so their democratising effect is real but partial and stratified - not the transformation optimists claim.

Typical mistakes

Assuming the new media are straightforwardly democratising, ignoring the digital divide and corporate dominance.
Technological determinism - treating the technology as the sole cause of social change independent of ownership and power.

Active revision

Outline and explain two ways in which the new media may increase inequality. (10 marks)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for sociology (Department for Education)

Ownership and control of the media#

AdvancedAQA 7192/2 The MediaDfE GCE Sociology subject content

Manipulative versus pluralist views of ownership

Fig. 2Marxists see owners controlling content in class interests; pluralists see content driven by audience demand in a competitive market.

The debate over ownership and control asks whether those who own the media control its content, and in whose interests. It is set against a background of concentration of ownership - a relatively small number of large, often transnational, corporations owning much of the media - and of globalisation and diversification of holdings. The central question is whether this concentration translates into control over what is communicated, and the perspectives answer it very differently, making this a classic evaluative essay.

The traditional Marxist or 'manipulative'/instrumental view, associated with Miliband, holds that owners directly control media content to serve their own interests and those of the capitalist class. The media, on this view, are instruments of ruling-class ideology: owners set the agenda, exclude challenging views, and manufacture a false consciousness that legitimates capitalism. The concentration of ownership is thus deeply anti-democratic, placing a powerful ideological tool in the hands of a wealthy few. The strength of the view is its attention to the reality of concentrated ownership; its weakness is that it can overstate owners' direct, day-to-day control and portray audiences as passive.

The neo-Marxist or hegemonic view, associated with the Glasgow Media Group (GMG), refines this. It argues that media bias arises less from owners' direct instruction than from the backgrounds, values and routines of largely middle-class journalists, who unconsciously frame the news within a dominant, consensus-supporting worldview. The result is a subtle, systematic ideological bias - a hegemony - that favours the powerful without crude manipulation. This account explains bias while acknowledging journalistic autonomy, and its claims about the framing of news (for example in industrial disputes) are supported by content analysis.

The pluralist view rejects both Marxist accounts. It argues that the media reflect audience demand in a competitive market: owners seek profit, so they give audiences what they want, and the diversity of outlets, the professionalism and autonomy of journalists, legal regulation and the active, discerning audience together prevent any single interest from controlling content. Media content, on this view, is diverse and responsive rather than uniformly ideological. Critics reply that market competition narrows rather than widens diversity, that 'giving people what they want' can itself be shaped by the powerful, and that concentration limits genuine choice. Evaluating ownership and control therefore means weighing the manipulative, hegemonic and pluralist accounts against the evidence of concentration, journalistic autonomy and audience activity, and reaching a judgement - often that the hegemonic model best captures a systematic but non-conspiratorial bias.

Worked example

Model essay plan: do owners control content?

Plan a 20-mark answer evaluating the Marxist view that media owners control content.

Set up the debate
Marxists say owners control content; pluralists disagree; the hegemonic view offers a middle path. Signal a judgement. Hook to the Item.
The manipulative case
Miliband: concentrated ownership lets owners set the agenda and manufacture false consciousness - the media as instruments of ruling-class ideology.
Critique it
Overstates direct owner control and portrays audiences as passive; journalists have autonomy; the active audience interprets messages.
The hegemonic and pluralist alternatives
GMG: bias comes from journalists' shared middle-class worldview, not direct instruction. Pluralists: content reflects competitive audience demand and diverse outlets.
Judgement
Conclude that owners do not simply dictate content, but the media are systematically biased towards dominant views - so the hegemonic model best fits the evidence, refining the manipulative view.

Result: A top-band plan develops the manipulative thesis, critiques its crude control claim, sets the hegemonic and pluralist views against it, and judges the hegemonic model the most convincing - a systematic but non-conspiratorial bias.

Typical mistakes

Conflating the manipulative and hegemonic Marxist views - one stresses direct owner control, the other unconscious journalistic framing.
Presenting pluralism or Marxism as obviously right without weighing the evidence on both sides.

Active revision

Applying material from the Item and your knowledge, evaluate the Marxist view that those who own the media control its content. (20 marks)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA AS and A-level Sociology (7192) specification (AQA)

The selection and presentation of news; moral panics#

AdvancedAQA 7192/2 The MediaDfE GCE Sociology subject content

The deviancy amplification spiral

Fig. 3Cohen's deviancy amplification spiral: media exaggeration and control feed back to increase the very deviance they report.

News is not a neutral mirror of reality but a socially manufactured product: from the vast number of events in the world, only a tiny selection becomes 'news', shaped by the routines and values of news organisations. Galtung and Ruge identified 'news values' - the criteria (such as immediacy, negativity, unexpectedness, reference to elite persons and nations, personalisation and continuity) by which journalists judge whether an event is newsworthy. Because these values act as a filter, the news systematically over-represents some kinds of event and under-represents others, so its content is patterned by the process of selection rather than by the world itself.

Several linked processes shape the news. Gatekeeping is the power of editors and journalists to let some stories through and block others; agenda-setting is the media's power to determine which issues the public thinks about (even if not what to think), by giving some topics prominence and ignoring others; and the routines of news-gathering (deadlines, reliable sources, the news diary) further pattern what is reported. These processes connect directly to the ownership debate, since the hegemonic view explains news bias precisely through the shared assumptions embedded in these journalistic routines and values.

Cohen's concept of the moral panic is the topic's most powerful analytical tool. A moral panic is an episode in which the media amplify and distort a form of deviance, defining a group as 'folk devils' - a threat to societal values - and generating disproportionate public concern and demands for action. Cohen's study of the reaction to the 'mods and rockers' showed how media exaggeration and labelling could produce exactly this. Moral panics connect the media topic directly to the sociology of crime and deviance, and they illustrate the media's power to shape public definitions of social problems.

The deviancy amplification spiral explains how moral panics can make deviance worse. Media exaggeration of an initial act of deviance leads to greater public concern, which prompts intensified policing and control; this identifies and labels more deviants, which the media report as confirmation of the growing problem, generating still more concern and control in a self-reinforcing spiral. The process can actually increase the deviance it claims to describe, for example by hardening the identity and solidarity of the labelled group. Evaluating news and moral panics means recognising the media's constructive power while noting critiques - that audiences are not always so easily influenced, that in a fragmented new-media landscape moral panics may be harder to sustain, and that the concept can be applied too loosely - and reaching a judgement about how far the media construct rather than reflect social problems.

The manufacture of news

Fig. 4News values, gatekeeping and agenda-setting filter world events into the constructed product we receive as 'news'.

Worked example

Applying moral panic to a media episode

Explain how the concept of a moral panic and the deviancy amplification spiral account for media reaction to a form of youth deviance.

Identify the panic
The media amplify and distort an initial act of youth deviance, labelling the group as folk devils threatening societal values (as Cohen found with mods and rockers).
Trace the spiral
Exaggeration raises public concern, which prompts intensified policing; more young people are labelled deviant; the media report this as a growing problem.
Show the amplification
The coverage feeds back into greater concern and control, and can harden the group's deviant identity - increasing the deviance it claims to describe.
Evaluate
Note critiques: audiences may not be so easily influenced, and in a fragmented new-media landscape sustained panics may be harder to produce.

Result: The moral-panic model shows the media constructing and amplifying youth deviance through labelling and a self-reinforcing spiral, though its force is tempered by audience activity and the fragmentation of the new-media landscape.

Typical mistakes

Treating news as a neutral reflection of reality rather than a selected, constructed product.
Applying 'moral panic' loosely to any media coverage without the amplification spiral and its critiques.

Active revision

Applying material from the Item and your knowledge, evaluate the view that the news is a social construction rather than a reflection of reality. (20 marks)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for sociology (Department for Education)

Media representations of social groups#

StandardAQA 7192/2 The MediaDfE GCE Sociology subject content

Media representation and social hierarchy

Fig. 5Representations are selective constructions that tend to reinforce hierarchies, though audiences actively interpret them.

Media representations - the ways in which social groups are portrayed - are a central object of study because, if the media help construct our sense of reality, then how they portray class, gender, ethnicity, age, sexuality and disability shapes how these groups are understood and how they understand themselves. Sociologists analyse representations through content analysis and semiotic reading, asking which images recur, which are absent, and whose interests the patterns serve. The recurring finding is that representations are patterned rather than neutral, often reproducing dominant assumptions and inequalities.

Gender representations have been extensively analysed. Feminists identify the persistent stereotyping of women in narrow domestic, sexual or caring roles, and Tuchman's concept of 'symbolic annihilation' captures the way women have been under-represented, trivialised or condemned in the media relative to men. Mulvey's concept of the 'male gaze' describes how visual media frequently position women as objects to be looked at from a male viewpoint. While representations have changed - with more varied and active female figures - feminists debate whether this reflects genuine progress or a commercialised, still-objectifying 'girl power'.

Class, ethnicity, age, sexuality and disability representations show similar patterning. The working class is often represented in limited or negative ways (as a problem, or as objects of ridicule or pity), while the powerful are represented more favourably; some minority ethnic groups have been stereotyped, associated with problems such as crime or portrayed through a narrow range of roles, and analysts note both under-representation and misrepresentation. Older people, disabled people and sexual minorities have likewise been marginalised or stereotyped, though representations have become more diverse. Across all these groups, the key sociological point is that representations are selective constructions that tend, in aggregate, to reinforce existing hierarchies.

Evaluating representations means combining the evidence of patterned stereotyping with attention to change, audience interpretation and the ownership debate. The hegemonic and Marxist views explain biased representation through the routines and interests of media production; pluralists argue that representations diversify in response to audience demand and that audiences actively interpret rather than simply absorb them; postmodernists argue that in a media-saturated society representations proliferate and fragment, undermining any single dominant image. The strongest answers show that representations both reproduce and, increasingly, complicate social hierarchies, and connect the analysis to the effects debate - since the significance of a representation depends on how audiences receive it, examined next.

Worked example

Analysing stereotyped gender representation

Applying material from the Item, analyse two ways the media may represent gender in stereotyped ways.

Select way one from the Item
Hook to a reference to women's portrayal and develop symbolic annihilation (Tuchman): women under-represented, trivialised or confined to narrow domestic/sexual roles.
Develop and link
Explain the effect - reinforcing the idea that these roles are natural for women - and connect to feminist analysis.
Select way two from the Item
Hook to a reference to how women are shown and develop the male gaze (Mulvey): women positioned as objects to be looked at from a male viewpoint.
Develop and link
Note change and debate (more active female figures) but that objectification can persist under a 'girl power' guise.

Result: A full-mark 10-marker develops exactly two stereotyped representations of gender - symbolic annihilation and the male gaze - each hooked to the Item with a clear analytical link, not a list of stereotypes.

Typical mistakes

Listing stereotypes without analysing the pattern or whose interests it serves.
Ignoring change over time and the active audience's role in interpreting representations.

Active revision

Applying material from the Item, analyse two ways in which the media may represent gender in stereotyped ways. (10 marks)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA AS and A-level Sociology (7192) specification (AQA)

The media and their audiences: effects models#

AdvancedAQA 7192/2 The MediaDfE GCE Sociology subject content

Models of media effects

Fig. 6The effects models range from a passive audience (hypodermic syringe) to an active one (uses and gratifications, reception), with cultural effects as a long-term middle position.

The question of media effects - how, and how far, media content influences audiences - is the topic's culmination, because the significance of ownership, news construction and representation all depend on whether audiences are influenced. The models range from those that see the audience as passive and directly affected to those that see it as active and selective, and evaluating them is the key AO3 task. The debate matters practically too, underlying recurrent public anxieties about media 'effects' on violence, behaviour and attitudes.

The earliest and crudest model is the hypodermic syringe (or 'magic bullet') model, which pictures the media 'injecting' messages directly into a passive audience that is uniformly and powerfully affected. It underlies many moral panics about media harm. Its weakness is that it assumes a passive, homogeneous audience and ignores the evidence that people interpret, resist and vary in their responses; few sociologists now accept it in its strong form, though it survives in public debate. The two-step flow model (Katz and Lazarsfeld) modified it by arguing that media messages reach most people indirectly, mediated by 'opinion leaders' who interpret and pass them on - restoring some audience activity.

Active-audience models reverse the emphasis. The uses and gratifications model (Blumler and McQuail) argues that audiences actively use the media to meet their own needs - for information, personal identity, social interaction and entertainment - so that people choose and interpret media for their own purposes rather than being passively shaped. Reception analysis, drawing on Hall's encoding/decoding model, argues that audiences decode media messages in different ways: some accept the preferred (dominant) reading, some negotiate it, and some oppose it, depending on their social position. These models credit the audience with interpretive agency that the hypodermic model denies.

The cultural effects model offers a middle position that connects effects back to ideology. It argues that the media have a gradual, long-term, 'drip-drip' influence, shaping the cultural climate and the taken-for-granted assumptions of society over time rather than producing immediate, dramatic effects - a view compatible with the hegemonic account of ideological bias. Evaluating the effects debate means seeing that the truth lies between the passive and active extremes: audiences are neither empty vessels nor wholly autonomous, but interpret media messages from social positions that the media themselves help to shape. The strongest answers reach a judgement - typically favouring active-audience and cultural-effects models over the discredited hypodermic view, while noting that the new media complicate the picture by blurring producers and audiences - and connect effects to the ownership, news and representation debates.

Worked example

Model essay plan: are audiences passive?

Plan a 20-mark answer evaluating the view that audiences are passive and directly influenced by the media.

Set up the debate
The hypodermic model says audiences are passively affected; active-audience models disagree. Signal a judgement. Hook to the Item.
The passive case
The hypodermic syringe model and moral panics assume direct, uniform effects; the cultural-effects model adds gradual long-term influence.
Critique the passive view
It assumes a homogeneous, passive audience; the two-step flow (opinion leaders) and evidence of varied response undermine direct-effect claims.
The active alternatives
Uses and gratifications (audiences use media for their own needs) and reception analysis (dominant, negotiated, oppositional readings - Hall) credit audience agency.
Judgement
Conclude that audiences are neither passive vessels nor wholly autonomous; active-audience and cultural-effects models are more convincing, though the new media further blur producer and audience.

Result: A top-band plan discredits the hypodermic model, develops two-step-flow, active-audience and cultural-effects alternatives, and judges audiences interpretively active but influenced within socially shaped limits - an evaluative conclusion.

Typical mistakes

Treating the hypodermic syringe model as credible rather than as a discredited starting point.
Describing the models without evaluating them or reaching a judgement about audience activity.

Active revision

Applying material from the Item and your knowledge, evaluate the view that audiences are passive and directly influenced by the media. (20 marks)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for sociology (Department for Education)

References & sources

Sources

Department for Education

GCE AS and A level subject content for sociology

AQA

AQA AS and A-level Sociology (7192) specification

The Media (optional topic)

5 sections~20 min reading time3 competenciesLevel Standard 2 · Advanced 3

The Media (optional topic)

Key points

Evaluating the democratising claim

Key points

Model essay plan: do owners control content?

Key points

Applying moral panic to a media episode

Key points

Analysing stereotyped gender representation

Key points

Model essay plan: are audiences passive?

Sources

The Media (optional topic)

Key points

Evaluating the democratising claim

Key points

Model essay plan: do owners control content?

Key points

Applying moral panic to a media episode

Key points

Analysing stereotyped gender representation

Key points

Model essay plan: are audiences passive?

Sources