Online Media

What is Online Media?

• The Internet
• A network system of computers
• Hyper-reality, beyond reality/ Hyper-link goes beyond the text
• Lead to a state of hyper-modality (process of going beyond one format/mode/format) 
• Multi-modality, process of media product that uses different modes of communication
• Same thing
• 'above the fold', all the information 
• Vlog is contraption of video log, aka online diary
• Subgenres
• Makeup tutorials
• Educational
• Travelling
• Fashion
• Lifestyle
• Tech
• Videogame streaming
• Cooking
• Sports
• Unboxing
• Songs
• 50% of 16-24 year olds watched vlogs in 2015
• Research says that 42% of the internet have watched a vlog within the last month
• Their informational and instructional
• There is a huge element of Voyeurism
• There is a sense of escapism
• They are relatable
• Vlogs oftenly do not have a narrative

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• Zoella
• UK based
• 12 million fans
• started in 2009
• has over 1 billion views
• 147th most subscribed person
• Her 2nd channel 'moreZoella' has 4.8 million subs
• Has 727 million views
• Has 13.6 million followers on twitter
• 10.9 million followers on instagram
• Videos
• Low production values and a clear lack of script
• Constructs a compelling and relatable persona for the audience
• Zoella is a 'real person', with faults
• MES high key unnatural lighting, low production values
• Constant reference to the brand primark, a budget clothing superstore, indicating a predominantly working class target audience. Yet does explicate on what Primark actually is or means, inferring a British working class target audience
• Accent- well spoken, maybe forced? Bubbly, colloquial personal
• Use of informal language such as the word 'bloody' indicates a relaxed and informal persona
• Costume is everyday and approachable, comfortable. Low cut top, yet absolutely no sexualisation: atypical representation of women!
• Makeup clearly visible yet not particularly over the top: 'going out' as opposed to 'high fashion'. Zoe sits and talks directly to the camera with very little movement. Video structure is straightforward and repetitive
• Constructs a hyper-real version of herself
• Video resembles a long and unscripted advertisement. A cultivation of materialistic and capitalistic ideologies
• The Zoella Apartment
• 
  

• Logo is right at the top
• Gold and sparkly, indicates stereotypical young, working class female audience
• Sans-serif font is scrappy and shabby, perhaps reflecting the relatable personality
• Social Media icons
• Multi/hyper- modality
• Banner ads
• long and thin advert, specific to online media and may pop up whilst watching a video
• Footer
• bottom of the webpage
• Carousel and slider
• side scroller 
• Menu-bar 
• on the left
• Search bar
• at the top
• Everything here has been crafted to make a familiar and enjoyable experience for the audience
• UX, User Experience
• Videos are arranged in a nice way, each of these thumbnails which are crafted to be nice

• Symbiotic relationship: where a youtuber and youtube rely on each other for money
• Thumbnails exist to entice and try to force you to watch the videos
• She uses a range of theatrical and exaggerated mode of address with her expression
• She does this to try to make the video better than it is
• Hyperbolic mode of address
• Bright. vibrant colours, further anchored by high-key lighting and post-production editing
• Uniform, similarity creates a recognisable brand identity for her target audience
• Use of makeup, reinforces brand identity and hegemonic social values
• Titles, big bright bold colours and text
• Products/ commodities presented, encoding the dominant ideological perspective of consumerism 
• Head is often tilted to the side, gives of the illusion of attractiveness and approachability
• Zoella does repetitive content in order to maximse her click and her revenue

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Zoella Theories

1. Semiotics: The proairetic code created by the pizza thumbnail informs the target audience that the video will focus on pizza, a fast food popular with Zoella's young, female, working-class, target audience
2. Structuralism: A binary opposition is created in Zoella's apartment video, where Zoella is represented as small, petite and vulnerable, while Alfie is masculine, large and confident. This reinforces notions of patriarchal hegemonic values.
3. Postmodernism: The representation of pancakes in the pancake blog constructs a hyperreal representationof Zoella as a hegemonically perfect and flawless woman.

Zoella representation theories

1. Representation`; Zoella presents herself as stereotypically hegemonically attractive woman. Petite and girlish, she reinforces certain expectations of how women should look
2. Identity: the 'FuckZoella' account demonstrates an opportunity for the audience to present their own specific ideological perspective, and to engage with Zoella in an oppositional manner.
3. Gender performativity: Zoella continually self-represents as a sexless, virginal hyperreal construct. This in turn influences and manipulates her young and impressive target audience t follow certain hegemonically constructed expectations of women
4. Postcolonial theory: Gilroy's theory of post-colonial identity assumes that there is a definite hierarchy thats exists with the representations of ethnicity. Zoella presents a hegemonic construction of beauty that assumes that the audience is white. By presenting white ideals of beauty in her videos,  Zoella is effectively symbolically annihilating any representation of black and ethnic minority voices.

Zoella industries theories

1. Power and media industries: Zoella uses algorithmically appropriate and effective titles in her videos in order to ensure that she attracts a much larger audience and maximises advertising revenue
2. Regulation: Zoella was threatened with court action, after not announcing that she was sponsored by a brand on instagram post. However, this example underlines how totally ineffective the regulation of online media is.
3. Cultural industries: Zoella works independently in a small group. Ultimately her business endeavours are vertically integrated, with all forms of production and distribution under her control.

Zoella Audience Theories

1. Cutivation Theory: Cultivating the ideology that makeup is what every girl should wear
1. Cultivating maetrialistic ideologies
2. Fandom: Use of hyperlinks to follow Zoella on many different platforms and ability to contact Zoella through the use of Comments
3. End of Audience: Media in which Zoella started herself as a producer using online media
1. Community are able to subscribe and unsubscribe from following the producer, showing if she doesn't perform she will be losing her following

Utopian solution

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Gender Performance: how people demonstrate their gender through our actions (Judith Butler)

• 'gay man acts flamboyant'
• There is no gender identity behind these expressions of gender
• Performativity is a repetitious and ritualistic act that constructs identity
• Our identity only comes as a result of this performative act
• Gender is a performance, whilst Sex is what we biologically are.

For Zoella, performativity for women can be displayed on the mise-en-scene

1. makeup, covered to appeal to men, wearing heavy makeup
1. not particularly sexualised, she appears 'sexless'
2. She seems normal, approachable, a girl on the street
2. Outfit
1. 'normcore' plain jumper, grey and non-form fitting. Cre-neck grey jumper, symbolic pf a standard-straightforward and non-sexualised fashion
3. hair
4. straight boyfriend
5. middle class house, stereotypical girls house, all accessories and flowers
1. Reinforces stereotypical representation of gender
6. Setting
1. kitchen, symbolic of old fashioned representations of femininity, and reinforces hegemonic norms and social values regarding women
7. "boys are too big to get in the back" [of the car], clear distinction between genders. Alfie announced loudly he has been down to the gym, and is wearing a vest, emphasising his body
8. white people
9. performing as a stay at home mother
10. Target audience is teenage girls
11. A clear binary opposition is constructed between zoella, who is small, and alfie who is significantly larger. The binary also constructs diametric opposiiton between genders
12. Zoella's lifestyle: 'i've been busy baking' a clear and gender role is constructed between Alfie and Zoe in their leisure activities
13. Yet alfie subverts representations of masculinity through sharing his life and his emotions. He demonstrates extreme happiness at having completed a gym workout
14. Zoellas gender peformance is arguably subversive. She does not wear any revealing clothing, nor bad language
1. Constructs a stereotypical soft and caring. (Sigmund Freud)
15. Shot of Zoe in bath, covered in ball pit toys and laughing with poppy is a stereotypical girlish construction of gender. DEFIES hint of sexualisation
16. zoella is pushed in to bed by Alfie, in a gesture that briefly hints at eroticism. Yet instead they simulate having a nap while lying down and not kissing. Their gender performativity constructs idealised, non-sexual, childish and loving relationship. Instead, Zoella turns the conversation immediately to candles. Here commodity fetishism replaces any reference to sexual intercourse.
1. A Madonna/whore complex? Zoella is completely sexless, and sells this ideology to her target. In performing in such a way. Zoella reinforces that sex and sexuality are undesirable aspects in young woman 
17. Zoella's gender peformativity creates a complex set of reactions and interactions in her target audience
18. Zoella is asexual, no have no sexual preference 
19. During makeup tutorials we see Zoella with spots suggests she is relatable

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To what extent an Zoella and attitude be seen as postmodern

• breaking the 4th wall is when a character addresses the audience
• Zoella constantly breaks the 4th wall
• Jean Baudrillard: We live in a world where there is more and more infomation, and less and less meaning
• Hypereferentiality: beyond intertextuality, when someone makes reference to themselves
• Zoella relies heavily on other vloggers to create intertextuality

Blog redesign

• much more sophisticated
• less girly, less childish, more adult
• Easy to use, easy user expirience
• Fashion and lifestyle blog
• 
• The pancakes are an example of commodity fetishism
• Creates a stereotypical and hyperreal representation of women
• Zoella is constructing a stereotypical representation metonymical, the pancakes are meant to show that they are as perfect as Zoella, this is meant to direct to audiences that the ideal women must be perfect
• Is run by Team Zoella, suggested she is not a person anymore, she is a brand
• The longer we spend engaged with a website, the more likely we have our ideology cultivated by the website

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In 2017, Zoella released a christmas calendar, it was expensive and was crap

• Zoella's audience was meant to be kids
• The calendar did ruin her reputation
• Many saw this as Zoella taking advantage of her audience 
• This calendar did ruin her image, previous audiences were able to feel related to Zoella however the calendar made the, feel more distant
• Comment left on Zoella's page
• Fuck Zoella 

Controversial tweets

• Extremely disruptive to her image

Machine-learning: the way in which a machine learns such as learning what you like to watch on youtube and gives you a recommended.

30 seconds into a video counts as a view, so Zoella talks gibberish to keep the watchers intrigued until it reaches 30 seconds

Zoella is using the logic of algorithms in order to capture her target audience

producers no longer target their audience, instead they try to target the algorithm so the videos are at the top of the search list

Henry Jenkins

Fandom

Clay Shirky

End of Audience

User engagement: when a product tries to keep you involved in the product for as long as possible
Conspiracy theories are the ideas that the world is against them, people with schizrophenia and paranoia will be more likely to believe in such stuff

A high-engagement person is a euphemism for being addicted to something on the internet

• Reptoids conspiracy
• Famous celebrities are reptiles
• 911 was an inside job
• George Bush
• Hitler survived WW2
• Fled to Argentina
• These all get popular due to becoming viral

Component 2 Section C: Online Media

Mini Mock Test: December

Liesbet Van-Zoonen argues that media language encodes how male and female characters act in media products. Explore how representations position the audience in Humans and Les Revenants

Key scenes

• Brothel in Humans
• Adele scene

Key theory 8: Feminist Theory/Male Gaze Theory

Lisbet Van Zoonen

The theory is that every media product is aimed to a heterosexual male audience

• Gender is constructed through discourse, conversations, media products
• And that this gender stereotype can change over the world depending where you are.

Van Zoonen believes that women are used in media products to attract heterosexual men

Aspirational image: an image that inspires you to look like that model in the image to gain a better life style.

Sexualisation: To make something sexual

Objectification: The change someone to the status of an object

Simone, Adele and Lena Scene

• Adele's response is not logical and is not typical of the genre
• Mid-shot of Adele collapsed against the door is symbolic of her misery and her lost of sanity, along with the high angle view makes her seem isolated, exposed, alone and weak
• Preferred reading of this scene was to make her seem happy again, but Les Revenants puts us in a confused position by making her not happy to see her.
• Terror intertextuality, the diajetic knocking sound, coupled with the shot of the handle moving is highly conventional of the horror genre.
• The scene demonstrates hybrid fluidity between the genres of horror and romance
• Brighter lights on Adele's side contrasts the low-key lighting on Simone's side of the door
• Non-diajetic music creates a stereotypical horror track, instruments such as a piano can be played very creepily. An arpeggiated song, symbolises loss 
• Big theme about this show is death, this means that this is final, and there is no return from death but Les revenants flips this, and for example Adele is upset because she believed she is being haunted by Simone
• We have a shot of Simone yelling "open the fucking door" with a counter shot of Adele screaming "go away'. This creates a barrier between the two and a diametric opposition.
• Extremely uncommercial scene
• Mise-en-scene of the mirror symbolises that Simone is a ghost and that he doesn't belong here
• Adele wears a white dress symbolises the fact that she is married
• Simone is wearing a suit which creates a binary opposition between Adele and Simone,  Simone is giving order and being stereotypically masculine, Adele is being stereotypically feminine and being scared and isolated, this links to Lisbet Van Zoonen's theory that genders are portrayed in a certain way across all media
• Low-key lighting in Adele's house is a proairetic code suggesting something bad is going to happen to her
• This could be an intertextual reference to the gothic genre
• lighting is artificial suggesting Adele carries herself now and doesn't want Simone in her life

How is Gender constructed when Leo enters the brothel?

• Leo is aggressive to other men on the street, even pointing, glaring; he is assertive and is getting stuff done
• Leo Gesticulates aggressively and assertively
• wears lots of layers of clothing making him look ruff and tuff
• military connotations with the guys wearing green shaded jackets
• Tracking shot positions us with Leo as he enters the brothel
• Leo tries to conceal a disgusted expression as he's quite upset to be in the brothel
• Leo is acting tuff, Niska is acting sexy; she is putting on an act so she can survive otherwise she'll be found out
• Hyper-real representation of a brothel
• The soundtrack makes it sound like an uninviting place to be, we are in the same position as Leo where we feel uncomfortable.  It is exploitative. Usually it would be the woman's right to choose to be a prostitute however all the prostitutes in the scene are synths, meaning they have no choice
• Tracking shot follows Leo around, it cuts to Niska which is a eye-line match shot
• Niska sexualisation, she is wearing a stereotypical sex worker costume
• During the hug they both breakout of their characters, Leo is no longer ruff and tuff
• Niska is very happy and is acting very human
• She proceeds to take out her anger at Leo by smacking him, but also continues what Leo claims that she is best as a prostitute for now
• This glare, smacking and close up shot of Niska emphasise the power she has over him; symbolically castrates/emasculates him
• women are numbered which objectifies them "yes i want number 7"
• Each prostitute is in their own chamber as if they are in a zoo, being treated like animals
• beard symbolises manliness in media
• £25 for 10 minutes can be considered
• Leo walks in a slouched way as if he has a purpose
• Backstreet which has symbolic connotations of crime, this creates binary opposition with the middle-class household that Anita is located

Sigmund Freud Madonna/Whore Complex

Woman Magazine

Audience is positioned to be uncomfortable

Allegory

Sociohistorical

Key Words

1. Representation
2. Stereotypical
3. Mise-en-scene
4. Hegemonic
5. Proairetic
6. Ideology
7. Hermeneutic
8. Symbolic
9. Cultivate
10. Polysemic
11. Subversive
12. Semiotics
13. Encoded
14. Binary/Diametric Opposition
15. Anchorage

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Liesbet Van-Zoonen argues that media language encodes how male and female characters act in media products. Explore how representations of genders position the audience in Humans(Stereotypical representation of women) and Les Revenants(the same as Humans)

To begin, Van Zoonen believes that women are used in any media products to appeal to the stereotypical hegemony of society that that media product is representing. In my overall opinion, I believe that representation of genders are portrayed stereotypically to the hegemonic norm of a patriarchal society before everyone was treated equally.

For Humans, it’s displays women in a very stereotypical way. Such example of this is Anita in Humans, she is being portrayed as a house-wife or maid, doing the dishes, laundry, cooking and always says to Laura Hawkins that she was built to serve. What makes this fit to the Zeitgeist of women in the 1960’s is the intertextuality of Humans, such as the Women magazine. We can associate Anita’s actions with how women were treated when society was more patriarchal then egalitarian. For the audience, they are positioned by making Anita the main character of the story. Examples that put her as the main character includes marketing such as posters, and her flashback in episode 1, season 1, when Leo loses her when she gets kidnapped. Meaning that she has a key importance to Leo who also is portrayed as important in the plot of Humans.  With the audience knowing that she is the main character means that the producer wants the preferred reading to be that the audience follows her story as she seems to be the spine of episode 1, season 1. With this we can consider that the representations of the female gender in Humans is that they are treated as a household object, as she is forced to do all the house cleaning and cooking etc. An example of this objectification can be when Laura Hawkins calls her ‘you’re just a stupid machine’ with Anita replying ‘yes Laura’. For the audience, they are meant to feel sympathy for Anita and also feel like they’re in the same position, to feel angered by how the Hawkins family treats her such as Matty saying that she is a slave. Concluding that for Lisbet Van Zoonen’s theory, this can be considered that females match the hegemony of society, however this is more directed towards the 1960’s when women were portrayed more as house-wives, this suggests that the show Humans is an allegory, with Van Zoonen stating that women are still portrayed to appeal to a male heterosexual audience. With Humans being Anita’s story, the preferred reading is for the audience to associate themselves to Anita the most as she is the one found on all the marketing for the TV show. And with how the Hawkins family treat her, makes the audience feel bitter towards anyone else who treats her badly.

Additionally, Les Revenants follows the same format of following the portrayal of men and women stereotypically. To begin, the best scene to describe how each gender is represented is the diametric opposition between Adele in her white wedding dress, low-key lighting and being indoors, with Simone in his black suit, dark lighting and being outside. One mid-shot of this scene is when Adele collaspes against the front door, this is symbolic of her misery and her lost of sanity after Simone had supposedly died ten years before the tv show is set. The mise-en-scene of the high angle view makes her seem isolated, exposed, alone and weak which follows the stereotypical hegemony of society in the 1960's. 

Furthermore, Humans also follows stereotypes of women but in another fashion as well as a house-wife. Theorist Sigmund Freud suggested that men, during his time, perceived women in one of two categories. He coined this the Madonna/ Whore complex, stating that women can either be a virgin, motherly, all caring, benevolent carer with great beauty or rather a whore, a character that craves intercourse, mostly prostitutes who want money. In this case Anita’s house-wife actions are contrasted by Niska, another synth in Humans. She also kidnapped and becomes a robotic prostitute. In episode 1 of season 1, Niska is portrayed as a whore according to Sigmund Freud. For one the mise-en-scene of the brothel when the character Leo enters it has high connotations to how women are represented. For one, Niska is wearing a stereotypical sex worker costume. Each prostitute is numbered, and not called by their real name, Leo says to the brothel owner that he’ll ‘have number 7’, which objectifies Niska and women as a whole yet again. Each prostitute is also in their own chamber as if they are in a zoo, being treated like animals, aka being treated as if they had lower status in society than men. Furthermore, the soundtrack of the brothel scene also makes it sound like an uninviting place to be in, the audience at this point follows Leo as he snakes around the brothel to find Niska, making us feel uncomfortable to be in the brothel. This follows Van Zoonen and Freud’s theories, that women are portrayed to be appealing to the male-gaze, or rather that media sexualises women; and that with the soundtrack making the audience feel uncomfortable with its exploitive nature demonstrates Freud’s belief that men portray the whore of the Madonna/Whore complex as scary and uncaringful, and the soundtrack follows this. This diametric opposition between Anita’s house-wife attitude and the objectification of synths in the brothel demonstrates Freud’s simple complex.

For the audience in this scene they follow Leo around the brothel could possibly show a rather atypical response but also stereotypical response on women. For atypical, Leo feels uncomfortable around the women, suggesting that he is fearful and unmanly, this of course is atypical to the stereotype that men are not afraid of anything and are brave, and with the audience being forced to follow him around the brothel, makes them feel uncomfortable to be around the women. This follows the stereotypical response that women that follow the whore part of the complex can be considered untrustworthy and scary. This can tie in to Stuart Hall’s reception theory, he states that when an audience is given a media product, they give three response to that product. For the producers preferred reading, he wants the audience to feel uncomfortable around the brothel, demonstrating an allegory that women should not be sexualised like this, following Van Zoonen’s theory but also tying in to how Freud’s theory demonstrates how wrong the whore is. For oppositional reading, this can be that women should be perceived to have a lower status in society and disgusting according heterosexual men, which Van Zoonen theory follows.