Black Britain

Black Britain on Prezi

Key terms

Identity: Identity is an umbrella term used throughout the social sciences to describe a person's conception and expression of their individuality or group affiliations.

Collective Identity: is where an individual perceived membership in a social group impacts upon their own identity in some way.

Mediation: Mediation refers to the reconciliation of two opposing forces within a given society by a mediating object. Similar to this, within media studies the central mediating factor of a given culture is the medium of communication itself.

Representation: Representation refers to the construction in any medium of aspects of ‘reality’ such as people, places, objects, events, cultural identities and other abstract concepts. Such representations may be in speech or writing as well as still or moving pictures. Representation involves not only how identities are represented or constructed within the text but also how they are constructed in the processes of production and reception by people whose identities are also differentially marked in relation to such demographic factors.

Hegemony: Hegemony refers to the ways in which the media encourage people to consent to status quo power structures.
Gramsci believed the media have always had a key role in teaching people to do things in their everyday lives that support the power structures. In media studies today, people look at how the media support power structures such as government, capitalism/corporations, and patriarchy. For example:

• A news report that shows strong support for a controversial foreign policy decision can be said to hegemonically support the government.
• A game show that shows scantily-clad women passively standing still until the host tells her to "open the case" can be seen as hegemonically promoting patriarchy.

Antonio Gramsci's conceptualization of hegemony has become an important part of the media studies discipline and media studies classes around the world. This concept has contributed a valuable vocabulary for discussing the relationship between media and power.

Colonialism and Post-colonialism: Colonialism is the expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. The most common type of colonialism been exploitation colonialism which is where colonists are usually interested in extracting resources to export and sell in richer countries. Post colonialism consists of reactions to and the analysis of the cultural legacy of colonialism.

Imperial 'other': Imperial is a term that is used to describe something that relates to an empire or the concept of imperialism.

Youth subculture: A youth subculture is a youth-based subculture with distinct styles, behaviours, and interests. A minority youth culture whose distinctiveness depended largely on the the social class and ethnic background of its members; often characterized by by its adoption of a particular music genre.

Examples of youth cultures are teddy boys in the 50s, punks, rastas and hippies.

Syncretism: Syncretism may involve attempts to merge and analogise several originally discrete traditions, especially in the theology and mythology of religion, and thus assert an underlying unity allowing for aqn inclusive approach to other faiths.

Post-modernism: Postmodernism is the movement away from the viewpoint of modernism. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the modernist approches that had previously been dominant. Postmodernism rejects the modernist ideals of rationality and individualism in favour of being anti-capiatalist and committed to radical egalitarianism.

Urban music: Urban music was developed in the 1980s and 90s defined by recordings by rhythm-and-blues or soul artists with broad crossover appeal. Urban contemporary began as an American radio format designed to appeal to advertisers who felt that "black radio" would not reach a wide enough audience.

Today I think people think of urban music as hip hop, rap, garage and reggae. It is also associated only with only black artists because thats where it originated from.