Codes & Conventions
A tool used to create meaning in a media product.
What is a media code?
The intentional shaping of audience responses through media codes and conventions.
What is audience positioning?
Stories created by Australian media creators that reflect Australian culture, history or identity.
What are Australian stories?
Australia's publicly funded broadcaster.
What is the ABC?
This Australian animated series follows puppy and her family, and was used to discuss Australian stories, institutions and audiences.
What is Bluey?
Interviews, testimony and archival footage are examples of these.
What are documentary (or non-fiction) conventions?
Choosing what is shown and what is left out to influence audience understanding.
What is selection & omission?
The world's oldest continuous living culture.
What are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures?
Rules that require a certain percentage of Australian content to be shown on television.
What are quotas?
This zombie comedy combines horror and humour, following a Brit who barely notices a zombie apocalypse has begun.
What is Shaun of the Dead?
This code includes facial expressions, body language and movement.
What is acting?
Shock, fear, suspense and sympathy are examples of this type of audience engagement.
What is emotional engagement?
An Australian documentary studied this semester about racism in Australian sport.
What is I Was Actually There: Nicky Winmar?
A major challenge facing Australian media because our population is relatively small.
What is limited audience size?
This product begins with main character Rick waking up alone in a hospital after the zombie apocalypse has already started.
What is The Walking Dead Issue #1?
A narrative convention that refers to how time is manipulated within the narrative.
What is structure of time?
A zombie film repeatedly portrays zombies as violent, infectious and less than human. This is an example of constructing this.
What is a representation?
An artist of Bidjara heritage whose work explored identity, belonging and connection to Country.
Who is Michael Cook?
Netflix, Disney+ and YouTube have made competing for this increasingly difficult for Australian stories & creators.
What is audience attention?
This music video uses suspense, mystery and audience uncertainty before revealing its twist ending.
What is Thriller?
In I Was Actually There, historical photographs of Nicky Winmar are examples of this documentary convention.
What is archival footage?
When audiences actively think about themes, ideas, values and messages rather than simply reacting emotionally, they are demonstrating this type of engagement.
What is cognitive engagement?
Historically, representations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were created by people other than Indigenous people themselves. Including Indigenous creators helps provide these.
What are Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander perspectives?
The social, economic, institutional and political influences that shape media production.
What are production constraints?
These two Spider-Man media products were used to demonstrate how representations can change because of the constraints and opportunities of different media forms.
What are Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Spider-Man 2?